October.  It has been an insane month.  Lots of ups.  Lots of downs.  And in all reality, 2013 cannot come soon enough.  I am tired of 2012.  It has been a good year, but it is making me tired.

*October 2nd was Jake's 10th birthday.  After the last four years... this year especially, birthdays have even more meaning in our family.  I am so grateful he has had another one.  It has been a rough year for him, but I am pretty sure he has passed with flying colors.  He is doing so so well and we will take each and every good day we can get this year!  I am so glad he has been able to make it to this point.



For his birthday, we got up early and headed to the airport.  His Uncle Alex just so happened to be coming home from his mission that morning.  It was a good birthday gift.  Jake loves Bigul  (Jake gave him that wonderful nickname!  When he was little he could not say Big Al, and it eventually was shortened to Bigul and has stuck.  It is what everyone calls him now.  In fact, I called him Alex the other day and Crew's comment was, "Who's Alex?")    He was an amazing missionary, and we are so grateful for his example to our kiddos, but we are so glad to have him home.



After the airport we headed to lunch at a brazilian restaurant and then walked through one of the funnest toy stores we have been to.  Jake really wanted to open his birthdays presents, so we went home and he was excited to get Avengers, Harry Potter for the wii, a new book and some new skylanders.  He is easy to please.  The rest of the afternoon, he played his new games.  We had such good intentions, but that afternoon was when things started to go downhill for me.  I was horrendously sick.  We put off his birthday cake until sunday.  Poor kid.  I still feel awful about that.



 We are so incredibly grateful for this boy.  His sassiness.  His feistiness.  His goodness.  He is one of the sweetest, kindest boys you will meet.  He loves legos and to build things.  He loves to read.  And reads for close to four hours every day.  We are running out of series to start him on, so if you have any ideas, send them our way!  He loves to swim.  And has been in heaven each and every time he has been able to get back in the pool.   We will be forever proud of him for his strength the last four and a half years.  He teaches us something new every single day and we love him to the moon and back.

*We went to the pumpkin patch out in santaquin.  We had lots of fun.
(Copied the idea from the video from a girl's blog I follow.  Next time, I will do quite a few things differently.  So please note that it is totally amateur.  I was learning.  And it sometimes gives me a headache to watch it.)

*Swimming.



*We finished soccer and tball and football.  Cole loved flag football this year.  It was his first time playing and he even ended up scoring a few touchdowns.  He thinks he is going to play tackle next year.  It is one thing that we are still discussing.  (Funny story about Jake and football... poor kiddo still has a hard time running and keeping up with other kids.  He does not like being last or behind, so most of the time he just refuses to play.  He went to his friends house one day and his friend apparently was able to talk him in to playing football with him and his friends.  Jake came home begging to play tackle football.  The next day I heard his cute friend telling other kids how good Jake was and that he needs to be on their team.  Seriously made me cry.  He recently had another little boy make fun of him when they were playing football.  And it makes me horrendously angry.   I have the hardest time when kids are mean to other kids... not just my own child.  I could not be more grateful for that other sweet little boy that helped build up my child's confidence.  Jake obviously will not be able to play tackle football, but it helped him to know that he can be good at something if he tries.)



*We hiked donut falls.



*Pa Randy took Jake and Cole repelling.  There is something really scary about watching your kid hang off the side of a cliff.  Not sure why...

Jake loved it.  Cole was not too sure.  He was petrified actually.  I am pretty sure his motto is "anything Jake can do, I can do better", so he did it.  But I am not sure when he will be trying it again!



*Cole was finally baptized.  Another day I had such good intentions.  The day turned out special, but I am still sad I was not able to take as many pictures as I had wanted to.  We were able to have a private baptism because of Jake.  There were four other kids in our ward being baptized that day and it would have been a little much for him with all of those people.  His grandma's both spoke and Jeff baptized and confirmed him.  We had a book for people to sign in and he wrote what he felt that day:

"When I got baptized I felt happy.  And lots of peapel came!  And I was very excited.  Evrey body came just for me."



Also have to share what Jake wrote.  The kid seriously makes me laugh like crazy sometimes.

