Best Pals

As much as our kids thrive on annoying each other to no end, it's payback for parents when we see our kids actually managing to be friends with each other.  Here are a few times we caught them in the act.

 

Whitney and Spencer are like two peas in a pod.

They are often inseparable when they play together.

Perhaps we should separate them more often. Spencer is still very impressionable. :-)

I took Sarah and Whitney miniature golfing for the first time a week ago for filling up their marble jar (for doing their chores and other good behavior).  They loved the princess castle and were absolutely fascinated how you could hit a ball into one hole and it would come rolling out of a chute somewhere else.

Intel hosted a family activity at a local corn maze.  There were so many great activities there we never made it into the actual corn maze itself.

One of their favorite activities is playing in these huge wagons filled with corn.

Michael trying to keep warm with his favorite mom in the whole world

MRI results

This morning we made the all-too familiar trek down to Children's Hospital for Michael's MRI.  We've been anticipating this trip for almost a year now, anxious to see whether all of the surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments even made a difference in eliminating Michael's brain cancer.  We were so nervous going down there, since every MRI Michael has had in the past has brought bad news.  But this time the scan was clean!  No evidence of cancer!  YAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So what does this mean?  Does it mean his cancer is now in remission?  Well, not really, no.  Michael's type of cancer doesn't go into remission.  It's either completely gone, or it's just so small it doesn't show up on a scan.  Michael will have MRIs every 3 months for the next couple of years (and less frequently after that) to monitor whether the cancer is completely gone or if he'll need more treatments in the future.  So although Michael's future is still uncertain, this is a huge milestone and it's definitely a time for celebration!

So what's coming up for Michael in the next three months?  First of all, he'll have surgery next week to have his port removed.  Since he doesn't need his port any more for chemo and radiation, it's better to have it removed.  It's a simple outpatient procedure.

Next, he'll likely have surgery on his eyes.  The damage to his brainstem has caused his eyes to be crossed, which affects his vision.  Since the brainstem can't be repaired, Michael's ophthalmologist will do the next best thing by tightening some of the muscles in his eyes to bring them more in line.

Lastly, we'll get Michael caught up on all his immunizations.  His immune system has been so badly out of whack that he's missed all of his immunizations this year.  It will take another year or so for his immune system to normalize completely, but it's stable enough we can get him caught up.

We're so grateful for all the prayers offered in our behalf this week and for those who helped us make it through the day today by watching our kids and providing meals, love, and support.

Here are a few pictures from our big day today:

We'll all smiles after hearing the good news about Michael's MRI!

Our friends the Staceys recently moved to Denver and helped us out today.  Michael got really attached to their dog, Angel.

We came home from Denver to find our house had been "heart attacked"!

Daddy and Michael after our big day.

Mommy and Michael are thrilled with the good news!

Scanxiety and other hard things

It's been a tough week.  I haven't written on the blog for fear that the minute I start typing the tears will start to fall.  It's like when I open my mouth to try and make a thoughtful comment at church and just a big blubbery mess falls out.  Goodness, what an embarrassing wreck I am sometimes and I don't even realize it until it's too late.

We've been feeling the nervous apprehension that comes before a brain scan, the feeling of not knowing what to expect, wondering if our lives are about to be dumped upside down again or hoping we might get a free ride for another 3 months. 

On a brighter note, Michael is getting stronger a little more everyday and has longer periods of the day where he feels well.  His appetite has even picked up and he's finding he likes Wheat Thins quite a lot, one more thing to add to his limited palate.  And there are moments when - shock - everyone is content and happy and we almost feel like a normal family!

The kids are getting into the spirit of the season and left little surprise Halloween treats at friend's doors.  Well, except I totally messed up and we left one of them at the wrong house, so some special person in Fort Collins got our treats and has no idea how they ended up on their door.  I'm finding that working on the kid's costumes for their school celebrations has been therapeutic to take my mind off of the stress of things.

And the sky turned a brilliant orange the other night.

These are the simple things I try to hang onto to get through the hard things.

Fall

The simplest of things make my kids happy.  I love fall for it's beauty and sweater-weather. 

It's the simple things in life that make all the difference, isn't it?

Wing-dingers

It's been a tough week with Michael's radiation sickness.  He has good days and bad days and bad days can be a real wing-dingers.

Last Friday, Michael began refusing to drink anything.  This included nursing, which is still his main source of food.  It quickly turned into a stressful situation as he's already been losing weight and has some pretty serious problems with constipation.  But he would literally refuse, kicking, screaming, arching his back, choking on any liquid we would put in his mouth.  It was a fight all day and many long long nights and yet we had to make him drink or end up in the hospital with a feeding tube (please no).

This lasted for a few days and then thank goodness for heaven's goodness coming upon us and he started being more willing to drink later this week.  But the nights are still tough.

It has been pretty intense.  Radiation sickness is no fun for nobody. 

Luckily, most of the time Mickey just needs some good snuggling for the most part of the day.  As hard as it is at times, I feel so grateful I get to be the one to take care of this sweetest boy on earth, even if he can create wing-dinger days.

