prayers and kids

Many people have asked specifically what we pray for right now for our Michael.  There are so many needs he has that it's difficult to narrow them down.  But here are three specific things we pray for right now:
1.  That the cancer might be completely eradicated from his body
2.  That he might blink and smile again, that the nerves to his face might reconnect and he might have use of his face again.
3.  That he might regain his balance and coordination and learn to sit unassisted.

Kids and their funny-ness

And here are some funny stories of things going on around here:

A few days ago, Sarah and Whitney were playing "hospital."  Around here, this is pretty common pretend play for the kids.  On this particular day, Whitney was the patient with a hole in her head and she needed a new brain and Sarah was going to perform the surgery.  Of course, Whitney needed an MRI first, so Sarah drew a profile MRI of what she thought the inside of Whitney's head looked like.  She got out some of our "body" books for reference material.

This morning Whitney was saying the breakfast prayer.  Among other things, she prayed that Michael's cancer would please please just go home and not come back.

My sister was known to be a bit hot-headed at times growing up, so it was pretty funny when Whitney whispered to her during church and asked, "Aunt Julie, where do you keep your tempers?"  My sister was quite surprised by this question and asked her what she meant.  Whitney replied, "Don't you remember you showed them to me one time on your face?"  "Do you mean my dimples?"  "Yeah, your dimples."

Remember this pool? 

I have a story about it.  A few weeks ago I saw it at a store here and thought my kids would love it.  I just had Michael with me so I tried to fit the pool in the minivan, but it was too wide so the guy at the store helped me tie it to the top of the van.  I carefully turned on to the main road, which was 2 lanes in each direction, only to hear a "whoosh" and look in my rear-view mirror to see if fly off the top of the van and land smack dab in the middle of the road.  I pulled to the side of the road and waited for all the cars to drive around it and then moved it out of the way.  I wasn't sure how to get it home now but I quickly came up with a plan.  I left the pool by the side of the road and drove home quickly and picked up the other kids from the babysitter's.  I told them I had a really totally awesome and cool surprise.  We then drove back to near where I had left the pool.  There wasn't a good spot close to the pool to park, so instead I pulled on a side street about 500 feet away, turned on a movie for the kids and hopped out promising I'd be right back with the huge surprise and then ran to the pool.  I'm pretty out of shape so it took me way longer than I would like to admit to get that pool back to the minivan and I felt horridly guilty for leaving them alone in the car. Not only that, there was a tall fence blocking the kids from seeing where I was going and the movie wasn't working and they didn't know how to fix it so when I returned they were all scared and bawling.  No problem, I thought, the sight of the pool would for sure turn those tears into smiles.  I said, "Look everyone, we have a brand-new pool for the summer!"  They all just looked at the pool and at me and then Sarah said, "Oh mom, that wasn't a very good surprise at all.  I was hoping you were going to come back and say that Michael didn't have cancer anymore."

I did manage to tie the pool on and get it home safely.  And it's okay, they still like the pool.

One more about Spencer and locking his babysitter out of her house...
Spencer loves to open and close doors.  He especially likes to lock them if he can.  While a friend was watching the kids while I was at the hospital with Michael, Spencer locked his favorite blanket in one of the bedrooms and asked her to unlock the door so he could get it.  We keep the key high on the door molding, no problem for Tim and I, but a huge problem for our friend who is really quite short.  She had to use all sorts of creative methods to finally get that key down and retrieve the blanket.  Just a couple of weeks later, the kids were playing at this same friend's house while I was once again at the hospital with Michael. She went outside for a brief moment when Spencer shut the door behind her and then turned the lock.  She rang the doorbell and knocked and asked him to open it but he couldn't quite figure out how to get it unlocked.  The older girls were playing in the basement and couldn't hear the commotion.  After a few minutes she gave up and luckily found another unlocked door into her house.