Why we celebrate Christmas!

Our family just loves the Christmas season, it is always a joy to get together with family and friends.  Christmas is my favorite time of the year for so many reasons, but mainly because of the "real" reason for the season, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  We have several family traditions that we enjoy doing with our children at Christmas time. The first being that no one in our family opens a single gift on Christmas day before we read the Christmas story aloud and sing Happy Birthday to Jesus.                                        

                       http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+2&version=KJV

 

  We decided when our kids were born that we would always put the focus on Christ and let them know what this special time of year was truly about. It was a personal decision of ours that we would not tell our children about Santa Claus and that is a personal decision for all parents. We have always told our children their gifts come from Jesus, that he allows us as parents to have good health to work and provide for them.  I know this way of thinking does not sit well with all people, but then again it is a personal decision. I have explained to our girls that some parents do tell their children about Santa and that they should never tell another child that he is not real. I want them to know that it is a parents place and not theirs. I will admit that we have had some close calls at times and that our children do need a gentle reminder this time of year. 

As I sit here at the hospital waiting for my oldest daughter to come out of surgery I am reminded of how precious family is and that we have been giving a very precious gift this year, her being cancer free.  I can honestly tell you that this Christmas is going to be wonderful for that, but also bitter sweet, as I would have been giving birth to my third child right after the new year. I am glad to know that my precious baby will be spending his first Christmas in Heaven with Jesus.

I hope that y'all have a very Merry Christmas and remember without Christ there would be no CHRISTmas.

"That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"
 



 

 

 

 

One of my happiest moments!!

I know that we have all had some happy moments in life. When I think back there are some major ones that jump out to me. The day I married my husband, each time I found out I was expecting, the birth of my children, but the best was the day that I discovered how much the Lord loved me and that he sent his son to die for me. Recently I posted a blog about the scariest sentence I had ever heard, the day my daughter was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Well, today I want to blog about the very happy sentence we heard just a couple of days ago. After four months of chemo treatments, many stays in the hospital, a whole bunch of blood work and a few blood/platelet transfusions we got the news everyone longs to hear, "Your daughter is cancer free!"  Oh, how that sentence made my heart soar! I can not even begin to describe the jubilation that I felt with just those few words.  In that small moment of time I took in the awesomeness of our God. I knew that he had been with us throughout the whole process, but to see and hear that healing had taken place made me see the miracle that is my daughter. As I begin to cry her doctor handed me a tissue and apologized for making me cry, my reply was, "These are happy tears".  I felt so good, almost as if I could have flown from the hospital roof.  I could hardly wait to call and tell everyone, but her Grandmother was to be the first to know and that had to be in person, you see it was mammy's birthday and she got the best present ever. It was just a couple of months ago that my husband told me he believed we would get a Christmas miracle, well he was right, because we did.  I know our journey is not over yet, we still have another surgery (to remove her port), she will be seeing the doctors a whole lot over the next few years, and she still has lots of scans to do. I was just telling someone a couple of weeks ago that sometimes you can't leap into things in life, you have to take small baby steps to get to where your place is. I know that we have many baby steps to take, but as God goes before us, I know he is making a way for us to follow.

"That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"

Thankfulness is for everyday

Let me apologize for being absent for almost a month, as you can imagine things around here have been rather crazy. My daughter has been able to be in school much more this month and I have been busy with the family and preparing for Thanksgiving.  I'm sure by now all of you have gotten together with family to celebrate Thanksgiving and if your like our family you are still trying to get rid of all the leftovers that didn't get eating.  I get really tired of them, but then again it was very nice to not have to cook after church today. I hope that each one of you took the time on Thursday to express some of the things that you are thankful for. We started a new tradition of a thankful tree this year, but of course I forgot to take a picture of it. My daughters started their own tradition of reading The First Thanksgiving story to us. When you take a moment to stop and think about all the hardships that the Pilgrims went through it is amazing that they even chose to stay in the new world. It was not an easy start and life continued to be difficult, but they were able to stick it out and persevere.  Any way I just wanted to wish all of you a belated Happy Thanksgiving and to remind you and me that we shouldn't wait for one day to be thankful, but we should strive to  be thankful every day of the year for all the blessings in our lives.

                                           "That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"

http://www.plimoth.org/learn/MRL/read/thanksgiving-history

Autumn: My favorite time of the year!

Let me start off by saying I just absolutely love the fall of the year. There are so many wonderful things about, even if my husband says he doesn't like it. My husband loves the summer time, he says, "The hotter, the better!", we totally disagree. I mean summer has it good points. I like that the days are longer, the kids are out of school and that we get to go swimming, but around these parts it is just so hot it makes you miserable.

