Happy Halloween!

Halloween is always a favorite holiday around our house! We love to decorate and we love the whole feeling in the air surrounding that night! We had fun making carameled apples, listening to Halloween tunes and just being together. We knew this would be a different Halloween, by virtue of what's going on in our life right now. We have always spent it all together, so it made us sad to divide up to conquer Halloween. Grace was able to make it to about 5 houses, and she had a great time. Then she decided she was too tired to go on. We are grateful she tries so hard, and is so good about knowing when it is all too much. She has done fairly well this week, despite chemo. She had a few nights up with aches and pains and has had a bad stomach from it (in fact she won't eat more than a few bites of yogurt, and a bite or two of dinner and she's done for the day). But, she still championed through Halloween-even visiting JR's office that day. Tanner had a blast! He and JR met up with friends and made out like bandits on candy. Tanner loved being a special ops army man! Eva thinks the whole concept of Halloween is just delightful! Who wouldn't love practicing a newly found walking skill coupled with free candy at each door? We hope everyone had a great Halloween!

A funny set of deviants...

Grace and Tanner are little buddies. They have so much fun together and, if Tanner can forget the harder effects of Grace's steroid on her personality, they will have sweet memories of this time and growing closer from it. They love to have sleepovers and one night when they were supposed to be sleeping we heard secretive giggles from our room. When we retired to bed for the night, we found them in our room-beautified in sleep masks (thank you Jet Blue)! When they look this cute it's hard to be mad! (we wrote earlier of Grace's surgery to insert a porta catheter through which her chemo would be administered. You can see the small circular scar where the tube went in, the line where it was placed and the bluish bump is the actual device. Hard to believe a little body can have so many battle wounds-she is so brave)!

Why?????

Eva makes us laugh! She is so funny, smart, and for a one year old is able to verbalize so many things. But, her trick of late stops us in our tracks. She now asks why! Isn't that something that is supposed to begin when a child is around 3 or so? If I say, "Eva, we cannot play with markers anymore-she says, "why"? After I tell her it is because she eats the tips off of them, she lays her head on the ground and pretends to cry. When she looks me in the eye and says, "oh un" I know she is sweetly begging for more lotion. But, I have to tell her no. What does she do? She asks "why?" Then, I have to spout off a mini dialog about how the last time she got a hold of it while I was on the phone with Grace's doctor, she managed to pour out an entire bottle and wipe it across every reachable surface. Why is a commonly used word in our household. Between three children we hear it often enough, but it still surprises us when our 15 month old shouts it out!

Chemo, leg warmers, and dancing

When Kim and I sat in the hospital listening to a team of doctors tell us what our lives were going to be like, we hoped and prayed that our daughter would be healed no matter what. We knew Chemotherapy was poison and as such we expected the worst. We expected and were grateful to have a bed-ridden child who would slowly, yet increasingly improve... There are many of those days and we are so grateful for the fact that we are out of the hospital and Grace is healing.

Today was a Chemo day. This morning Grace decided she wanted to go to school so she went to school and loved every minute of it asking to stay longer when it was done. She then went to Doernbecher to have her port accessed where they took blood, and administered two types of Chemo into her blood over the course of three hours. Yet, in true Grace form, she came home and rested for a little bit and decided she needed to dance, sing, and play. I guess even in the shadow of Cancer Grace cannot help but be herself...happy, joyful, sparkling, and energetic.

On a chubbier note Eva wore leg warmers! They were a perfect accessory for her chubby, juicy thighs. She has been an angel and loves to dance as well. Her favorite thing to do right now is to walk around our house pushing her baby in a stroller. Sometimes the stroller is filled with marbles, lotion, or hand sanitizer rather than the baby.

Tanner is still loving his new school and doing very well. He has two more soccer games to go. If they win both they will be undefeated. In his game on Saturday he had two great goals; one with his left and one with his right foot. His favorite thing to do lately has been to act out either battle scenes or football games while on the tramp. Kim and I sometimes listen as plays outside by himself yelling, making gun noises, and sports commentary. Sometimes even reenacting out the plays in slow-mo. Since T hates his picture taken the only one we got today is blurry because he escaped while we were shooting.

Random Recent Pics

I downloaded a bunch of pictures and thought I should update the blog.

We have had so much help from everyone and we are so grateful. From amazing dinners, to visitors helping with the kids and everything else, to taking our dog on vacation, to letters, emails, and gifts. We are so grateful and feel we will never be able to adequately thank all of you.






Tanner's Jogathon was a great success. Thank you for all the donations




Annabelle is getting gigantic. Here is a recent picture from Wu.