Hammis Family Blog

Angelo Scura was a close friend of mine who passed away this past Monday, March 1st, after a yearlong battle with brain cancer.  I first met Angelo when I was working for Siemens as a contractor assigned to the Washington Mutual account.  He lived in California and soon made the migration from California to Texas similar to myself.  While he was making that transition I gave him advice about the move, having just made that move a few months earlier myself, which he was greatly appreciative for.  After a time he had gotten laid off from WAMU and we hired him at Siemens.  He also started going to church at the same church that Evie and I went to and soon became a very active member there, getting involved in the Men’s ministry.  His wife Kim also started to work at the same place that Evie worked at and they also bought a house on the same street as my mom, so our lives were quite intertwined both in and out of work.

The character that Angelo possessed can only be described as selfless.  He put God, family and friends before himself in everything that he did.  He was one of the first people to show up for work and the last one to leave at the end of the day.  After the leader of the Men’s ministry lost his own battle to cancer, Angelo stepped up and took over to keep it going.  He organized the Saturday breakfast meetings and the Tuesday Men’s Night Out gatherings.  When scheduling got complicated at work and adjustments to schedules had to be made he took them on.  He worked third shift, second shift, whatever shift we needed him to fill.

Last spring when he was diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer and was given little time left he still kept his faith in God and God’s will.  He would’ve loved to have stayed another 20 years but he knew that if it was God’s will for him to come to heaven sooner then he would.  And he would tell you this with a smile on his face.  He knew where he was going, no doubt about that.

Nobody’s perfect and Angelo did have his faults.  He would talk your ear off some days and it could drive you batty.  But he always meant well.

His funeral is Saturday and he will definitely be missed by many.  I’ve been honored to be asked by his family to be a pallbearer.

Angelo, if you’re reading this from heaven, just know that all of us in the Hammis family love you and miss you.  We will see you in heaven when we get there.

I’ve linked my twitter account to this blog.  If it works right then the blog should notify twitter when I post a blog.

I’m a little late with this but it’s blog-worthy for sure.  Dallas, TX rarely gets snow and when we do it’s hardly ever much accumulation.  Most of the time they predict an inch, maybe two and it turns into half that and will dust the ground and is gone either that day or the next.  This year has been a bit different.

Back in November we got about 3 inches of the white stuff that fell early on a Wednesday morning.  Oddly enough we got snow before Canada did!  True to Dallas form however, it was gone by lunchtime as the temperatures rose into the 40’s.  We got a couple more dustings until Christmas Eve when we got another 3 or 4 inches of snow, covering the roads, yards, etc.  Most of that melted in a couple of days, but it was still lingering some by New Years Day.

Last week was the big one though.  The East Coast was getting hammered with snow and forecasters predicted that we might catch the tail end of that storm and get 1-2 inches on Thursday.  On Wednesday they upgraded that to 3-4 inches.  We woke up on Thursday morning and the snow was falling quite heavily.  By noon we had their 1-2 inches and their 3-4 inches and it was still coming, hard and heavy.  The snow continued on until late Friday morning, dumping a record 12.5 inches of snow on the Metroplex!  The previous record for single day snowfall was 12 inches.  This was more snow than Dallas had received in one day, during the month of February and the total snowfall for this winter is more than has ever fallen in Dallas.

Check out pictures of Evie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Layla (our dog) playing in the snow!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2050976&id=1476777364&l=2a01af8de3

Life has been very hectic over the past few months and I’ve completely neglected my blog.  I’m going to try to go over all that has happened since October that I didn’t blog about.

October 31st was Halloween and my birthday.  I had told Evie that I didn’t want her to spend any money on my gift but that it should be something very special to me.  She somewhat circumvented that by buying me a couple of gifts from the kids but she had made me a very special gift.  She made a keepsake box that was decorated with pictures from our trip to Italy and the gifts that we had gotten from my brother and sister’s christenings.  It was very sweet.  The girls went trick or treating dressed up as a lady bug (Elizabeth) and a bumblebee (Catherine.)

November 11th was Catherine’s first birthday.  We had a party for her at the house with some friends and family and also took the time to celebrate my Mom’s 60th birthday which was on November 15th.  We got Catherine a small cake that she could smash and get into and she did just that, making quite a mess and having a lot of fun.  We took both of them plus Evie’s mom and stepdad out to dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe in Dallas to celebrate.  Pictures of it all are up in the gallery.  Also while Evie’s family was in town to visit we had an early Thanksgiving dinner.  I fried half of a turkey breast in the deep fryer and then we roasted the other half in the oven.  We also had the rest of the trimmings, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberries, green bean casserole, etc.  It was pretty nice to spend that time with them since we don’t normally get to spend Thanksgiving with them.

On Thanksgiving we had a traditional Thanksgiving dinner over at my Mom’s house.  It was another good and filling meal and enjoyable time spent with family.

December came and we did lots of preparations for the Christmas holiday.  We decorated the house and put up the tree and made a trip to Michigan to spend with Evie’s family.  This was the first time we had been in 4 years and the first time Catherine had gotten to celebrate Christmas in Michigan.  We drove up on the 19th with the whole family and Layla, our Golden Retriever.  It was a 22 hour drive but we made it without any problems.  We avoided most of the weather on the trip there and back but did see a bit of snow while we were visiting.  Elizabeth loved playing in the snow and got lots of time with all of her grandparents that were up there, as well as her cousins, aunts and uncles.  We had a very busy week while we were there.  We did Christmas with Evie’s sister Ronni on Tuesday.  On Wednesday I got my Christmas present from Evie, a tattoo of Catherine.  We had Christmas church service on Wednesday night.  Thursday was Christmas Eve and we spent that with Evie’s dad and stepmom.  That evening we visited with family friends Mike and Sandy and I got my first experience working on a lathe with Mike.  I decided when we got back that I was going to get one.  Friday was Christmas Day and we spent that with Evie’s mom and stepdad.  The girls both made out with a lot of presents from Santa.  Saturday we headed home with Evie’s brother Treg and left the girls behind for another week.

