Marie Parr Wangler (Bob's grandmother)

Marie Parr Wangler, 84, passed away Monday, June 5, 2006, at a local nursing home.

Funeral Mass: 11 a.m. Friday at St. John the Apostle Catholic Church. Burial: Mount Olivet Cemetery. Visitation: 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Greenwood Funeral Home, with rosary at 7 p.m. in Greenwood Garden Chapel.

Marie was born July 12, 1921, in Tarrant County, in the area now known as Haltom City, to Lucia Mais and Arthur N. Parr Sr. She was a homemaker and a longtime resident of Haltom City.

Marie was preceded in death by her husband, Ervin J. Wangler; brothers, Charles E. Parr and Arthur N. Parr Jr.; and sister, Helen Moore.

Survivors: Sons, Michael Ervin Wangler and wife, Joan, of Washington, D.C., Daniel J. Wangler and wife, Joann, of Allen and Jim Wangler and wife, Jacqui, of Cedar Hill; daughters, Kay Haaser and husband, Bob, of Irving, Beverly Gordon and husband, Mark, of Lenexa, Kan., and Barbara Steward and husband, Kenneth, of Arlington; 11 grandchildren; sisters, Margaret Price and husband, Bill, and Patricia Burk, both of Hurst; brother, Raymond Parr and wife, Pauline, of Richland Hills; and sisters-in-law, Theresa Matzer of Richland Hills, Jenny Parr of Arlington and Valerie Parr of Haltom City.
Copied from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram 6/8/2006.

Happy Birthday BOB!

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to my Bobby
Happy Birthday to you!

I know, I'm a couple hours early. :)

Trip to South Dakota

Bob and I took a trip up to South Dakota for my sister's high school graduation. I posted some of the pictures over at sname. Since all us girls were together I took a shot of my 3 sisters, below.


We took a quick trip to Mt. Rushmore, walked around the trail, simulated blowing up the mountain, fun stuff.

Update

I've slowly been updating my website so that :

The pages are coded in CSS style sheets,

My photo album contains the story of the photos and not just pictures, and

I'm moving the destination photos to www.sname.com and keeping family pictures on nautmile.com.

Thus far I've moved over My Construction Project and My Goonie Adventure and added Northern California.

Other than updating the website, not much going on down here. We've had a couple monster storms that have sent us running for buckets to keep from soaking the carpet. Bob is doing well at Dell and looking forward to starting classes this fall. I may have another construction project later this year, but it depends on how quickly I can get this job permitted. My record is 2 weeks, but I cheated by having a Congressman write to the Corps to speed up the project.

I will need to start studying for the Professional Engineers exam later this year, as I plan to take it next April. I could take it later this year, but after witnessing what a colleague went through prior to taking his, I'd prefer more time to study for it. Especially considering there it no Coastal Engineering PE exam, so we have to learn some environmental engineering to take the test, an 8 hour exam.

In the meantime, I'm just swimmning and preparing to go up to South Dakota for my sister's high school graduation (bio-father's daughter with new wife). Bob and I will spend a little extra time to go see Mt. Rushmore and possibly Crazy Horse, so it should be fun.

Army on Hold

My brother's entry into the Army has been temporarily postponed.

While he was pretty bummed over the weekend, the rest of the family saw it as a blessing in disguise, particularly because my dad was admitted into the hospital last Tuesday due to chest pains and by Thursday morning the doctors were saying his chance of survival was 50-50. Envision family freak out.

My understanding of the situation with my dad is a little hazy, but his doctor said that it appeared that the bypass on one of the arteries was in the wrong location and that to correct it they'd have to go back in. In addition to that, he had 3 other arteries that were clogged. The method the cardiologist wanted to use was pretty risky, since my dad has already had open heart surgery and is held together with wires and all, so my parents got a second opinion from the surgeon who suggested that the procedure to get to his heart would be too risky and to use stents rather than a bypass.

The doctors got together and concluded that the surgeons plan was safest and the cardiologist was successful at placing stents in 2 of the 4 arteries. Afterwards, he told us that the damage was likely already done to the heart from lack of blood from the arteries he could not fix and that the only other option was to try the bypass, which he did not think we should do now.

That was last Friday and by Sunday my dad was able to go home.

After spending another weekend in the hospital I can see why Joe is interested in becoming a medic, HEB has some really great nurses. Of course, he's currently talking about going to medic school and holding off on nursing school for a couple years because he's really interested in getting out of Texas. Personally, I'd prefer him to get his RN first, then travel but I'm a school first play later kind of gal and I know he's going to do what he wants regardless and seems unconcerned about the prospect of going to Iraq, and in his words, "... would rather die in Iraq than spend the rest of his life as a pizza delivery man...."

Of course, I know going to war is the chance you take when you join the military, it's part of the job, but as his sister, I'd much rather have him in a military hospital compared to the frontline in Iraq. Yea, I'm selfish, I don't care. I just know I had to look at my dad's brothers, a medic in the Marines, picture on the mantel my entire childhood and I'd prefer my brother not suffer the same fate.