What a busy weekend!!  Friday morning came and Zac and I took Jack down to PCH to see Dr Eshun.  It is RSV season so while you are in clinic, we all have to wear masks so we put them on and in we went.  Dr Eshun came in the room as friendly as ever saying how great Jack looks and how he can’t get over how much hair he has.  We found out that one of his blood samples wasn’t done right so Jack had to get an unexpected blood draw at the clinic for his thyroid test.  We were really looking forward to hearing what the results were of that, but we will have to wait until tomorrow or Wednesday to find out.  Everything else looked great and his Vitamin D is totally normal so he gets to go off of that extra supplement that he was taking.  We go back to the hospital in 3 months for more scans and that will be 1 year post treatment!  After that we go to every 6 months but we will do random urine tests during that 6 months just for our own sanity rather than something we have to do.

While we were at clinic we got to see Jack’s nurse, Sharon, who we totally adore. It is always comforting to see her because she is so honest and such a straight shooter.  We miss seeing Sharon and all the people that were such a big part of Jack’s treatment, but it was nice being there after a whole 3 months of being away!

My mom came in town Friday night and so did Shawn so Saturday afternoon we all headed out to lunch to celebrate Braden’s birthday as well as our 5 year anniversary!  My mom basically told Zac and I that we didn’t have a choice and we needed to take advantage of them being here with the boys and take a night out by ourselves.  So we did!  We had a nice time out together especially since we don’t get that many of them being parents of 2 and with him being gone for work a lot of the time.

Sunday rolled around too soon and my parents left to go back to CA but they will be back in a few weeks for the comedy event! Zac still has some time off work so he is here today and we get to spend the day together as a family and that couldn’t be more special to me.  Thank you everyone for all of your prayers during the past week.  Scan week is stressful and the “what if’s” really play with your mind so when all is over with, we are all exhausted but now we have clear heads and get to breath for a bit so that’s a great feeling!!

Here we are, already 7 days away from Jack’s next set of scans.  It is hard to believe that 3 months have passed since his last scans.  This time the actual scan days will go a bit faster since we don’t have to do the bone scan and it is also really nice that he only has one day of being under anesthesia.  We did add a x-ray of his foot on Wednesday to see how his little broken bone is healing but I imagine it will be just fine.  He says it doesn’t hurt at all anymore and he would rather take the boot off and run around but we obviously aren’t letting him!

In these days approaching scans I tend to get pretty stressed because of the overwhelming anxiety of  ”what if” but I try to push those aside with the words “no evidence of disease”.  I am trying to stay positive and keep my prayers going.  Zac will be home for scans next week and that is always good because he has always been constant with his positive outlook on Jack and that’s nice to be around!

Of course we are staying busy with the in’s and out’s of having two young boys and planning a charity event!  There are some AMAZING donations coming in for silent auction and raffle so you better buy your tickets now!!!  You can follow the link at the top of the website to go to Stand Up Live’s page and purchase your ticket.  If you want to buy 2, call Stand Up Live DIRECTLY and tell them that you want to 2 ticket special for the night and you will get 2 for $115 instead of 1 for $65.

Stand Up Live’s number is 480-719-6100

We want to say thank you to those of you who have brought toys or donated money to the Foundation for the play room on the oncology floor at Phoenix Children’s Hospital!   We are so thankful to all of you!  The boys and I went out today and bought some new toys for the kids and they had a ball!  Jack picked out all the toys that he thought the kids would enjoy and he didn’t forget about the little girls either.  He picked out toys, books, movies…and it made us feel so great knowing that we will be giving back to the hospital that did so much for us.  He is excited for out next shopping trip on Monday…all from the donations made on this site!

We will probably be heading to the hospital AFTER Christmas because of how busy they are this next week with the lack of staff. We don’t want it to be hard on the staff when we all show up so we might wait until after the 1st of the year to donate our gifts…so PLEASE keep them coming!!  If you do not want to ship gifts, you can send a gift card or donate through the website and note it for PCH Toys.

Thank you again ahead of time for those who are donating!  We understand that everyone cannot give this time of year and that is ok, but if you want to give…please help us let Jack give back!!

Thank you so much!!!

Here is a picture of Jack with some of the gifts we brought back from today as well as some from others!

Well Hello!

We have had a wonderful holiday weekend with our family all being here.  Zac and Shawn (Nikki’s husband) were only here for a couple of days, but a couple of days is better than nothing!  My parents came in town and we had Thanksgiving over at my sister’s house across the street.  Zac’s Dad was able to come by during the day as well as a visit from his brother, Jess, at my sisters house that night.  The kids all had a great time playing together and it was just a simple understood fact between everyone that we were all so happy that we were there together.  When we sat down to dinner my aunt and my mom had some very nice things to say about the family and then Zac took the floor.  Zac is a very quiet person so when he said he had something to say I was a bit blown away.  It was wonderful to hear him tell everyone how thankful he is and how happy we could all be together.  It was a wonderful moment that I will never forget.

