Benziger babes

My Dad and I catching piranha's in the Amazon I recently listened to a podcast "To Dad, From Daughter" by She Explores and it was in honor of dad's for Father's Day. It was an hour long show full of women of all ages calling in and leaving messages about how their dad introduced them to the outdoors. The podcast resonated with me as many of my early memories were with my dad in the outdoors. My love for nature stems from our adventures in the outdoors and is one of the major reasons we moved to Seattle, and now Duluth, to be closer to the outdoors. Growing up, my Dad was not around every day as he woke up early and was off to take care of patients at the local hospital and then to clinic. As a physician myself, I know that the profession demands that patients come first and often family second. With the limited time we had together, he made the most of it and often took us to explore the outdoors. I am who I am today because of my Dad and his love of the ou

To the lovely - your spirit lives on in all of us! When my Uncle Jim passed away last year, I wrote a blog about " Death and Dying ." He discovered a lump on his neck, which turned out to be metastatic esophageal cancer. My Aunt Rita also had cancer but hers started in the colon and was slower growing and initially responded to treatment. CEA levels were up, started chemo, CEA levels went down, stopped chemo, CEA levels went right back up, started chemo, and CEA levels came back down. Rita rode this rollercoaster for the past 3.5 years and finally the ride ended last night, 8/21/2019 around 7:30 P.M, when she peacefully left this world and was reunited with her brother Jim. I visited Rita the last time I was in Minneapolis and she told me that Jim taught her a lot of not-so-good things in his early life but he did teach her one thing that was good - how to die. She missed him dearly, as siblings do, but watching him give away his dog, go on hospice and pass away in les

Former lion scouts Theo's Cub Scout Pack 3043 had their rank-up ceremony on May 31 on Island Lake, about 30 minutes north of Duluth. Theo begged me to stay overnight so despite working 12 day in a row, I left work right at 5pm on Friday and Seth had the car packed with all our camping gear and we headed to Camp Horace Johnson . The Voyageurs Area Council owns various camp sites for Boy Scouts who come from across the country to experience the outdoors. The rank up ceremony is a chance for each boy or girl ( girls are now allowed in scouts as of 2017 ) to get recognized for the work that they have done for the required and elective badges. Each scout was presented with belt clips for each badge they earned that they put on their scout belt. They also got presented with a handkerchief that has the name of their next rank. Theo and his friends in kindergarten moved up from being lion scouts to being a tiger scout (1st grade). "What are the cub scout ranks" is a common

Benziger Family in Chi-town 2019 Downtown What you see is what you get girl Don't ever forget girl Ain't seen nothing yet until you're Downtown Have you heard the song,  "Downtown, downtown" by Macklemore? Our one trip this summer was a long weekend going downtown - to Chi-town. A quick 1 hour direct flight from Duluth makes it an easy get-a-way with lots of great restaurants and cultural opportunities for the big and little kids. Luck for me, our Thursday night flight was delayed two-hours so that I finished reading all my echocardiograms and cleaned out my Epic in basket with just enough time to spare to get home, change clothes, finish packing and leave our house exactly 1 hour prior to flight departure and still drive to the airport, park, check a bag, get through security, and buy some candy before the plane started boarding! Gotta love the DLH international airport! "Long" security lines at the airport < 1 hour prior to flight