"C-O-L-E-R-S!!!!!  How good a decision was that?!  The best you'll ever make!  I'm so proud of you! You may be a psyco, but you are also awesome!  Love ya bro. Jake"



*Some of my favorite little boy comments from this month:

Cole:  He is obsessed with hair.  I am not sure why, but he wants to shave it off.  All of it.  His hair on his arms and legs.  He saw a hair in his nose and wanted it gone.  The best was when he walked downstairs and said, "Hey mom!  Ya know how I'm eight years old now?  Well, I looked in the mirror an saw a mustache.  I need to shave."  He was dead serious.

While Cole is obsessed with hair, Crew is obsessed with Jesus.  Everything is about Jesus.  You push him on the swing, he is bigger than Jesus.  That building over there is bigger than Jesus.  The other day, he asked me, "mom?  Why is Jesus a church man?"  Hmmm.

Cure Search Walk

September 29th was the Curesearch walk.  All proceeds for the walk go to donate to childhood cancer. A couple of unknown facts that I was unaware of until recently was that Cure Search is one of the only organizations that donate all of their proceeds to childhood cancer research.  Leukemia and Lymphoma Society give only 2%.  American Cancer Society.  Only 1%.  Salt Lake City was able to raise over $150,000 this year.  Thank you so much to those of you who not only donated, but supported us by joining our team.  Research is critical to finding a cure for these little kiddos.  Not one of them deserves to go through what they have and there were not only numerous kids going through treatment, numerous kids that were survivors, but WAY too many white balloons let off in honor of those children that have passed away from cancer.  It is a gut-wrenching disease.  And we need to find a cure.  I am done with cancer.  I am tired of hearing almost every other week of another child that we know of pass away.   The following chart shows the current long-term outcomes for children with cancer.  I think it is horrible that Jake has only a 22% chance of having no chronic health conditions as he gets older.  There is a higher chance that he will pass away within 30 years of his diagnoses.  Hate it.  Hate what it does to families.  Hate that we have to constantly worry if our child will be here to celebrate his next birthday.   So again, thank you to all of those who help support us in finding a cure for this horrendous disease.  We need a cure rate of 100%.  There are too many children who lose their lives every day.






















Our team:


The dark green bandanas represent those who are currently in treatment, the green ones who are survivors and the lime green bandanas are for those who have passed away.


White balloons let off in honor of those who passed away.


Jake and cute little Miss Millie.


My awesome cousin designed and had the shirts made.  SO grateful for her.  That part stressed me out more than anything else.  Love her for being so willing to do it.  And Love how the shirts turned out.

Bye-Bye Broviac!

(FYI:  This post was written a couple of weeks ago.  I just never got around to posting it. And about five other posts.  I really need to get my act together.)

Bye-Bye Broviac and HELLO freedom!



Usually it takes awhile to get this kid up in the mornings for his clinic appointments... but he jumped out of bed the second I walked into his room, he was so excited to find out when his broviac could come out.  We were given the go ahead and as soon as they could fit us in, we could go!  Two days after his clinic appointment, we checked into same day surgery.  He was a champ and did not complain more than a couple times of being hungry.  His surgery was supposed to be at 2:00.  They did not end up taking him back until after 5:00.  Poor kid did not eat anything until almost 7:00 in the evening.  On the way home he told me, "Well mom.  I guess I know I can fast now!"   The surgery went very well and he was even able to go swimming this week.  It has been SO nice not to have to worry about his central line.  It was a lot of maintenance every day.  And it is just one more step to normalcy.



Even though Jake was thrilled, it was surprisingly difficult to have it taken out.  The only thing I could think about while sitting in the waiting room, waiting for him to come out of surgery, was, "I wonder when we will be back here again, putting the line back in."  I know how negative that sounds.  I hate thinking it.  I hate that it has even crossed my mind.  It is so difficult to not think about the 'what if's'.  This year alone, I counted seven surgeries.  That is not even including any bone marrow aspirates or lumbar punctures.  Almost one a month.  It was depressing to walk into the waiting room and have the receptionist know who you are because you are there so often.  Cancer has been such a huge part of our life for so long, it is scary to let your guard down even a little bit because that is when you get punched in the gut.  And I am so scared.  I am scared that one day when we least expect it, it will be back.  It is a struggle to let your guard down.  Every time we go to clinic, we hold our breaths until we walk back out that door for another two weeks.  We are trying.  And we will not let it rule our lives, even though it is so scary.