Rhen-man vs. Ave-dog

the battle is on to see whose are the cubbiest.
the cheeks... Ave-dog wins hands down! horray! says avery.




the feet.

Rhen man pulls through on this one, sorry Ave-dog

haha right on! says Rhen.

Ave dog looks a little stunned thinking, I thought I could pull through with my finger toes! dang it.

...and he finally walks at 14 months

Rhen is on his feet, finally! He walks around wobbley like my very cute grandpa Lewis. He looks so big and feels like such a big boy as he grins from ear to ear when we cheer and clap for him. Now I can't wait until spring so he can cruise around outside. He loves to play catch with any ball in the house. He waits for Jake to come home and when he does he wants to go find a ball and play catch down stairs with his daddy. He seriously has a good throw, he has practice since he throws everything he ever gets in his hands, including a wood box which the corner of it tagged me in the temple and hurt. Jake said I looked like a character of Lost.
He still is lactose intolerant, and Jake always jokes when I am gone to Young Womens, that he just feed Rhen some yogurt and cheese and wonders if he will be ok tommorow (because he used to give Rhen whatever he wanted cause his boy should eat dairy, he's missin out). He is getting another tooth, he is as skinny as can be, his cousin Avery, who is half his age just out weighed him. So watch out Rhen she is going to take you down!

long clinic

If there is a big storm, guarantee we have clinic. Ever since she was diagnosed 4 years ago, everytime it is either raining or snowing. Sardine Canyon was so bad, at one point we couldn't see the hood of our car. It was learry scary, as Elsie would put it. Luckily it was the family meeting day so Jake drove with me.
The drive took a long time, clinic took along time with audiology, xray, clinic, more xray's, clinic again, and our meeting with her bone marrow doctor. The yearly meeting went good. He said that since she has made it to a year past transplant, and since she was on sirolumous ( a drug being tested which we were lucky to be picked, and is given before marrow transplants) her chance for relapse is 10% and it goes down to 2% by year 5. Those statistics are from the other patients who were given that same drug. She still has chronic GVHD so we are still in the bone marrow team and not turned over to oncology team, which it may be a while. They are slowly tappering but chronic GVHD is hard to kick and it flares up when you tapper. Chronic GVHD never stays after 5 years and basically gives up. We don't want it to last that long, we hope it gives up earlier and she can return back to school in the fall. The doc wants to set that goal, but you never know. Then we drove our long drive home in white out conditions, going pretty slow. It was a long day.

I have been wanting to post the video for months now but haven't been able to get it downloaded. This is just a typical day of play for Elsie. Long but cute. We love her imagination! This is her rendition of peter pan.

Brady Bunch

Last night Chloe asked me to tell her a story when I was tucking her in for bed. I usually make up outlandish stories about my past or invent some kind of fairly tale - the girls seem to like that. Last night though, I was fresh out of ideas but thinking about Stacie and our three pretty daughters. So I started tell this:

"Here's the story, Of a lovely lady, Who was bringing up three very lovely girls."

Chloe stops me after the one line and says "Dad... I already know about the Brady Bunch."

I haven't seen that show since I was a kid. Figured she would have no idea about the show and I could tell her the theme song as a story. She's too quick for me. Good thing though, after the first line I couldn't remember the rest of the song.

long clinic day

Today was some of Chloe's year evaluation tests. She had a 4 hour long psych evaluation putting together puzzles and taking test, etc. She is doing really good! Her reading and comprehension is at a 6th grade level, and her phonics are at a 12th grade level, that is so great!! However her math levels are only at a 1st grade level and I expected that, math cognitive development I was told, is effected more with all the meds she was on. So we will be focusing on math to get her caught up. She had xrays, breathing tests, labs and they all look good. Her donor cells are at 100%!!! We are excited about that. We have two more of these yearly evaluation, like her eyes and ears and a family consultation in the next few weeks so they will be long days too but we are excited about the good news of today and hopefully good news at all the other ones! Some people have asked if she is able to go out more because there is no cancer in her blood. Although the cancer hasn't come back with her donor cells she still is on her anti-rejection and steroids for her GVHD, and those are immuno-suppressant meds, and while she is on a tapper, they say that her body is more susceptible to viruses. We will still be home bound at least until June, and that all depends on her GVHD. So anyway that is the update on clinic. If anyone has good online math websites send them my way, we have to start working on them.

like mother, like daughter

All my girls like to do crafts, and I keep thinking of new ideas for home school, so I had chloe make a mask. It turned out pretty cute. It disguises her really well and she thinks it is funny. When addie came home from school, and Jake came home from work she scared them with her mask on and she just laughed.

Chloe's baptism

Chloe was able to get baptized on saturday! We are so excited for her, it was a great day and she felt special. It was done when all the other baptisms were over, the font was drained and then refilled. We are so grateful to those who were accomodating to our special situation.

We went back and forth wondering what to do about sharing this experience with lots of family and friends, maybe wait a year, but in the end we just decided to do it, and for her safety of getting sick couldn't invite all family and friends. So we will share a picture of her, for you, after she was baptized.

a Rhen post

Rhen has been a little jealous of all the attention Moose has gotten the last few days so I thought I would post one special post for him. We are in trouble with this little cute one because how do I say no to this cute face...

Rhen is such a happy boy, always giving kisses, always smiling and making odd random noises. He is boy and lets everyone know it. Last night he finally figured out his four wheeler toy and was riding around with his elbow out to the side and his back arched bumping into walls and furniture just laughing. We love this kid!!!

meet..moose

Our new dog!
Now those of you who know Jake, you don't need glasses or a new prescription, us girls just wore him and down and I am sure he just gave in so he didn't have to listen to us anymore or he is just a really, really nice guy. I am pretty sure a little bit of the first and a lot of the second. He is a golden retriever, the runt of the liter. Our neighbors breed them, they are great people and we new those dogs were taken very good care of, and they let us spend some time with them since Chloe loves dogs they let us pet them. Well we fell in love with this one. Very laid back. So
this was his first night at our house!

Chloe has to be careful not to let the dog lick her face, she can't brush it's hair or of course clean up poop, and lots and lots of hand washing. We have him as an outside dog, so all these things made it so the doctors said she can have him. She loves to play with him at her recess time from home school!

He is a lot of fun and the laid back one of the bunch of his bros and sisters. He doesn't yipe at all at night. I didn't sleep much the first night, not because of the yipping, but because I thought he was dead or something. I can only speak for me but it is fun to have him around.

So thanks to their great dad, they are able to smother and love their very own dog.