One year later

It was a year ago this month that Michael finished his grueling cancer treatments.  His cancer was so aggressive there were times we wondered if the treatments were even making a difference.  Today he went down to Children's Hospital for another MRI, his fourth since he finished radiation.  We were thrilled to learn it was another clean scan!  It's nothing short of a miracle that his cancer hasn't returned, and that we get to enjoy four more months with him until his next scan!

One year later and I'm still cancer free!

We're in our new house!

The last few months have been absolutely intense!   Here are a couple of highlights.

After Brooklyn was born we spent the next few weeks taking care of our newborn and packing up our house in preparation for our move.  Liz's parents and sister Julie came out to help.  We also celebrated Michael's second birthday on July 2nd.  Last year at this time we didn't know if he would even have another birthday, so it was awesome celebrating another birthday with him!

+

We closed on our new house on July 12th and spent the next week with Liz's parents working on a few pre-move-in house projects and doing more packing.  That Saturday a group of friends and neighbors helped us transport two Uhaul truckloads to the new house.  We saved some of the really heavy items such as our piano, some dressers, couches, etc. for the professional movers, who came a few days later.

 

Liz's parents took our three oldest children with them back to Utah on the day of our move.  They enjoyed having a week to play with their Bellamy cousins while we moved to our new house and started the unpacking process.  We drove to Utah the following weekend to pick up our kids and for Brooklyn's baby blessing.  Brooklyn looked like an angel in her blessing dress.

 

One evening while we were in Utah, Michael was playing on Grandma and Grandpa's bed and tumbled off it.  With his poor balance he's already prone to falls.  We protect him the best we can while still letting him explore and develop, and fortunately none of his falls have been serious.  But after this particular fall Michael just wanted to be held all the time, cried a lot, didn't want to sit up, crawl, or do much of anything.  We couldn't figure out what was wrong until a day or two later as we were preparing to drive back to Colorado, we noticed he wouldn't put weight on one of his legs.  That night after arriving home we took him to the ER, and sure enough he had a broken leg!  It's not a bad break, so the ER doctor put a splint on it and referred us to an orthopedic surgeon.  The surgeon, Dr. Baer, happens to be one of our friendly new neighbors we had just recently met, and he put a nice waterproof cast on Michael's leg.

Interestingly enough, Michael's physical therapist has wanted to put weights on Michael's right leg to help him with learning how to walk.  The cast has fit the bill nicely and has been a blessing in disguise in that regard.

My parents drove out to Utah from California for Brooklyn's baby blessing and caravan-ed with us back to Colorado to spend the week with us.  It was great spending time with them and their help was invaluable as we worked on more house projects, unpacking, cleaning out our old house, moving the rest of our stuff over to the new house, taking care of the demands of five young children, and so on.

In the midst of all this moving, Whitney and I celebrated our birthdays as well.  It's a real treat sharing a birthday.  I took Whitney on a special birthday date and asked her where she wanted to go for it.  None of the options I presented sounded all that appealing to her, such as Fort Fun (miniature golf, arcades, etc.), bowling, and the like.  But when I suggested taking her to McDonald's where she could order anything she wanted, her whole face lit up and she was sold!

On August 14 we closed on our old house on Willow Creek Drive.  What a bittersweet moment it was for us.  I bought that house 12 years ago as a single bachelor.  I proposed to Liz in that house and together we brought five children to that beautiful home.  We spent many years making memories and getting the house just the way we wanted it.  But we were bursting at the seams and it was time to find a bigger home.  The family who bought the house from us has two children, a girl and a boy.  When we met the husband and wife on our closing date, they seemed absolutely delightful.  They even brought a baby gift for our little Brooklyn.  As sad as we are to leave our beautiful home, we're so glad that it's going to a wonderful family.

Even though we now live in a new neighborhood, we had originally planned to keep our kids at Liberty Common School.  Liberty is an amazing school and has been so good for our family these last two years.  But as we looked at the logistics of a longer drive to and from school on top of an already packed schedule, we decided to give the local neighborhood school a try.  We've heard a lot of great things about Zach Elementary, and like Liberty it's considered one of the top schools in the Fort Collins area.  The bus stop is on our street, so commuting won't be a problem.  So we're sad to leave Liberty, but hope that Zach will be the right fit for our family at this time.

First day of school!

Michael had a multi-disciplinary clinic at Children's Hospital a week or so ago.  That's where doctors and surgeons from many different fields related to Michael's illness meet with him to see how he's progressing and decide on his next steps.  The clinic was long and Michael has a lot of challenges ahead of him, but overall it went about as well as expected.  Michael's next MRI is this Friday.  We're praying for another clean scan!

The last few months have been absolutely exhausting and we sometimes wonder if we're ever going to come up for air!  Our kids have needed a lot of attention to help them get through this transition.  Poor Michael would scream and cry for up to nine hours a day, and who could blame him?  Bringing home a baby from the hospital and moving to a new house completely rocked his two-year old world.  On top of that Brooklyn is going through a really fussy period right now.  The combination of just those two kids has made it tough to get much done, including sleep!  Our three oldest children are adapting to the changes in their own ways, and we try to find the bandwidth to give them as much love and support as we can.  We don't know why we have felt impressed to make so many big changes at this time in our lives.  We feel completely overwhelmed, but we've seen the Lord's hand in our lives a lot lately, helping us, guiding us, and reassuring us.