Disney Cruise Finale

This will be a super long post trying to wrap up about the cruise.
Tim:
I think four nights was just the right length for our cruise.  It was long enough that we had a great time, but by the end we were all getting pretty tired.   On the last night of the cruise I laid Spencer down for a quick nap before the nightly show.  Just before the show was about to begin I woke him up and put on his shoes.  I took my eyes off him for just a minute, and when I turned back he had disappeared!  He had taken his shoes off and tucked himself right back in bed.

Whitney and Spencer sleeping on the plane ride home

During the "Golden Mickey's" show on the first night of the cruise I couldn't help but get teary-eyed while I was holding Michael.  I just felt so grateful that he's still with us and that here we were on this cruise because of him, celebrating his life and this long road we've been down together as a family.

Liz:
For the past week, the kids have expressed with great emotion and many tears that they wish they were back on the cruise and beg that we will go on another one again soon.  So, here's a couple more reasons why they liked this trip:

Running into a couple of these famous folks on the ship:

 Swimming is this warm, perfect-for-kids, Micky Mouse pool:

Television time:

Sarah and the adults loved the water-coaster called the Aqua Duck.  It spun out over the ship and then headed around it through a tube.  It even goes up-hill a couple of places and is so much fun:

And night swimming:

Pirate Night was loads of fun.  The kids dressed up in pirate clothes their Aunt sewed for them and we all got a Mickey Pirates bandana to wear.  Dinner was a pirate flair and there was an awesome deck party later in the evening with Jack Sparrow and fireworks shot directly off the boat in the middle of the ocean.  It was really cool.  Here's us dressed up:

Okay, isn't that the cutest little pirate you've ever seen?

Here are just a few more random pics to add to the fun from our adventures:

More of the Disney ship model from our earlier post.

Michael was such a trooper through this whole experience.  Tim snapped these photos when he borrowed the captain's caps:

Snapped just as we were boarding the first day

The family traveled remarkably well too:

Sarah pulled this heavy suitcase everywhere and anywhere.  She is growing up to be such a great help

There are many details and nice touches that Disney does that I couldn't even cover all of them if I tried, like how the room hostess leaves fresh towels for the next day in the shape of cute animals on your bed.  Or that there's an attendant in the restrooms during dinner times to keep them clean and tidy.  I especially appreciated that because the attendant kindly pointed out to me I had tucked my skirt into my underwear and thought I ought to fix it before I headed back to the dining room.

And just to keep it real here on the blog, I have been asked if there is any reason why you shouldn't go on a Disney cruise and here is my response:
1.  Seasick.  Liz got pretty seasick the first 2 days and was not so fun to be around and spent most of the time wishing she were off the ship
2.  LOUD.  Disney cruises are for families so we expected it to be loud, but it seemed like it was super loud.  Peace and quiet was best found in the adult-only areas, or in our staterooms (which actually were amazingly quiet given the decibel level everywhere else).  Even the DJ cranked the music up too loud.
3. Crowded.  We've heard this in general about cruises, but there were many times it was tough to find a place to sit to eat, get through crowds or enjoy the pools.  Those photos of the kids in the Mickey pool were taken when everyone had already headed over to Castaway Cay and we hung back to let our kids enjoy the pool without it being wall-to-wall with kids.
4.  Too much to do about food.  Dinner time was fun with themed restaurants and the food was great, but it took 2 hours to get through dinner, much too long for our kids.

Tim would add things like the ships horn bellowing parts of Disney songs, and the waiters and waitresses singing "Happy Birthday" or "Happy Anniversary" to 20 tables a night it seemed, but I think whether you do or don't like those things is up to interpretation.  Oh, and the ship running a second emergency drill (after the one with all the passengers) on the 2nd day of the cruise.  Although it involved just the crew, it was loud and distracting and made it difficult to get help from crew members when we needed it.

If it were up to our kids, we'd be on another cruise in two weeks.  Thank you Disney for giving us memories to last a life-time.

Disney Cruise Part III

Our ship departed from Port Canaveral, Florida on Sunday afternoon and then arrived in Nassau, the capital city of the Bahamas around 9:30AM Monday morning.  It was warm and humid and lovely.  We pulled in alongside a couple other cruise ships that had also stopped there for the day.

We had a scheduled trip on a glass-bottom boat that took us through the channel between the island where Nassau is and Paradise Island.  Here are some pictures from that adventure:

After our little boat trip, the kids and I headed back to the ship for the afternoon to rest while my parents and Tim did a little shopping on the island.  They managed to snap a fun photo in front of this:

The next day was even more fun as we stopped at Disney's private island called Castaway Cay.  It was clean, safe and beautiful, in contrast to Nassau that was a bit of the opposite (minus the beautiful part).  The kids enjoyed playing on the beach while some of us went snorkling for the first time.  Tim and I also took a bike ride around the island which was pretty awesome.  The water was incredibly warm and Mikey loved playing in it.  This was probably one of our most favorite parts of the whole trip and we wished we could have stayed there for a couple of days.

We wore like SPF 50 sunscreen and anywhere we missed putting it, the sun was not forgiving and we got pretty burned.  But we also came home without much of a tan because of the sunscreen (for people who were asking why we weren't so tanned after the trip).

I'll wrap up my Disney Cruise posts tomorrow.