All About Sam: My Grandpa's River

So this spring right before Sam was born I lost my grandfather and grandmother in two weeks. My grandpa had been fighting cancer in many different organs for about seven years. He lost the battle this spring when the cancer went to his brain and he was just too exhausted from the brain radiation and actually aspirated his morning eggs. So I guess technically it wasn't the cancer that killed him but the eggs! My grandmother had dementia and had not been herself for sometime and she just seemed to know that it was time to go two weeks to the day after grandpa had died.
Anyway, why I am bringing this up you ask?
Well, yesterday as I was changing some things in my profile I realized that you could search for other blogs by clicking on the interests that you list in your own blog (a pretty cool feature, try it!) and I came across a blog that really struck me. So I felt I needed to write about it.
When my grandpa was younger he floated the entire length of the Missouri river, starting at the headwaters. He always called it "His River" and would constantly ask me "What are you doing to save my river?". He was concerned about all the dams that had been built and about all the pollution that was now in the river. I never really knew that much about what was going on with the Missouri River so I always nervously smiled and told him that I would see what I could do. I always felt kind of bad that I really never did anything for "his river".
So yesterday I found the answer. The Missouri River Relief is an amazing organization working to clean up and maintain the ENTIRE Missouri River. I checked out the blog and got excited. Although it is probably not something I can do right now, someday, someday hopefully soon, I would love to get involved with this organization somehow so that I can finally have an answer for my grandpa. I would love to be able to tell him when I see him again what I did to help save "his river".

Okay, pictures and discussion of the amazing weekend in St. Louis will be coming soon but for now I will leave you with a few pictures of Sam and the family (no pictures of Grayson yet, my new adorably wonderful nephew, to see him go to my sister's blog www.jodified.typepad.com).

Samantha playing with cousin Parker and PawPaw.