KEEPING BUSY

We’ve been trying to keep busy the last few days, while we wait to see what the future holds for us in Memphis. It’s been fun to have Grandma here, and we celebrated the 4th of July and had a fun weekend all together.

We thought we were going to be in the hospital with Caleb on the 4th of July, but he ended up getting discharged. We had no plans, but thanks to Grandma, we threw together an “indoor cookout” with hot dogs, hamburgers, pasta salad, and baked beans. It was delicious!!! At night we decided to go to St. Jude to watch the fireworks because we heard the top of the parking garage was a great place to watch them. It was definitely great! We could see fireworks on all sides of us including the big downtown ones. It was nice to have some space and not be stuck in large crowds, especially since Caleb would not have been up for that this year. We brought snacks and glow in the dark bracelets/necklaces, and had a great time! It was definitely memorable just looking at Caleb and thinking about what a little miracle he is. It also made me think about all the holidays we’ve celebrated here… birthdays, Halloween, Christmas, New Years, Valentine’s day, St. Patrick’s Day, Easter…. almost a full year of holidays in Memphis. We definitely had our hopes up to be home by July 4th, but it ended up being fun anyways and we made the best of it.

The rest of the weekend we did some activities, like playing putt putt, playing games at our favorite arcade, and watching Toy Story 4 again.

Caleb does get tired very easily and so we spend a lot of time at home. Thanks to our wonderful and thoughtful friends, and also Grandma, we had plenty to do. We save boxes of toys that get sent to the boys for these exact moments, when we are home and we really need stuff to do. Thanks to some very special people the boys had Lego sets, a snap circuit kit, puzzles, robots, model planes, modeling clay, and Play doh sets to keep them entertained. Thank goodness because we had a 4 day weekend and a lot of time on our hands to try to keep them entertained!!! Take special note of the Play Doh set my mom got them… it’s a barber shop set but you make the “hair” on the little Play Doh people grow. Caleb’s hair is just starting to grow back, so he thought this was so funny!!

We also did some 4th of July crafts/activities including making patriotic cakes. Well, I thought the boys were going to make American Flag cakes BUT they wanted to do their own thing instead. So, we’ll just call them Red, White and Blue cakes ha ha!

The boys have also spent a lot of time with Grandma including sleepovers. One night in particular they made a tent to play in and read books in, and another night they made home made pizzas for dinner. Grandma time is so much fun! It’s fun for James and I too because we got to go out to a peaceful quiet dinner. It’s really nice to get a break sometimes even though we love them so much.

That is pretty much it… like I said, we are just trying to pass time while we anxiously await the results of the pathology report, and talk to our doctor about where that leaves us with our treatment plan. We hope that meeting will be on Wednesday afternoon, but there are no guarantees. We have to wait for the full report to come back as well as Tumor Board to discuss Caleb’s results and treatment plan. So, we are trying to stay calm, but we are feeling a mix of emotions. I think as the days pass we are ready for whatever the results are. We will handle whatever comes at us. We just want to know. The not knowing is the WORST part. We just sit around and think about it and wonder if we’ll still be living here in a week or not. It’s hard. I am glad we have our silly boys to keep our mind off things.

We will let everyone know as soon as we know anything about results, future treatment, or coming home. We know everyone wants to know just as bad as we do. So hopefully more updates coming soon!!!