To post or not to post

So yeah, I fell off the blog wagon. I got so far behind with pictures it's almost impossible to catch up...so I don't think I'm going to try. Radiation kicked my butt, I was so tired. I could go on with excuses but I won't. I'm down to either two or three chemo treatments and then done forever....I pray. I saw my Plastic Surgeon today about the exchange surgery and have TENTATIVELY set a date for February 16th. Emma is doing really well in 1st grade, Gracie is going to preschool two days a week and loves it. Maybe I'll start over again with 2010. No promises.

More pictures of summer fun!

July and August of 2009

Finally it's picture time! Emma's Kindergarten graduation!!!

This was from July 9, 2009....click the pictures you can get to the Picasa album & see them bigger if you want.

It's OVER!

Monday was my last official day of radiation! I'm burned, sore and exhausted but slowly feeling like I'm getting my life back. Emma also started first grade on Monday so it was a GOOOOOD day (first grade = full day school folks!). I still have pictures going back to her Kindergarten graduation, that's how far behind I am. Considering everything I've been through I hope it's understandable but I honestly hate not having the pictures up. The blog is fun for me so the fact that I'm so far behind has been eating at me forever. Radiation was actually worse for me than chemo was, probably because it was everyday M-F and literally sucked the life out of me. The only way to describe it is like being in the sun all day long, you're just exhausted. Now I just have my final chemo drug, Herceptin, every three weeks....but there are no side effect from that really so it'll be a cake walk compared to everything else. I'm also starting to play catch up on everything that I've put off....eye doctor, dentist, going through stacks of paper mail, taking the car in....all that "fun" stuff. Despite how hard radiation was we did manage to sneak in two quick turn around trips. One to Arizona to see our new little neice Madison and one to Utah to go to a college reunion with some of my friends from we all lived at Raintree apartments. Both trips were fun, I only wish we could've stayed longer!

My next item on the "to do" list is to get a new photo program for editing pictures. When our computer got the virus we had it wiped and lost whatever photo editing program we had....problem is we don't KNOW what it was! Now all we have is this Windows fax/picture viewer and well, it just sucks. So hopefully in the next couple weeks I'll start getting pictures back up, I think they're more for me than anyone else! lol

Tomorrow I'm going to St. George with a few of my college roommates for a girls weekend.....like we did last year. I'm really looking forward to it, we had a great time last year and right now I need a relaxing, fun weekend. Bring on the sleeping, shopping, eating, talking, watching movies, swimming, hot tubbing and fun!

It's been awhile....

Yes, yes I know....it's been awhile since I've posted. And I've heard it from a couple people so I guess I'll update a little. Truth is it's been busy and crazy and frustrating. Some days I don't feel like ever posting and others I feel like I have too many pictures to go through. Time, it's a lot about time and I don't seem to have much of it lately. One of the main reasons is that our home desktop computer (where the camera software is) got a MAJOR virus and it's being returned to us via the mail as I type. All I can say is thank goodness for friends who are computer geniuses and generous enough to ship a HUGE, pre-paid box to get our computer half way across the country to repair it...at no cost to us! Wendy if I haven't already mentioned it a bazillion times, I LOVE YOU!!!

SOOOO....I'm d.o.n.e with big chemo and starting to feel much better. The only lingering side effect is my eyes that are still tearing all the time. I need to get back to the Opthamologist but again, I just haven't had time. We've been doing a lot of swimming and the girls LOVE it. They are both in swim lessons for about six weeks this summer and it has been great. The only thing is now that it's over 100 degrees outside every day I'm ROASTING while I wait for them. UGH! I was so tempted to jump in the pool during their lesson yesterday, clothes and all!

Emma is officially a Kindergarten graduate. She had her "graduation" last Friday and it was too dang cute. I have a ton of pictures to go through (another big, time consuming task) and will do that once the home computer is back. One of the biggest, baddest, most frustrating pieces of news is that it looks like I will be losing my job. Farmers Insurance bought our company awhile back and I found out recently they do not "do" part time, work at home positions. So sometime around September 1st we will find out the gruesome details. I've never been unemployed and it's a scary prospect right now. You can bet we're going to be looking into every type of government assistance we can until we can get Coray into school and then live off student loans. I can't believe I just said that. lol We have some challenging times ahead but for some odd reason I'm not TOO worried about it. I just have to have faith that we're doing all we can and that we'll be blessed for it.

