Happy Birthday Brady!

a GREAT MAN and FATHER turns 30.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRADY!

you AMAZE me.

(Brady's birthday is the 8th, but we will be driving to Lake Powell at 4 am and won't have Internet)

ER visit

The word that Millie was in the ER a couple nights ago spread like wild fire, so I thought I should give you all an update, but 1st of all she's fine!

Monday night we went to the Bees baseball game with HopeKids and while we were there Millie had gone to the restroom and she had blood in her urine. Our 1st reaction was that she had a bladder infection and that is what the On-Call Oncologist at Primary Children's thought as well. He suggested we take her to the emergency room as soon as possible. If the infection were to get into her kidneys she would get a fever and we'd be hospitalized, so it was important for us to get an antibiotic asap.

We left the game immediately and headed up to Primary Children's. Luckily they got us right back! I thought we'd be out of there in a couple hours. Nope! They took a urine sample and the results were a bit confusing. It was not conclusive that she had a UTI and her blood test came back abnormal as well. Her PTT blood level was high, which meant her blood was taking too long to clot. NOT GOOD. Since they took the blood sample from her PORT there was a chance that her sample had heparin in it and that would effect her results. They took another sample, it showed the same abnormalities.

After 7 hours of sitting in the ER they decided to admit us to the Oncology floor for the night (at this point it's 4:00am). I really hoped I would never have to see that place ever again! Around 5:00 am they took a 3rd blood sample, but this time it came from a vein in her arm and her results came back NORMAL! It was the heparin after all.

After 7 hours in the ER and 8 hours in Oncology, we were sent home with a $200.00 prescription for a UTI. Don't worry, I threw a fit and got a $10 script instead.

All's well that ends well, right?

Happy 1st Birthday AUSTIN

From THIS in his 1st month of life...

(click to enlarge)

To THIS...

I can't believe my teenie, tiny, little guy is 1! When did this happen? Suddenly I hear a fiddle and Tevye singing, "Sunrise, Sunset".

I can not tell you how much we all love Austin. It's hard to imagine that we waited 4 years for him to join our family, but I know it was a blessing that he came when he did.

I love you Austin and I am so grateful for your life.

About My Little Man:

• He is CRAZY!
• He makes the funniest faces
• He loves to be chased
• He won't eat baby food at all - he wants what we're eating and he let's us know it
• He can say dad (when he's happy), mom (when he's upset), kitty, baabaa (for bottle), Hi!
• Austin always wants to be where Millie is
• He gets really excited when he gets something he's not suppose to have
• It's impossible to get him dressed or change his diaper
• He's the happiest when he's doing something he's not suppose to do
• If you turn your back on him to leave the room he freaks out!
• He crawls really fast!
• Still has his tongue out constantly
• He let us help him take a few steps the other day (PROGRESS)
• He loves to play ball and peekaboo
• He is DANG CUTE!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUSTIN!

EAT DIRT!

Don't mind if I do...

You want some?

Millie's August 2010 Update

It's time for clinic AGAIN, I feel like the past couple months have flown by! Millie actually had clinic on Thursday, but since we were posting about Disney World I decided to hold off a couple days.

Everything went pretty well. We met a new little girl that has the same cancer has Millie (HI OLIVIA!) and Millie did her crafting as usual. We had her blood counts drawn and thankfully they are high enough that I'm not in panic mode everywhere we go. She also got her Vincristine and started steroids. YUCK! Can I tell you how much I seriously HATE steroids. The doctors and nurses always told us that we wouldn't really notice a difference in her behavior since she's only on them for 5 days out of the month. WHAT A JOKE! Maybe I would be handling it better if I'd been prepared, but by the time they've been in her system for 24 hours I have completely lost my daughter. Don't get me wrong she has her good moments and she does well with other people, but this is what I hear all day, "I HATE YOU, DON'T TOUCH ME, DON'T TALK TO ME, I SAID DON'T TALK TO ME", followed by a lot of crying, stomping around, and sometimes throwing things.

Don't be fooled by her darling smile...

It was either SMILE or sit in TIME-OUT for 10 minutes...While I was 1st taking her picture she said, "Hurry, Hurry, I have to go potty RIGHT NOW," I said okay, but come right back out when you're done. I waited for a bit and when I came back in she was sitting on the couch watching t.v. I said, "Honey, I've been waiting outside for you, didn't you hear me say to come back out"? The response, "Ya, I heard you, I just didn't care and I didn't have to go potty either".

