Merry Christmas

What would you know? Santa found us again this year. Kelsie had a good question. She wanted to know how it was that Santa could land his sleigh when we didn't have any snow on the ground. Hmmmm, not sure about that but somehow it happened. For the record, we did get some snow this year. Kelsie had to rush outside after the snowfall and measure the intake with her little snow measuring stick.The snow measured somewhere between .005-.008 cm. Pretty impressive if you ask me, and sadly to say it wasn't quite enough to even attempt making a snow ball. The kids really are missing the snow. Kevin and I aren't missing the snow at all.

Our Christmas was really laid back this year and it was nice not having to rush out anywhere. Both Alyssa and Kelsie were a little under the weather anyway on Christmas so it was nice just being able to relax at home with our own family.

Sadly to say my heart wasn't in Christmas this year. The normal Christmas things that I usually find pleasure in just weren't the same for me this year. Fortunately other hearts were in the holiday spirit this year and really touched mine. So many people were looking out for us, and helped to make our holiday bright. I appreciate all of the love that was shown to us. We have such great friends, neighbors, and family members. I hope that next year I will be back to my normal holiday self.

Boys will be Boys

The mustache boys of anesthesiology

Take a close look at Kevin in these pictures. Do you notice anything different about him? Yes, he is wearing a suit which only happens once in a blue moon but there is something else that is different? Oh, he has something growing on his face. You guessed it. Yes, he has a mustache, and Yes, I hate it.

Kevin came home from work a while ago and told me that the men in his department were all going to be growing mustaches for the upcoming Christmas party. I have seen Kevin with a mustache one other time in the ten years that we have been married, and I did not let him go out in public with the thing. When he told me that he was going to do it yet again, I just tried to keep my opinions to myself. I said tried because I couldn't help myself, and every time that he talked to me, I would just laugh at him. He is hard to take seriously when he looks like a weird convict or something. I won't say out loud what I told him that he looks like but he seriously looked creepy with the stache. Even Leah and Audrey didn't hardly recogonize him with the fuzzy mess growing on his face.

The Christmas party was last weekend, and Yes I had to be seen with him in public. It wasn't as bad as I expected and we had a really nice time despite my allergic reaction to scallops. Overall it was a pleasant experience.

When Kevin returned to work this week, his stache didn't return with him. His co-workers were relieved to see that his razor had found his face, as was I.

One week down, many more to go!

I have officially survived one week of radiation. What a week it has been. I feel like I have been pretty much living in the radiation oncology department. I have to go Monday-Friday and luckily have weekends and holidays off. It's not as bad as I imagined it to be and not painful at all. I had heard a lot of horror stories about radiation. You know the stories, My friends cousins husband's wife had radiation and her face got burned so bad that you couldn't even recognize her afterwards. Yes, those kids of stories. Everyone always has a story don't they? Well, so far no burns, no vomiting, and no hair loss. I have felt a little more run down than usual, and my eyes seem dry. Other than that, really I don't have much to complain about.

I have met some incredible people in the radiation oncology department. It's surprisingly a really good place to hear some incredible stories of courage and endurance. As I have talked to many patients this week, we have all come up with the same conclusion. What gets us through this is our attitude. We have to remain positive and have faith that things are going to work out. Sometimes that's hard to do, but I know there is a lot of truth to that.

I am really hopeful that this will be the last of my treatment as it is really the last resort. I will continue radiation through the first week of January, and then will have an MRI in the spring to see if this worked or not. By the time we find out the results, we will have been going at this for three years. I was diagonosed with the tumor on Alyssa's 5th birthday and it would be so nice to have it gone by her 8th birthday.

Radiation has advanced tremendoulsy, and there are so many complex procedures to ensure that they are only getting the radiation to the exact location that they are wanting. What I am having done is called fractionated radiation. Instead of one large dose of radiation, I am having several small doses over six weeks of time. I wear a mesh mask over my face which looks awesome by the way, and then I lay on a table for about 20 minutes while some x-rays and radiation beams are shooting into my body. It's hard to describe the feeling after radiation. It's a lot like having the life zapped out of you. As soon as I start walking out to my car, I feel normal again.

Ice

The Opryland hotel puts on an incredible ice show every year, and this year we had the privilege of going for FREE. The admission is very expensive and it would have cost our family over $80.00 to go. Kevin was able to get some free tickets from work and so we decided to check it out. All of the sculptures are hand carved out of colored ice, and the work is incredible. As you get ready to enter you are given a lovely blue parka to wear as it is only eight degrees inside where the sculptures are. Mind you I have now lived in Tennessee for eighteen months and no longer remember the freezing cold. As we all put her parka's on and walked inside, we could see our breath. It was so cold, and the kids and I just kept saying over and over, "This is what it was like in Utah, and we are freezing." Seriously it was so cold, but really neat to see. Afterwards we warmed up with some hot chocolate and then walked back to our van in the nice 70 degree weather.