The other big thing in our lives right now is that I started Radiation last week. I now can say I have a real, permanent and forever tattoo! Five of them to be exact. They are only little black dots but yep, they are permanent. Done with tattoo ink and a needle and all. And you'd think I'd be used to needles by now but if anything, I hate them even more. Anyway, the first day of Radiation was awful. For some reason I was more nervous the first day of my Radiation therapy than I was on my first day of Chemo! The two techs there were NOT nice at all and gave me attitude. They had to draw these "fields" all over me to line up where the Radiation would go, it took about 45 mintues. Like I said, I was nervous and trying to take a deep breath now and then when they stopped marking on me. They'd go out and look at their computer or take a picture, come back in and make some more marks. At one point when they were out of the room I took a deep breath, one of the techs came back in and told me not to do that because I'd just moved the field. Another time (remember my eyes are still watering) I had a tear dripping down my face, which is very annoying. I blotted it with a tissue....one of them told me "don't move". Other than snapping commands at me they barely said anything. I had no idea what they were doing or how long it was going to take. By the time it was over, and I looked like one of the girls had colored all over my chest with a magic marker, I was so MAD I was in tears. The lead tech Margaret, who was NOT in the room but who I had dealt with up to that point, came to walk me back to the little changing room area. As we were walking out I asked her if I'd have to be marked up like that every day, she said no but one of the other techs heard her say that and commented that maybe they would because there was a "lot of movement". I pretty much snapped at that point and said "yeah, because I have to breath" in my best snotty attitude. I told Margaret I was not going to be treated like that again and if I was the next day we were going to have a problem. She is a TOTAL sweetheart and apologized that I had been treated that way and has been in the room every day since. And I will say the other two have been much nicer and I haven't had to put them in their place.....but I won't hesitate to do so if they ever do that to me again.

As you can see by my calendar, Radiation is every day through the third week in August. Between that, swimming lessons and trying to work every day with the girls being home and it being too hot to play outside in the backyard....I'm a little frazzled to say the least! So many things going on it's really just been nuts. I promise (mostly myself) that I will get pictures up once we get our computer back. There are some good ones of swimming fun and Emma's graduation. So there's the long and short and good and bad and craziness that we've been up to recently. Life is never dull!

The new bunk bed!

I promised Emma we'd get them a bunk bed this summer and we finally did a couple weeks ago. After much searching I decided on one with a staircase and I'm really glad I did, it's really nice. I haven't gotten any pictures yet but I did get a cute video of the girls singing while sitting on the bunk bed so I thought I'd share that.

Bye Bye Big Chemo!!

Yes, it's finally OVER!!!! Last Friday was officially my last BIG chemo! Didn't do anything overly exciting but my dear friend Jen flew in from California to spend the weekend with us. She was here for my first Big Chemo weekend and came again for my last. I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful friend who was able to do that for me. It was great to have her & I'm always sad to see her go....as are Coray and the girls. It was a very tough weekend....chemo definitely got harder with each treatment. Still, I'm feeling ok and am REALLY looking forward to feeling more "normal" in the next couple weeks. I still have my little chemo treatments every Friday through June 19th and then I will meet with my Oncologist again to discuss the results of my PET scan (which is scheduled for this upcoming Monday) and also find out about my Radiation schedule. So, I'm by no means done but I AM done with the nasty, yucky drugs and am so happy about that! All in all it was no where near as hard as I know it could have been. But I sincerely hope & pray that I'll NEVER have to do anything like it again! Here are a couple pictures.....and YES, it is quite chilly in the treatment area so I always grab a couple blankets. I was pretty drugged up in these pictures too. They give Benedryl and Ativan for the big treatments and it made me so sleeeeeeeepy!

My nurse Amy.....I've had her every week for 18 weeks (except for two). She's so nice.

And one with me and Jen....thanks so much for coming my friend!

A little window fun

My friend Jenn (Estes) is quite the talented artist and something of a food storage expert. Since I was interested in getting a wheat grinder Jenn came over a couple weeks ago with hers to show me how easy they are to use (I subsequently bought one of my own and am now the proud owner of a WonderMill Wheat Grinder). Anyway, while we were waiting on the dough to rise Jenn got a little creative with our front window. It's just too cute not to share! Thanks again Jenn...it really does make me smile everytime I see it.

Our darling little niece

We had even more fun just after our Race for the Cure weekend....Spring and Paige (who turns two this July 4th) came and stayed at our house for a few days. It was so much fun to have them and the girls especially loved playing with their little cousin. She's so dang adorable but she's got some competition coming since both Shannon and Skye are pregnant with girls too!!! Thanks for coming Spring and Paige, you are welcome ANYTIME!

Playing around with Grandpa

Mother's Day this year was spent in bed dealing with my "chemo crash". It wasn't terrible but I'm looking forward to NEXT Mother's Day & feeling a lot better. Coray & the girls were great & I did get to rest a lot, which is really what I need right about now. Anyway, while my Dad was here we took the girls downtown to the MGM Grand to see the Lion Exhibit they have there. They really are gorgeous & it's fun to see them so close up. They rotate them throughout the day so the lions are actually only there for a few hours & then they go to a preserve they live on the rest of the time. We also went to the M&M factory store near the MGM Grand. Yeah, that was a big hit with the girls! Pink & purple M&M's!! Does life get any better when you're a kid??