When we got back I was able to go get my new car, a 2010 Transformers Edition Chevy Camaro.  It was the first time I’ve had a sports car and it’s a very nice car.  I had to sell my Harley to get it but it is nice because I can take the girls in it if I need to.  For New Year’s we visited with our friends Gary and Rebecca and also celebrated our friend Frenchie’s 50th birthday.  The following weekend we drove back up north to Tennessee to drop off Treg and pick up the girls to come back home.  While we were there we visited with Evie’s former stepmom and step-sister and their families.  It was really cold while we were there though and we were anxious to get back home.

After we got back home we got Elizabeth back into her hockey practice.  She had a break for the holidays and is doing very well with it.  She’s not quite at the level that her coach wants her at, but she’s getting better each week.

On January 17th Catherine started to walk without any prompting from anyone or grabbing onto people or objects.  Since then she has been walking all over the place and does it more than crawling now.  A video of her from that day is here:

January 23rd was Evie’s birthday.  She turned 28.  We had a bit of a birthday weekend celebration for her.  Saturday morning I brought her breakfast, donuts, as she requested.  I also brought her flowers, cards from the kids and I and her present, a new Nikon D3000 camera.  She also got taken out shopping, to get her nails done, to a comedy club and then out dancing with her friends.  Sunday we slept in (the girls were at the baby sitter’s) and then later that evening we went to dinner with our friends Jenn and Rex.  I also got her a trip to Las Vegas.  We’ll be taking that trip at the end of March.

That pretty much sums it up for the last couple of months.  I’ll try to update more often and I’m going to try to get Evie to update some as well.  I’ve also posted new pictures in the gallery today from the same time period.

After a long delay I’ve updated pictures in the gallery.  Pictures from August, September, October and part of November are up.  http://www.hammis.com/gallery is where they can be found.  You’ll see pictures of Elizabeth’s, Catherine’s, my mom’s and my birthdays in there as well as Halloween, a wedding that we all were in and an impromptu trip to Michigan.

Today is my sister Barbara’s 30th birthday.  It’s not only a milestone birthday, but a special birthday because it’s the first that we get to celebrate now that we know each other.  Since we’re 5000+ miles apart I recorded a video of Elizabeth singing Happy birthday to her.

You can also find it on my youtube channel, www.youtube.com/dhammis

Catherine hit the 10 month mark today.  She’s not walking yet like we had predicted, but has finally cut her top two teeth and is showing interest in walking.  She’s walking while holding onto objects or holding someone’s hand.  She just went up to Michigan with us and did pretty well on the drive.  We didn’t have a crib for her in the hotel on the way down so she was difficult at night, but otherwise did pretty good on the trip.

Today was Elizabeth’s birthday.  She turned 4 today.  We originally planned to have a party for her this past weekend, but due to the loss of Evie’s uncle we had to postpone the party a week and will instead have it this coming Saturday.  Evie and I spent the day with Elizabeth (I took the day off of work) and we took her shopping and then out to Gatti-town, which is a place that has a pizza/salad buffet and lots of different games for kids of various ages.  She picked out some Word World toys from Toys R Us and played skeeball and air hockey at Gatti-town.  That night my mom took Elizabeth out for some special time with her.  They went out to eat and then mom took Elizabeth shopping at Target.  She had a very good birthday this year.

Monday night we got a call that Evie’s Uncle Pat passed away.  He is Evie’s Dad’s younger brother and was only 48 when he died.  The official cause of death is cardiovascular disease, which caused his heart to stop.  Wednesday night we started to drive up to Michigan and got here Thursday night.  There was a viewing today and tomorrow there will be a funeral.  Please pray for Evie and her family while they mourn the loss of their family member.

I went to Las Vegas last week to play pool during the APA National Team Championship.  While my team didn’t qualify for the tournament, they also hold smaller tournaments that don’t require a qualification or pre-registration called Mini-Mania.  While I was there I found out they had a number of vendors there that were selling various pool goods, doing exhibitions and cue maintenance.  I showed up on Wednesday and found out that I couldn’t register for any of the tournaments that day because they had sold out already.  While walking around through the exhibitors I found a booth for Tiger products.  They make cues, tips and leather wraps for cues.  I’ve wanted to get the wrap replaced on my cue for a while, so I took the opportunity to replace the wrap on my cue with leather.  I also had the shafts for my cues cleaned up by Leonard Bludworth, who is a master cuesmith and owner of Bludworth cues.  Also while wandering the floor I found the booth for Allison Fisher, a world champion player who is one of my idols.  She was holding challenge matches for charity.  I made a donation and signed up for a match against her later that afternoon.  When my turn came up I made the most of it.  We had two games of 9-ball and while she killed me on the first game, I was able to beat her in the second game.  She gave me some tips and complimented me on my breaking ability as well.  It was a big high moment for me.  I got a signed picture of her and she signed my cue as well.

Thursday I played in the Mini-Mania tournaments and didn’t fare as well.  A missed shot in a 9-ball game gave my opponent the opportunity to run out for the victory.  Poor overall play in the clutch in my 8-ball game lead to a 5-0 loss in that game.  I tried my hand at cards and lost $20 playing blackjack so I determined luck was not in my favor that day.  I watched more pool and Thursday night went to PoolAPAlooza, an event the APA was holding by the pool at the hotel.  I watched Tom Rossman do trick shots and got to meet him and get a picture of him as well.

Friday I did some shopping for friends and family and then headed to the airport to come home.  It was a fun trip for sure.