True Awesomeness!

  This is my Young Women's team:   

back row:   me, Kelly (1st counselor), Kim (secretary), Cindy (personal progress specialist), Corinne (assistant beehive adviser)
front row:  Rochelle (2nd counselor), Laura  (laurel adviser), Ashley (mia maid adviser), Katie (assistant beehive adviser)

   These ladies keep me afloat with their friendship, hard work, creativity, and general awesomeness.    I've been in this calling for 3-1/2-years now and I am more grateful than ever for their willingness to be my partners in loving and serving the 34 young women we have in our ward.  

Thanks to these wonderful women and to each of the wonderful young women that brighten my life tremendously.   

Ella♥Maya♥Meg♥Alyvia♥Bella♥Martha♥Coco♥Gianna♥Amelia♥Eden♥

♥Kate♥Maeve♥Lola♥McKenzie♥Clarissa♥Aubrey♥Maria♥

♥Morgan♥Ana♥Elena♥Emma♥Auli'i♥Allie♥Nadine♥Anna W♥Sidney♥Mikayla♥

♥Marina♥Miko♥Courtney♥Rachel♥Ashley♥Anna B♥Annika♥

And thanks to our Savior, Jesus Christ, whose birth and sacrifice provide the reason why we do what we do in the first place.    

I am grateful for this Christmas season that reminds me of the great blessing it is to have a knowledge of the beauty and simplicity of God's great plan.   I love the gospel and find comfort in the peace and perspective that it brings me.

#ASaviorisBorn
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Pioneer Day Picnic

One of the things I love about my friend, Rachel, besides the fact that she's an awesome mom, a great listener, someone who also loves photography, baking, and blogging, is that she's good at making things happen.  While I only daydream about planning fun social activities with our friends, she actually goes the distance and makes it happen!

Take this Pioneer Day picnic at the park...

She made the decision to do it in the first place... 

did all the advertising for it...

and planned all of the activities.   

It turned out to be a great way to celebrate our pioneer ancestors' sacrifices and to be reminded why it's such a blessing to have great friends in our lives.

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Friendship

Blogging is not a burden or a chore to me, but rather I consider it a key to my sanity.

It doesn't matter how busy I am, I almost  always carve out enough time (even to the detriment of sleeping or chores) to blog at least a couple times a week.   Writing blogposts simultaneously soothes and challenges my mind  and I love the visual aspect that the photos add.  It really is therapeutic to me, which is why it's always a surprise to me when I realize (usually after a family member reminds me) that it's been almost a week since I last blogged.      

This is one of those times.

I'm busy, but no moreso than usual.  And it's not that I don't have anything to blog about.  I have several post beginnings, but I just haven't sat down to finish writing them.   If anything, I think my lackluster blogging can probably be mostly blamed on the gorgeous autumn weather we've been enjoying.   We've taken a lot more long walks lately and I'm finding that the time I would normally be spent blogging is often time we head outside instead.

This afternoon is the last mild day we're supposed to have for a while and the kids are once again outside taking advantage of the loveliness that Virginia autumns are.  In our backyard the leaves are  still mostly clinging to the trees. Tomorrow it's supposed to turn cold and in the next few weeks we will be deluged with torrents of leaves and have to spend hours out there raking them up.  I know that I will have an opportunity to take a walk this afternoon while Emma is at voice lessons, so today I let them play while I blog instead.

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When I left our beloved homeschool co-op shortly before school started this year, it was with a leap of faith and a strong hope that we would be able to find new social outlets for the kids and me.

Thank goodness for the S family!  

I had met Rachel, a fellow homeschooling mom, at YW camp this past summer and we connected with  our mutual love of photography and blogging.   I was so grateful when she invited us to participate in Lego League with them.   Lego League has been a fun, albeit challenging opportunity for the kids to learn teamwork, cooperation, and engineering skills.

It's been a good experience for all of the kids, but especially for Ellie.  

Ellie is a social butterfly who loves people and has a gazillion friends, but weirdly has never had a best friend.  

Until now, that is. 

   

Hannah and Ellie are two peas in a pod and their friendship is a joy to behold. 

Emma and Abigail also get along really well and all of them enjoy playing board games and putting on plays together.  

We love spending time with their cute family...

and consider their friendship a blessing to all of us.  

PS  All the photos in this blogpost, except the first one,  were taken by Rachel.  :) 

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It's a Small World

A couple of weeks before we left on our vacation I posted a status update on Facebook asking for ideas of what to do in and along the way to PEI.  Shortly afterward Cami's best friend from elementary school, Mikhaela, who had moved back to Canada a few years ago, excitedly got in touch with us asking about the dates for our trip.  In a very random twist of awesome timing, it just so happened that her family was planning to be in Prince Edward Island for two of the same three days we were planning to be there.

After jubilant rejoicing from our oldest daughter, we looked forward ourselves to reconnecting with our long lost friends.    We arranged to stay in the same place in Cavendish that they were staying and joined them for ice cream as soon as they arrived.

After being separated by an international boundary for the last three or so years, Cami and Mikhaela were happy to reconnect and lost no time picking back up in late night chats and lots of giggles....

Mikhaela's younger sister Josée was just a baby when they moved away, but Ellie and her hit it off too!

Mikhaela used to live around the corner from us and I didn't realize until we were all back together again how much I missed their family.  Luwana is a kind, dear friend and I really enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with her again.  Heck, we even joined in the fun with the younger girls and played dress-up too.

