Following The Call » Our lives as we went from adopting to mission work to leukemia fighters.

Monthly Archives: July 2011

Clinic stinks.

07.31.11

Sweet Lola on clinic day.

Lola is doing decent now. Her blood counts are really crazy low again, so we can’t leave the house or have any visitors. It was a very sad day when we found out her counts were low, because she was supposed to go to a birthday party the next day for her sweet friend (Matt’s cousin’s daughter Stella) and she was SO EXCITED about it. One of the main crappy things about this whole cancer (other than that she HAS cancer..) is that we can not ever make plans. I generally do not even tell Lola if something fun is happening, but I thought her counts would be fine and a sweet little invitation came in the mail and I knew Lola would be excited!! But… of course as usually cancer ruined the day. For those of your familiar with cancer treatment, Lola is finishing out Delayed Intensification and will be starting Interum maintenance 2 once her counts come back up, hopefully in a couple weeks. After IM2, on to maintenance.

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Mod House in the country

07.31.11

So. We have been in our house about a month. It is great. We love it. We’re in the country. The kids can run and play. We have a pool. We have a puppy. We’re getting a mini horse. What more could a girl want?!! Or perhaps I should ask what less a girl could want. Less wall paper perhaps?? Holy cow. This house is a wall paper nightmare.

Anyone who has ever stepped into any of my prior homes probably knows I have some kinda wild taste for decorating. I love color. I love modern style and I am border line obsessed with danish modern furniture. So… all that said I am CRAZY excited to have my friend Mindi from Mindi Freng Designs helping me out with getting my crazy style taste to tie together. We have some AMAZING ideas that I can’t wait to share with you all!! We are starting in the kitchen… here’s where I am so far-

The problem with all this work in our house is that it leads to this-

and that disaster is driving me crazy!! Oh well… I’ll survive. I think. Kia likes the mess. She added a towel held up by bottles of spices and said it was her ‘meeting place.’ whatever. the kid is just as crazy as me.

I also took myself out to the great home depot and bought myself a circular saw. It is crazy amounts of fun. So far with my mad cutt’n skills I have cut out pieces of wood to make a book shelf. I haven’t put it together yet… so I don’t know how well I did with the saw yet. At least books aren’t breakable if the whole until comes crashing down to the floor.

We had some other great excitement around here yesterday (saturday). Matt was outside and came rushing in (I was painting… of course) and said he heard a crash just down from our house. I quick ran out there and a car had lost control and smashed into a tree. The tree was basically where the drivers seat was supposed to be and the man was laying back un-responsive. One of my neighbors was already out there, and he said that the man was dead and there was nothing I could do to help. So I went back home. A few minutes later like 8 million cop/fire/ambulance vehicles started coming, and aero med landed in my neighbors yard. They worked on the guy for awhile and then aero med took him out. I later read that the man was drunk and speeding. We knew he was speeding based on the amount of squealing as he was going around the curves. The man died later at the hospital. It was a very strange experience to see happen. I am very sad for the mans family, whoever they are. I can not even imagine what it is like to suddenly loose a loved one like that. I am thankful that the man did not kill anyone else in his foolishness of driving in that state.

* as a side note…. word on the street is that accidents frequently happen in front of our house. We live on a big curve, and many drunk people don’t make it all the way through the curve… Our neighbor warned us of that the day we moved in!!

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30 miles..?? No prob. bring it on!!

07.13.11

Alright folks. I have some very important business to take care of. First up- the Ultimate Hike. I posted a bit ago about the ultimate hike and how you can sign up to take part in it to help raise money for Cure Search, an organization that does childrens cancer research and has directly affected that fact that Lola will probably live through Leukemia. With out cure search, she would probably not have such a good chance at life. With that said, I completely totally and utterly love cure search. And if they are offering me a way to help out their research, then I’m gonna do it. Now…. I would have been OK if they offered a cute little 2 mile walk or something…. but NO, they are offering a 30 mile hike instead!!! But by golly, what do ya know?!! I still signed up for it And… I even have a TEAM of people signed up for it to hike for Lola. Now, currently that team only consists of me and my friend Kerry, but I sure hope some more of you would be willing to join us!!

