Sun Shiny Christmas

Well, while much of our nation is suffering from horrible holiday storms, we were favored with one of the nicest days in months for Christmas Eve. I'm thankful, since we had many car-fulls of family traveling to our home for our traditonal holiday brunch.

We were even able to go outside for pictures, and you can see by the light in the pictures that the sun was very clear and bright.

Here's Mom and Daddy on the porch. Daddy just had a week of chemo, which will happen every month. He's strong and in good spirits. He's still eating well, but not gaining much weight. I think that's because he's keeping busy with the yard and dogs. He was able to walk just fine into the arena to see Granddaughter Julie graduate from college on Saturday. He used the walker for safety (crowds, ramps, etc). Here is a picture of all of us on Saturday: (ignore Meaghanne's face, you know there's one in every family, isn't there??)

Having the family together this Christmas season was very important to us, especially since our newest member Kevin (Grandson-in-law) came down on his leave for Julie's graduation and to celebrate Christmas. He's scheduled to go back to Iraq (again!) for another 15 months this coming April. So it's going to be a while before we see him again. Here's the whole gang out on the porch for a picture:

Merry Christmas to our family and friends!

Greedy Thankfulness - or Thankfully Greedy?

These last few weeks we have all been recognizing how fortunate we are. We spent a nice Thanksgiving afternoon together enjoying a fantastic meal cooked primarily by 16-year old Meaghanne. We offered up a blessing that included Mom recognizing that this year, more than any other year, we have much to be thankful for. The support of each other, Daddy's strength in fighting cancer, the doctors who have been so awesome. The moment was very emotional, I had much I wanted to say but my throat closed up into a ball and I couldn't get words out. All I could do was squeeze my dad's hand and look at Mary Anne, hoping she could see what was in my heart through my eyes.

We do have much to be thankful for, but is it okay to want more? Daddy has been feeling so good, has been able to do some (but not all) of the things he wants to do, is it greedy to hope that the cancer has decided to take a rest in response to the overwhelming onslaught of medical treatment and Daddy's will to get better? It was hard not to feel a little "conditional" thankfulness, "conditional" on the results of his MRI that he had last week. This is what tells us how the tumor has responded. I think we all felt the stress of not knowing hanging over our head, as much as we tried to ignore it.

Daddy went in today to meet with the doctor who performed his surgery, the one who diagnosed his cancer and met with the entire family to answer our questions on that awful day in August. Mary Anne, Joe, and Julie were there with Daddy today too. The results of the MRI were incredibly good....the tumor that was removed has not grown back. And the part that the surgeon was unable to remove is shrinking in response to the treatments. It appears that Daddy has been selected to be on the "long side" of the averages. He will take a week every month of chemo to keep the tumor cells from growing, hopefully for a good long time!

The doctor told him to go home and live life.