The night before we left we kept the kids up way too late, so us adults could all keep talking...

Josée was already asleep, but Ellie, Cassandra, Cami, and Mikhaela didn't mind their parents' distraction a bit and took full advantage of the extra time with their friends.  :) 

It was hard saying goodbye, but we are grateful for the opportunity we had to reconnect with our friends again and hope that we can find a way to do it again in the not-too-distant future!   

"I Can't Think of a Good Title"

In the middle of exercising, loads of laundry, scrubbing the house, and plowing a path through the kids' room today, I had  a couple of very worried people get in touch with me to find out why I hadn't blogged anything yet and if everything was okay.   After feeling cool for a minute thinking that someone actually cares if I miss a day or two blogging (a new phenomenon, I tell you!), I realized that cool or not, it's wonderful to know that there are so many people who care about our family.  

So now I am blogging to say everything is fine and dandy.    It was a long process (the vast majority of it spent waiting in windowless rooms in the bowels of the hospital), but Spencer's central line was successfully removed by Dr. A on Tuesday.    The poor kid wasn't able to eat or drink the entire day (until 10pm), because he was being sedated, but he took the lack of food better than his mom and has been eating nonstop since then to make up for the lost calories. 

Spence let me take a little photo shoot of his line before it was removed (but has yet to let me take a picture of it since it's been removed).  You can see that it was stitched into place on the left side of his chest near the shoulder.  It went in a large vein that ran alongside of his heart.  It was kept covered with a sterile dressing, which was very carefully changed once a week. 

For the past few months all of his blood has been drawn from the line and all chemo and meds administered through it.  Normally they would keep it in until a week or so after he was released from the hospital for the last time, but because he is essentially done with his treatment and just waiting for his counts to come back up again, it was easier to just take out the source of the infection and administer any fluids and meds through an IV in his arm instead.  Spencer did not enjoy getting the IV in his arm, but since getting the line out meant that he was one step closer to being done forever he didn't complain a bit. 

Lab results identified the bacteria as one that is easily treated with an antibiotic (Cefapime) and it was confirmed that the bacteria was confined to his line and was not in his peripheral blood stream, which would have made it a little more serious. 

Yesterday Spencer had a visit from one of his cancer buddies.  Sean recently finished his year-and-a-half course of treatment and was already sporting a great head of hair.  He told us all about the amazing Make-A-Wish trip he'd gone on with his family where he got to swim with the dolphins on a Disney Cruise.  It made Spencer all the more excited for his Make-A-Wish trip which is still in process of getting approved.   (Can you guess where he wants to go?)

As happy as we were to see a healthy, energetic Sean and his mother, we've been sad to hear in the last couple of days that two of our other cancer buddies are not doing well.  Both fellow AML patients, a 12-year-old girl and 5-year-old boy, are not responding well to treatment and it's breaking my heart to hear of the pain they (and their families) are enduring .  Cancer is a horrible, horrible disease for anyone--old or young, but it seems even moreso for these young kids who have barely lived their lives.   :( 


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Changing topics now...I received this card in the mail a couple of days ago...

I thought it was cool that they sent the card to say that they'd used the blood that I donated a couple weeks ago.  There's no way of ever knowing, but with as many blood transfusions as Spencer's received in the last week or two, it's a definite possibility that he's got some of his mama's blood in him now. 

More than he already had.  :)

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"...the dial on the wheel of sorrow eventually points to each of us. At one time or another, everyone must experience sorrow. No one is exempt . . . Learning to endure times of disappointment, suffering, and sorrow is part of our on-the-job training. These experiences, while often difficult to bear at the time, are precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our character, and increase our compassion for others . . . The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss. That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in His own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude."
                                                                                                              - Joseph B. Wirthlin

Princess Invasion!

Junk food.

Singing and Dancing.

Climbing into Cami's lair.

Huffing and puffing.

A princess invasion of this kind can only mean one thing....

My baby is....

1,                                  2,

                           3,                                                     4,

FIVE!!!!!

Happy Birthday Sweet Ellie Bellie!
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An Explanation

  You've probably noticed over the course of my blogging adventures that my family and I are very close. I talk to at least a couple people in my family every day of my life and although we are scattered around the country I truly consider my brothers, sisters, and parents as my very best friends.   Through phone calls, blog posts, and emails they hear all about my good days, my grumpy days, and my frazzled days and I hear theirs.

In the course of these friendships, it has occurred several times that I  have asked a sibling (usually Kristina) to preview a blog post to make sure I haven't said anything too over-the-top and many times I have returned  the favor for them.

At first I was really careful to change my password in conjunction with these editing sessions, but over time I got lazy and just kept it the same.    Same with Spencer.  I signed up for my google account with my juno email address, but as soon as Spencer signed up for a gmail address from the same computer it instantly linked the two accounts together; hence Spencer's free access as well.

So why don't I do anything about it?

I just don't care enough.  I have full faith that neither Kristina, Matt (the other main hacker), or Spencer would ever do anything truly embarrassing to me.  I do a good enough job at self-deprecation that there's little they could say or do that could beat me in that department.

Plus I got a free blog post, a couple more followers, and a few laughs on a grumpy day out of the deal.  Nothing wrong with that.

PS  For your entertainment purposes, here's a link to a few other hacked blog posts from the past.

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