Now. If your saying things like ‘30 Miles?? in one day… I could never do that!!’ Then to you I say, YES YOU CAN!!! If my 5 yr old daughter can go through all that she has in the last 6 months and STILL have a smile on her face, than I KNOW that you can do this!! and I sure hope you will!!!

Info meetings for the Ultimate Hike are this week and next at different locations around Grand Rapids and that is followed by the training kick off on July 30. Click HERE for more information (you know you want to…)

There now that I’m done pressuring you all into that I can move on….

What’s new since my last post…

1- we have a new home!!! And thanks to some AMAZING people helping us, we even have all our belongings at this new home!! We are now happy residents of Rockford Mi. And… now when I go to a store and they ask me my address I don’t have to freak out because I don’t have an address and cry the rest of the way home. HAH!!

2- We have a puppy Last time I told you we picked her out, and now I can report that we have her. Thank goodness we’re going to be getting all new flooring in this house, because this dog is NOT potty trained. GROSS!!!!!

3- For those of you that remember my friend Jill, who was working on adopting 3 boys…. well… the boys are home!!! The adoption went through and Jill is now the amazing mother to TEN beautiful children including these 3 boys!!

4- I had posted on facebook (if you don’t read my facebook…. you are going to have no idea what im talking about, so just skip down ) about a friend of a friend who’s little girls was being tested for cancer. Well… PRAISE THE LORD!!!!! It’s not cancer. You can keep on praying for them though as Dr’s are still trying to figure out what is going one.

5- I have started destructing our new home. Stay posted in the future for before/after pictures. I am crazy excited to be re decorating our new home as I have an amazing designer (Mindi Freng) helping me out. We are on a crazy tight budget for home decorating stuff… but she is still going to help me pull it all together into an amazing vibrant awesome house. For those of you that go on Pintrest, check out our inspiration board HERE!!

Ok. On to my sweet miss Lola.

We had really tough week last week. Meds we’re kicking in and she was not feeling good at all. It was a battle to get her to do anything. She would come down the stairs in the morning and find a spot on the floor where she could lay in the sun, put a blanket over her head and lay there until I would force her to get up and do something/eat/get dressed… etc. It was a really bad week. And then all the sudden yesterday morning I walked upstairs and she was in the bathroom. She immediately told me she wanted to be along, so I let her be. A while later she comes bouncing down the stairs all dressed and proud as can be that she brushed her teeth, made her bed and got dressed. PRAISE THE LORD!! shes coming around!! Last week when we were at clinic her blood count was CRAZY low (ANC of 50 for those of you who know what that means…). We have not really been able to leave the house, or have anyone over because she has no immune system. It was really low the week before as well, so I have been somewhat stuck in the house for the last two weeks. It made it even more difficult during our tough week because I couldn’t get Lola out anywhere to do anything. Normally I would have taken the girls to a park or out for lunch or something in an attempt to cheer lola up a bit, but we just couldn’t do that!!! So anyways… tomorrow we are going in for blood counts to see if her ANC is high enough for her to get her chemo treatment on friday. She needs to be at 750…. we’ll see about that tomorrow.

I will leave you with my life in pictures once more

Lola in her sunshine spot with Ms. Penelope the pup. Again in the sunshine… does it get any more sad than this??

I made her move to the table to eat. She was not happy. See the brown box with pink edges?? This mom, yeah thats right, crafted a magic treasure box out of cut up paper plates and pink duct tape. After that I made a house out of straws. And then a lion out of pasta. I do not ever want to do another craft for the rest of my life. ever. She’s quite cute isn’t she?? Uh oh… this kid looks like trouble…. I took these on lolas first day feeling better (tuesday)
I always try to force my kids to kiss. I think its funny. Lola thinks its gross because Kia has ‘juicy lips.’ Kia thinks the best thing to do is just grab on and go for it. Come on girls…. show your sister you love her…. Look at this amazing salad with fresh veggies form my garden (and some from the store)

See… I do have a garden. I’m turning into a real live Martha aren’t I?!!