Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Lisa is 6 today!

Ahhh...to be six again....Lisa raced into my room this morning and announced loud and clear "I'm six today!!!".   Yesterday at her hospital visit, the nurses and doctors gave her a few gifts and made her a happy birthday sign.  She carried it proudly in front of her and when she figured out that people were reading it and wishing her happy birthday, she carried it even more prominently.  She even got so bold as to shake it at a few people as if to say...hey, it's my birthday, wish me a happy one.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Enjoying Life

Sorry to be so sparse with posts lately.  Those of you that know me, know that once I'm in Topsail I cease to think about anything else.  It's been wonderful down here.  Mike's family and my nephew Ray was with us all last week.  Thursday, my brother Frank flew in with my niece Amy.  McMasters left Saturday. Frank took Ray and Amy home Sunday.  All the kids have had a great time.  It's interesting to watch the oldest nieces and nephews interact with their cousins and remind them of what they were like when they were little.  It's amazing to realize how much they've all grown up.

Now that all the cousins are gone it's just us and Grandma.  Maranda is already begging to go home early. Lisa keeps running around saying "We have the whole house all to ourselves!!!"  She is doing well, she is prone to taking long naps each afternoon, but so is Mike.  We've heard from our U of M docs and once we get back Lisa will be doing some testing which will be given to St. Jude to see if they will accept her for the antibody study.  If she's accepted, she and I will most likely be going to Tenn early September.  That will truly be a different experience for us all. 

Well..back to the beach...hope everyone is well and enjoying their last bits of summer.


Thursday, August 5, 2010

A brush with fame

Things have been going well.  We went to MI Adventure last weekend with my sister and nephew Jacob....I'm still waiting for them to send me photos so I can post them. We dropped the older three off at Special Days camp before Mike, Lisa and I headed home.

It's been pretty quite this week, but it's going by fast!   Lisa misses her sibs, but other than that seems to be doing fine.  She's a bit more tired lately and her appetite comes and goes.  I try not to think anything of it, but sometimes it's hard not to.

We are getting geared up for our 2 week vacation at Topsail with Mike's side of the family.   We continue to be on the waitlist for a protocol that could open at St Judes or a different protocol that could open at Motts.  IF either of these opened while we were on vacation, it could be problematic....once they studies open, scans have to be done within 5 days.  That means we either cut our vacation short or bypass the studies.  I'm not sure what we will do if faced with this conflict.  There is no hard evidence that either of the protocol would make a difference and cutting the vacation short seems like we could be cheating Lisa out of a family memory, but not doing a protocol could cheat her out of life.  I truly have no control on this one and hope God will see that the timing works out.  While try not to dwell on the issue, it is definitely stressing me out.

On another note, Lisa had a brush with fame tonight.  She got to join some other kids from her Kids Kicking Cancer karate class to film a public service announcement with Gerard Butler.  While he's not Miley Cyrus or Demi Moore -the stars that the kids got to shoot the announcement with on Sunday while we were out of town:(- Gerard was very nice and spent a lot of time with the kids before and after the shooting.   I've attached an amatuer clip I took from my phone....it's a bit long, but the whole process was a lot longer!  The film Gerard is in town shooting got behind schedule so we waited over an hour for him to get done with that.  We did get to peak behind the scenes and all the crew was very nice.  Once Gerard was done filming for the day, they shot the public service announcement.  There were many retakes and we were snapping pictures like crazy...those will be on shutterfly soon. Lisa, being bald and toothless, got the front and center spot right on his lap.  It was very cool! Lisa was awesome and very much the professional sitter.   We are so proud of her.