Perfect Winter Day

Hello blogger friends and sorry for my lack of posting. I have no excuse except that I took a little break and all is going really well for us. I just tried to entrench myself back into normal life and, as I have mentioned on here countless times, it is so awesome to have normal times with Ally.

Ally is on a delay with her chemo. She was supposed to go in last week to start a new round, but her counts were only 390 and they have to hit 750 to start. I am almost certain she will go in Tuesday, so we have one day of our break left. She gets her counts done in the morning and we shall see. It starts with another spinal and I am soo soo nervous about that since the last one resulted in a week long headache and lots of pain.

Ally has been doing very well. A glimpse of our old girl was definitely back. She got to go to school Thursday and Friday. She got to play with her friends over the weekend and go out to a restaurant. Jerad took the day Saturday and spent it with his friends...they went to UD Xavier and then hopped in the car...drove a few hours to Indianapolis and watched WSU play Butler. This was Jerad's "ideal day" and it was so nice to not have to worry about an impending fever. I also have to give some special thanks to one of our faithful prayer warriors/blog readers who I have never even had the pleasure to meet: Tara Pakosta. Thank you for sending Ally the great card kit. That is right up her alley. Thanks for thinking of us.

But today...TODAY...was one of the nicest days that I have had in a long long long time. It is hard to explain why, and it will sound silly, but somedays are just perfect. I always say "I want this day to be in my heaven" and they are rare when they come about. It started with a lazy and normal morning around our house. We all went to church as a family today. This is really really rare for us. We don't let Ally go because her counts usually aren't high enough. The kids all went to "children's church" so Jerad and I got to have sort of a date at church. And the sermon was on loving God, and trusting God, and having hope which was all good. Pastor Gil is just so inspriring. He can just motivate me to keep on going all on his own.

We then went sledding and snowmobiling up at Fox Hill. We were blessed with about six inches of snow and it is all stuck to the trees in the most beautiful way. This is what I want in my heaven actually....the beauty of the snow. We really don't get too many big snows around here. So the chances were slim that it would hit when our daughter was on a delay and could actually enjoy it!! We are blessed. The hills at "Fox Hill" are extreme and fun and long. And the snowmobile is quite fun to ride around on to see the beauty. Ally even did it (very carefully). It actually felt warm today. We had no wind and the sun peeked out today during the time we were sledding and only that time. I always attribute weather and other things like that to my mom. She was up there today watching down on all her grandkids enjoying her land. And the sun was shining on their faces.

Jer and I then got to do our weekly bootcamp class. Which we love (to hate). And follow that up with a little Superbowl party (just us!) where we decided to be bad and eat our dinner on the floor in front of the TV and a nice warm fire in the fireplace. (Ally's idea). Jerad tried to make it extra fun for the kids by inventing some sort of Superbowl gambling that they could participate in with his poker chips. Leave it to Jerad to teach our kids about gambling...but they loved seeing who could guess the coin toss, first penalty, first run, first score, etc etc. It kept them interested and made it fun.

So again, I overflow with gratefulness. My family was apart all last weekend...and then all day Saturday too...so I was so happy just to have my little family together for the perfect winter day. We appreciate this so much especially knowing some of Ally's friends are having harder days, primarily Lincoln and her friend Amanda who spent over 10 days in the hospital in terrible pain. Our thoughts are always with them, even on the good days when we try to just forget this horrible disease called cancer and all that is has changed in our life.

Here are some pictures of our day. The snow is a natural light reflector and always allows for the truest and most wonderful pictures. I have to post them all to remember my lovely day.

Love this picture of Daddy and his kids....with beauty in the background

She hates sledding, but let me take her picture before she went in and drank hot chocolate with her Pa. (love her ski hat made by my Great Aunt June for Ally when she was little)

Love those snowy trees!

Don't worry, he went slow (when she was on)
Daddy also tried a little snowboarding

This is Jerad hauling me up the hill, after I had walked it about 7 times and was too tired.

Here are also a couple videos. Not riveting, but you can truly see the beauty and the length of the "medium" hill. We skipped the "big" hill today as we didn't want to press our luck!

Ally Snowmobiling




Daddy and Evan sledding.