Taking Life with the Good and the Bad

Two big things are going on in our life right now-one good, one bad. First, the good. We are announcing the arrival of BABY #2 sometime in late July or early August. We are excited for our new one to make his/her entrance into the world, but more importantly it will be good for Braxton to have a brother or sister to play with. I am feeling pretty good actually and my worst sickness is in the middle of the night—weird, I know. We are grateful for this though, since Brian has started into his busy season and works until 11 pm or later every night and I have become a virtual single-parent during the week.

On to the bad things of life. We found out last Wednesday that my mom has a tumor on her small intestine. The doctors did surgery on Wednesday evening with hopes of removing it, but were unable to do so without taking out most of her intestine. What would have been left to work with wasn’t enough for her to live very long. They also were able to tell that it was cancer and it had spread a little. We were very shocked and scared for her, but the following days have given us a lot of hope for her recovery. She has Stage 2, Grade 2 Follicular Lymphoma. It can be successfully treated with chemo; however, it is not curable and may come back at anytime for the rest of her life. The doctors wanted to start chemo immediately, so I rushed down to St. George this weekend to spend a few hours with her before that started. The hardest part for me right now is that because I’m pregnant, I can’t be near her during chemo, which will last about 18 weeks. I’m so glad I went down, even for the few hours I got to spend with her, because it just reassured me how tough my mom is and I know she will fight this with all she has. So far, she has reacted to the chemo really well, with only a bit of nausea, and is recovering from her surgery well. Hopefully, she will be able to go home from the hospital this week where she can feel more comfortable for the remainder of her recovery. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers on behalf of my mom.

Holidays

Here’s a brief post on the holidays. For Thanksgiving we went down to St. George with my family. We had a wonderful time with good food and lots of family. Unfortunately, we didn’t take any pictures except on Thanksgiving morning we went up in the red rock and took family pictures for Christmas cards. Here are a few of the best ones:


Foster Family

Grandma and Grandpa with the grandkids

Clint, Amber, Sienna and Savona

Jessica and her boyfriend Brian

For Christmas we went to Idaho. Since we didn’t want to haul our presents for Braxton back and forth, we talked to Santa and he let us have ‘Christmas morning’ a little early this year—about 2 ½ weeks early! Braxton knew how to open presents pretty good this year, but he got distracted so easily that we opened presents for three days progressively. Then, actual Christmas morning we spent with Grandma and Grandpa Foster and the afternoon was spent with Grandma Coombs and Brian’s family.

Seeing our tree up for the first time—priceless!

The spread

He loves his kitchen

First time on Santa’s lap at our Ward Breakfast-oh dear!

New favorite toy

New Christmas Hairdo

First remote control car—thanks Uncle Brad! Deep concentration requires the tongue sticking out!

I love Christmas