I guess the cooler weather is one thing I love about autumn.  I just adore being able to get out my sweaters and long sleeves. I love fall festivals and sitting around the bonfire with family and friends.  What is my favorite thing about fall?  I love the colors of the leaves. I often walk out unto my back porch and just look at the beautiful colors. It is almost as if God has taken a giant paintbrush and went around and painted all the trees.  Of course I know fall can't last forever, there has to come a winter and that I am not crazy about. I mean I like to see if snow, but I also love to see it leave. I can't imagine living anywhere that the snow lays around for days, weeks or months. I would be a lot crazier than I am now if I had to live like that. At least after the winter comes the spring and life starts all over again, but I am partial to the fall, it is my favorite.

"That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"

Beach Break!

Well last week our kids got the whole week off from school for fall break, so we decided to take off for a day trip to the beach.  I know it may sound crazy to some folk, but Grace desperately wanted to see the ocean, so we took her.  I am happy to report that we had a wonderful trip and really enjoyed our time together as a family.  We did not see any attractions, but spent the day walking and playing on the beach and then the rest of the evening in the heated pool .  We kept with vacation tradition this time and ordered in pizza Friday night and then we were all so tired we crashed out before 10.  I wished we could have stayed an extra day, but we had our annual church fall festival on Saturday so we had to head back home. Before we left we stopped off at Mammy's kitchen for breakfast. The food was fantastic and to make it even better someone took care of paying for our meal, what a blessing.  We stopped off at a place called the Berry Patch for ice cream and a bathroom break about half way home and then we headed straight for our church.  It was so much fun seeing our church family and the kids really enjoyed the games.  I have to admit today I am just slap give out, but the weekend was wonderful.  Tomorrow we face heading back into the hospital for our daughter's 4th chemo treatment. My emotions are always mixed about it, on one hand I dread it and on the other I know it just puts us one step closer to beating this cancer. 

"That's my 'two-cents worth', what's yours?"

A Break from our Battle: A day at the fair

First off I will give y'all just a little update: My daughter is doing very well in her battle against this cancer. She has just recently completed her third round of chemo, like the champ she is and is getting a few days off.  It seems that we have adjusted well to the new medication she is having to take and are hoping to be off of it in a few weeks.

We decided to take a break form everything and go out to our local fair today. It was so much fun spending time with the girls. We watched a magic show, a tractor pull and my favorite, the pig races.  We got to ride a few rides, but mostly we just ate. We got to eat nachos with cheese, ribbon fries, chocolate chili flavored ice cream and a Krispy Kreme burger. In case you wonder it is a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato, and pickles with two doughnuts as the buns. It was so good!!

We really enjoyed being able to go out and spend some time together and get away from everything for a while. You don't really think about how much time you spend going and doing when you have a sick child. It is always a doctor appointment, blood work or something on your mind. We can never really plan to go anywhere because you just don't know what is going to happen. Thank God for allowing us to have some much needed family time today! Now it is time to snuggle up with my babies and watch a little Star Trek before bed.

And the battle rages on!

Man oh man what a crazy last couple of weeks it has been for us, I will try to catch y'all up as best as I can.  Last Wednesday we went to the hospital for our daughters scans to get idea of how the cancer is doing.  We hadn't been home no time at all when they called and told us to come back. They had found a blood clot in one of her main arteries and she needed to get back as soon as possible.  Let me tell you hearing the words "blood clot" is almost as scary as hearing the word cancer.  I rushed around to get everything together and took off to the hospital.  We ended up with a two day stay and having to be on blood thinner, but everything seems to be going well.  We went back in this week for our regular chemo treatment (round #3) and was told by her oncologist she will not need any radiation. Oh my word, let me tell you, I was one happy mama.  All I could do was just praise  the Lord for that good news, but God wasn't done with us yet. The dr. then told us that after consulting with some other oncologists they had come to the conclusion that she was only going to need 4 rounds of chemo in total and we had already finished two. It was so good to hear that we may be done with these chemo treatments by Thanksgiving. Let me tell you it took a couple of seconds for that to sink in!!  God just kept blessing us yesterday and sending us positive and encouraging news.  As I sat here at the hospital writing this blog I can't  help but think about how much our lives have changed over the last couple of months.  I have decided to reflect back on that in a later blog, after she has beat her cancer, and I know she is going to beat it. God has been so good to us, not only in her healing, but also in how he has used our family, friends and church family to help us out during this time. I am so glad we have had them to support us. I am going to end on that note and stop to watch The Phantom of the Opera with my daughter. 

"That's my two cents worth, what's yours?"