Please Pray

I landed back into the cold (but sunny!) Ohio about 3pm on Monday. It was good to be back AND I had a wonderful trip. It was nice spending time with my family...my original family of my Dad and my sister. Although the weather was not great (the sun did shine down for about 2 hours on Sunday and I pretty much froze while trying to sit out in it) we just had a really nice time. Shopping, organizing, planning, thinking...trying to make Dad's new place a home for us all to relax in. Oh how I wish I could take my family there, but not yet...we will have to proceed through the remainder of Ally's intense treatment before we can attempt to do that. If prayers are answered, we will all be down there in due time putting our little toes in the ocean. I pray for the day that my girl can wade out into that ocean and find a sand dollar on her own. The ocean is a wonderful place to sit and pray, by the way. Lots of prayers were spilled into the ocean water by me on behalf of our girl Ally and our friend's boy Cory. (who is doing remarkably better by the way).

I arrived home to quite a miracle I must say. There were several welcome home signs/card/ gifts...my husband was making dinner (the only thing he knows how to make: Chili, but still!), my house was totally picked up and they told me they had a surprise for me. Ally led me to the garage where they opened up the door to my car. It was CLEAN. (cue: angels signing) They spent three hours vacuuming, cleaning and scrubbing...my disaster of a car. It was truly a terrible mess and a definite sign that this Mom really does fly by the seat of her pants all the time. So that was just AWESOME. (I think I owe some thanks to Kopil too) Not only did my husband stay with the kids for me, but he did lots of little projects around the house for me and even laundry too! I know! I know! It doesn't get much better than that.

I also owe my sincerest thanks to three people who watched my kids while my husband went to work on Friday and Monday: Suzanne Duplain (thank you also for the dinner you left for Jerad/kids), Lisa Wygant, and Jackie Yount. I could never have gone to Florida without a little help from my friends and someday I hope to repay the favor!

I did come home to the reality that Ally's ANC number was not good enough for her to start the new phase of treatment this week. This is normal and expected, but I always hate delays. She was 390 and had to be 750. So she has the week off, and she is feeling really good. However, I did receive word (thank you Tracy) that the school is pretty darn sick this week...so I am holding Ally home a few days. She has enough to deal with and I know she will catch anything that flys by. We still do tutoring and then she pretty much job shadows me all day, which can get really tiring for me, but what can I do. I do think the girl could pretty much raise a family at age 8...she can cook, clean, do laundry, follow recipes, put away groceries, lay her sister down for a nap, you name it and I have taught her. I guess this is the school of life and I am her teacher.

I have mentioned on here several times my hospital family. And my hospital family is very dear to my heart. Another of our family, Hollie, was mentioning that we are kind of like a military family...we all have to stick together and rely on each other and fight the battles together...whether they are good or bad, we are just together. We have similar heavy hearts and tired faces and prayerful hands. We follow each other's stories every single day, thru the blogs, even if we don't see each other...we are there in spirit. So today my heart is very heavy...as the youngest member of our family, Lincoln, is possibly facing the last moments of his short life. He has seen more trials in his one year of life than most will ever see. He is a sweet baby boy...who we first heard about when the St Luke's moms held a lemonade stand last summer for Ally and Lincoln. We have spent many a day in the hospital right by him with Ally trying to make him giggle from his hospital crib. Today I am praying for a miracle for our baby Lincoln. He deserves a miracle and then some. Please pray.