Lemonade, anyone?

Renee over at My Special K's awarded me with my first ever blog award. It's called the Lemons to Lemonade award...I couldn't get the award picture to copy/paste over here, so just imagine you are seeing a cute little lemonade stand. I feel so special!! Thanks Renee!! I'm supposed to nominate 10 other blogs to give this award to...but let's face it, I'm lazy today. So if you are reading this and you have your own blog...consider yourself awarded!!

Riley is doing great, and sassy as ever. She's still sleeping in her own bed, although every night she whines about having to do so...and when I won't give in and let her sleep with us, she says I'm mean. Although, she does always seem to greet me in the morning with a smile, so I'm pretty sure she is just testing me. Lately, she has been sharing her bed with Hayden and Ace...it gets pretty cozy in that little twin bed for the 3 of them, but it does seem to make everyone happy.

Only 8 more days until we leave for Riley's Make-A-Wish trip to Disneyworld!! We leave on Saturday April 4th, and stay through Friday the 10th...we are all getting very excited!! We are staying at this fabulous village, Give Kids the World, where they go out of their way to make all the make-a-wish families feel like super stars!! Not to mention special treatment at all the Disney parks, and getting to meet Cinderella. Riley will be on cloud 9. We can't wait for her to finally get to forget about what she has been going through for the last 16 months, and enjoy life like a little 4 year old should get to. Bring on the fun!!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Were any of you brave enough to not wear green today? Riley was explaining to Hayden about St. Patrick's day in the car this morning, and when she told him you would get pinched if you weren't wearing green Hayden said "Oh No!" so dramatically. Lucky for him, he was wearing green!!

Things here are trucking along. Riley started back to school yesterday, although she wasn't very happy about it. She tried every excuse under the sun to get out of going. She was mostly worried that she wouldn't be able to walk fast enough in the line, when they go to the playground. I assured her I would ask her teacher to slow the line down, but that still wasn't good enough. We just needed to get back in the routine, and once she was there she was fine. This morning there were no excuses...she was excited to go back!!

Yesterday I was reading back on the blog, seeing where we were this time last year. I remembered we went to clinic on St. Patrick's day last year, but I had forgotten that was also the week Riley was admitted and ended up staying for almost 2 weeks. She slept the whole time, and lost the muscle in her legs. How could I have forgotten that? She was so weak she couldn't even roll herself over in bed...and now look at how far we have come!! The girl is amazing!!

March 17, 2008

Have a great week!!

My little heartbreaker

Mom's, lock your daughters up!! I know I am WAY biased...but is he not the cutest little man you have ever seen?!

Out with the old & In with the new!!

Riley is now newly equipped with 1 up and running port!! I'm not sure why, but I decided not to tell her she was going to have surgery to replace her port. But, the girl is smart...she figured it out. I think she remembered the last time she went through this, and began to get a little anxious. She was such a trooper thru it all...we are always so amazed at how well she handles everything. We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 Tuesday morning, which was a little painful in itself. Her surgery was originally scheduled for 8:30, but they ended up taking her back at 8. Riley was very nervous about having to walk back to the OR without us, but the nurse with her was so great and helped calm her down. Later in the evening I was asking her about what happened while she was back there and she started telling me about when they gave her the "bubble gum" air. She giggled and said "oops, I wasn't supposed to tell you that!" Obviously the nurse told her it was a secret to keep from Mommy and Daddy. The surgery went great, and we were in the recovery room with her by 9:30. It is so hard as parents to see her lying on this bed, groaning in pain and know there is nothing you can do to help her...it broke our hearts. You just want to pick her up and squeeze her, but that would hurt her even worse. She finally woke up enough to drink some apple juice, and we were back at the hotel around 10:45. I gave her a tylenol with codeine, and she slept until almost 3...the girl was worn out. By the time she woke up from that nap, it was time for another tylenol w/ codeine which knocked her out again. That seemed to be the cycle for the rest of the night. At least it kept her semi-comfortable, though.

Wednesday morning was her monthly doctor visit, and fortunately they had kept her accessed from her surgery so we were able to avoid another poke. Her blood counts were ok...her ANC is 570. 500 is the cut off for "public isolation"...so we barely escaped that. She was still able to receive her Vincristine in her port, and we started another week of steroids. The steroids will hopefully help in rebounding her counts...or so they say. We will check them again next week to make sure they haven't dropped any lower.

Please say some prayers for Riley to recover quickly from this surgery. She is still pretty sore, and doesn't want to go back to school quite yet. She is worried she won't be able to get on the potty by herself...the things she worries about! She stayed with Nani today, but tomorrow is silly sock day at school...so we'll see what she decides to do. I don't want to push her too much.

Relay for Life

Yes, it is already that time of year again...we are getting ready to kick-off our 2nd annual Riley's Relay-for-Life world tour. This year, though, we will be debuting our very own Riley's Bees Relay team for here in Hallettsville...in honor of our very own Princess. Although, I am a little unorganized in getting it started we are going to have so much fun, and try to raise record breaking amounts of money to help fund cancer research. That is where you all come in!! If you feel inclined to help donate towards Cancer research, please click here to visit my personal Relay page. Click on Donate, at the top, and do whatever your hearts and wallets will allow. We have got to find a cure for horrible disease, and every little bit helps.

Thank you!! Again, click here if you want to visit my page and make a donation.

Nothing new...

Things have stayed fairly quiet around our house, which is great news....well, except for the hacking coughs we have all passed around. Josh, Riley and I are heading to Houston this evening...Riley's port replacement surgery is scheduled for tomorrow. Then on Wednesday she will have her monthly doctor's visit and chemo, and of course the fun week of steroids begin. It should be extra fun dealing with steroid drama, on top of post-surgery drama. It's a good thing she is so darn cute, so I won't mind being the doting Mommy/nurse. We just need to pray this new port will stay open and continue working for the remainder of her treatments...if all goes as planned she will only have 10 intravenous chemo treatments left.
That's all we have going on. Please keep praying for Paige...I believe she was supposed to begin her stem cell transplant at some point today. She needs to get better quickly, so she can begin planning her wedding!!

Have a good week, everyone!!