It's all about Hope: A reason for the season...

The holiday season is always a time for reflection...

This year, Hope and I attended the "Light up a Life" ceremony at Sutter Roseville Hospital where we volunteer. It is an annual fundraiser for the Sutter Hospice where people can donate money to the foundation in memory of someone who has passed away. They basically light up a tree outside in front of the hospital and have a little ceremony afterwards. I didn't get a picture of the tree, but this is a picture of Hope by the sign (the tree is to the left and not in the picture) when we went to the hospital for a visit during the day.

On Christmas Eve day, I took Hope to the STARS unit for her last visit of 2009. We've been doing so many visits lately, that I decided we are not going to do any more visits for the rest of the year, so that Hope gets to just be a dog. The patients in this unit are on respirators and will spend the rest of their lives in the hospital. I thought taking her there would be nice right before the holiday just so they knew we were thinking about them and hopefully brighten up their day, if only for a little. We had a really nice visit with the patients we've been visiting for over 2 years now. Good girl Hope! The nice thing was that on Christmas Day these patients got another dog visit as our friend Rachel and her dog Rowie visited the unit as well.

Christmas this year was nice as my family came up here for a couple of days. Hope also had some doggie company as my niece and nephew's dogs came up too. Here is a picture of Hope with Lani and Kumu....