Clinic Stats:

Height: 103 cm

(I do think she was standing on her toes a bit, she loves to trick)

Weight: 16 kg (about 35lbs)

ANC: 1.9

(still a little low for Maintenance, so they are keeping her at 1/2 does chemo for 2 more weeks)

Day 7 Time To Go Home

Our flight home was Monday at 5 PM, so we wanted to have a little more fun before we headed to the airport. It turned out to be a fabulous day.

We started the day with ice cream for breakfast! Millie and I had eaten it for breakfast the day before but she wanted it again, and since Amanda and Sherry had been left out, we all went! I don' t see why we don't do this at home...

Of course Millie wouldn't do much else until she had a chance to go to the carousel to ride "her" unicorn, Rosabella.

I took Millie to the playground at the village while Amanda and Sherry packed. It was huge and we had it all to ourselves. Millie thought it was great that I was going on all the slides with her. I enjoyed having some one on one time with my cute little princess.

She thought it would be best to send her hat down first. She always knows exactly how she wants everything done.

Millie loves to swim, so Amanda and I went swimming with her while Sherry took care of Austin. Millie, Amanda, and I got squirt guns and chased each other around. Millie was laughing hysterically - it was great!

She likes it when we both put on our goggles and race, although she isn't so happy when I win...

Once we checked out of the Give Kids the World Village (which we were very sad to do), we were off to Sea World. We got there just in time to run through the park and sit down before the killer whale show started. Millie was sad there wasn't any more room in the "splash zone." Amanda and I weren't complaining, especially after nearly everyone in front of us was covered in salt water.

It was breathtaking to see these beautiful animals. We all loved it, and Amanda got tears in her eyes (which seemed to be one of the themes of our trip).

Kids. No matter how much you throw them in the air, they always want more.

One of Millie's wishes was to swim with dolphins. Although she was too young to swim with them at Sea World, they did let us skip the line and go right in to feed them. I gave Millie all my fish, and she couldn't get enough of them. She thought it was so fun that they swam right up to us, and loved the way they felt.

After another perfect day, we headed to the airport for the flight home. It was everything we all hoped for and more. Millie had the time of her life and was so happy. Yesterday she said to me, "Dad, I'm saving all my monies so that we can go back to Disney World."

Thanks again to Make-A-Wish, Give Kids the World, Disney, Universal, Sea World, our WishGranters, and everyone else that made this possible.

With all Millie has been through this year, it was great to see her feel like she's the luckiest kid in the world.

THANK YOU

Day 6 Hollywood Studios and Epcot

We got a small break from the heat today, it randomly POURED rain. It was fun though and Millie couldn't have been happier to have matching rain ponchos. Hollywood Studios ROCKED! We first went on the Toy Story ride and it was great! We also took a little time to hit some of the Big Kid rides. Sherry and I went on the Aerosmith Roller Coaster (not sure what it's called), while Millie ate and Austin slept. It was awesome! I've never been on a ride where you just shoot off from the beginning and I loved the music playing right in our ears. We also hit the Tower Of Terror and Millie came too! She said she hated it after, but she didn't scream or cry during it. Personally I think she had fun. ;)

We went to see Beauty and The Beast, it was a great play and a nice way to get out of the rain.

I loved it and so did Millie but she was a little sleepy.
Austin was being a stink so he and Brady had to sit by themselves near the exit.

We also took Millie to see The Voyage of The Little Mermaid. I completely missed it, because Austin had had enough and he wasn't shy about telling us!

After trying to keep it short at Hollywood Studios we decided to stop by Epcot. We took the ferry and it turned into a little bit of a nightmare. The Rain came POURING down and since there was thunder and lightning they had to pull to the side and wait the storm out.

Epcot was neat, but it took longer to do the things we wanted and we were all pretty dang exhausted by the end of the day.

Since we were trying to keep it short we only went into Germany and China. Germany so we could get a pretzel..YUM and China so Millie could meet Mulan.

Mulan Love

Millie dancing while she waits for Daffy's autograph.

When Austin wears his striped shirt Millie always calls him Nemo so I had to take his picture while Brady, Sherry, and Millie went on Soarin'

Because of the rain I didn't get many pictures this day. I wish I'd taken a lot more!

This was our last night staying in GKTW village and I cried all night. We had such and amazing week and I didn't want it to end. I really could have used one more day to soak everything in. I am grateful our flight wasn't until the afternoon because the next day we were able to go to SeaWorld...