{"id":175,"date":"2007-07-05T22:34:04","date_gmt":"2007-07-06T05:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/2007\/07\/05\/first-night-eureka\/"},"modified":"2007-07-06T06:23:38","modified_gmt":"2007-07-06T13:23:38","slug":"first-night-eureka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/2007\/07\/05\/first-night-eureka\/","title":{"rendered":"First night, EUREKA!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of the fun of staying in a town called Eureka is every time you say it, you can say it as an exclamation (EUREKA!). This never gets old. Especially when on a long road trip.<\/p>\n

EUREKA! is a wonderful town with a population of about 600 (although I feel like they might have double counted). Whenever I see little towns like this, I always think this was how it was for Josh and Mandy growing up. One restaurant, a hardware store, a hotel, and everybody knows each other. They will probably try and tell you Billings was bigger, but they are just denying their past.<\/p>\n

\"Main<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Jackson<\/a><\/p>\n

There actually was only one restaurant, so it wasn’t hard to choose where to eat. After dinner, the town had a pretty amazing firework show to celebrate the 4th. Niko powered through his bedtime and got to see his first fireworks. It was an amazing evening that reminded me how far we have come.<\/p>\n

Three years ago I was in radiation treatment. Two years ago we were trying to come to terms with the fact that we might not be able to have children. One year ago, I was in the hospital with my wife, grappling with her breast cancer diagnosis. Yet there I was last night, on the main street of a small town in the middle of the Nevada desert. It was a perfect night and the temperature was neither hot, nor cold. My wife sat next to me on chairs a fireman brought out for us. Niko buried his head into my chest as the first explosions went off. Colors filled the sky above and I watched them reflect off my son’s face. His bright dancing eyes would move from the fireworks, back to mine, and his expression said, “Can you believe this? Are you seeing this? This, is amazing.<\/em>” Niko fell asleep in Jul’s arms as the show ended, and I carried him back to the room, his head nestled into crook of my neck.<\/p>\n

I’m not dumb enough to think we have escaped pain, suffering, or death. But I’m smart enough to know how lucky we are. Last night I watch my son with the same awe he watched the fireworks. My eyes would move from him, back to my wife, and all my heart said, “Can you believe this? Are you seeing this? This, is amazing.<\/em>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of the fun of staying in a town called Eureka is every time you say it, you can say it as an exclamation (EUREKA!). This never gets old. Especially when on a long road trip. EUREKA! is a wonderful town with a population of about 600 (although I feel like they might have double […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinwater.com\/nicholas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}