Zac had to leave the day after Thanksgiving to head back out of town to work so he wasn’t able to join us at our annual Zoo Lights trip, but we still had a good time.  The kids love it and this year my aunt and her family along with some other friends were able to come this year and it was a good time by all.  Jack actually sat on Santa’s lap this year and while he looked a tad terrified, he did well.  He said that he was “so proud of himself” after he was all done and that was pretty cute. Braden on the other hand, wanted nothing at all to do with Santa so I wasn’t going to push it on him!

The decorations are almost all up for the season…the tree and the ornaments are up but the lights will be the challenge with Zac being gone but I know we will get that done!  Jack just loves driving around and looking at lights and there will be no way that we don’t include our house!

We start getting back in to the swing of things tomorrow with Jack going back to school again this week and counting down to Christmas time…I can hardly believe it is that time of the year.  Time flies.

I didn’t update on Jack’s appointment with the endocrinologist last week.  We went and it was a pretty quick and painless appointment.  Jack’s thyroid function is totally normal and it has been since he started his medication back in August.  Since his thyroid was only slightly elevated, I asked the Dr if we could cut the dose of meds in half and see if anything changes.  I would really love for him not to have to take any medication at all especially since the numbers of elevation were so very small.  He said that he had no problem cutting out the med all together 6 weeks before Jack’s next set of scans and then taking labs when he is under to see where he is at. So we will be stopping his medication in the beginning of January and then when we have scans the 3rd week of February we will check his levels.  I really hope that he is in the “normal” range and that we get to stop meds.  It would be so wonderful to have him on nothing at all!!!

Anyway, I will attach some pics that I forgot to attach before…some from scans, Thanksgiving, Zoo Lights, and of course the night of clear scan results!!

Scans:

Getting poked for the 2nd time….and then the 3rd!  He did so good!

CT scan with no anesthesia…

Seeing Dr Maze before anesthesia…he was joking with Jack and then wanted to see pictures of Nikki’s wedding and Jackers dancing at the reception….he is the best!

Waiting really is the worst part…

Worth the wait!  All clear!  Jack (last minute) asked for a sparkle cake and this is what we had in the house to work with!

Thanksgiving…

My sisters and my mom…some of our biggest supporters!

Jess and Zac and the kids!

Braden!

Zoo Lights…

And Santa…

What a difference a year makes!  This time last year when we went trick-or-treating, Braden was in his stroller catching is first cold and Jackers had his bald little head and was very limited with what he could actually do.  We passed out candy last year in our driveway with all the other neighbors doing the same but we had a table set up with hand sanitizer and after Jack would hand out one candy he would sanitize his hands as would we.

Last year:

This year was so much more fun for the kids and of course that made it even more fun for us to watch!  The only thing missing this year was Zac.  If you have wondered why he hasn’t been in the last few posts, it’s because he has been out of town for work and unfortunately couldn’t be here for the football game or for Halloween.  Obviously this isn’t how we would have wanted it, but we are very lucky that Zac has a job that has allowed him so much flexibility while we were going through so much with the boys and if he has to go away now and then, we just have to deal with it.  He was very missed though this year and he would have been so proud of the boys!

This year the neighborhood did something different, our neighbor decided we should have a block party and it was such a great idea.  We all brought food and we able to gather before the trick-or-treating began to eat and for the kids to run around.  This year Jack was out there playing football in our front yard with his cousins and the neighborhood kids all day and then we were all in the driveway before the night began.  We took off to go around to the houses and I decided not to bring the stroller this year for Braden thinking we wouldn’t be out very long.  Was I wrong!  The boys walked and walked and walked to as many houses as they could.  Jack was running from house to house with all the kids and told me many times how much better this year was than last.  Braden didn’t miss a beat.  He walked almost the entire way and carried his little bucket like a big boy.  It was so cute!

There is one house in the neighborhood that does a haunted house every year and we walked down that way because we figured some of the older kids would want to go in it.  Guess who wanted to go…Jack.  I was a bit hesitant at first since he has been having nightmares but he really wanted to go so off Jack, Nikki, and I went.  How scary could it be?  It was scary!  Nikki and I were terrified and Jack was laughing.  We walked through it kindly telling the scary guys in it that we had a little boy with us and not to jump out too fast!  They didn’t really listen and when we walked out at the end, Jack was all smiles.  And no, he didn’t have nightmares last night.  Thankfully.

We all came back home and passed out candy to all the rest of the kids that were still hitting the houses.  Jack was so outgoing with everyone and just had a great night.  Nikki stayed over and brought her puppy with her too and Jack got a kick out of that.  We all stayed up late which equaled to sleeping in a little later.  The boys had so much fun and it was pretty much a wonderful night.

We are now in Novemeber and once again have a busy month with the PCH benefit this weekend, CA trip, scans, Thanksgiving, endocrinologist appointment, Jack starting school again (tomorrow!), and so much more.  Scans are in 14 days.  Oh boy.  They will be clear.  They just simply have to be.

Captian America and Bubble Bee the Transformer