Happy Birthday!!!

First thing this morning Olivia was able to open 1 present to start off the day. Gee's present has been here since Aaron's birthday... such a spectacularly cute outfit Gee. GREAT TASTE!

What a great time to be turning 5! We had a great day today celebrating our little Livi all day long. Thank you to ALL the well wishers that called and sent their love. Everything helped make Olivia's day the "best birthday party ever!". 

Livi's "wish granters" brought the itinerary for Olivia's "Make a Wish" trip to Disney World. Along with it they brought a tea set for Livi, a race car contraption for Aaron, a couple of cute items for me...and... chocolate cupcakes with strawberry frosting from the "Cupcakery"! YUM!

Thanks to Aunt Gee we've developed somewhat of a birthday tradition and go to Red Robin for our free birthday club burger. Livi was so excited to have her ice cream sundae brought to her with everyone singing Happy Birthday to her that when a little girl at a neighboring table got the serenade first, Livi stared around in utter confusion. It was as if we had popped her birthday balloon. She was great about it though... she simply smiled and said, throwing her hands up in the air, "isn't it fun? There are so many birthdays!"

After dinner we came home to open presents. Poor Aaron fell asleep and didn't get to participate. (Luckily she opened his before dinner.) It worked out better this way... Aaron had a tough day all day that it wasn't "his day". Here's Olivia sporting her new bag from Papa and a sweatshirt from Grandma.

 
  

She tried on everything that everyone sent and was so thrilled to learn that Junie B. Jones is a series! She kept asking if she could do more poses and twirling. Twirling was very important. Little girls definitely need to know how big things twirl. Thank you to all of our wonderful family who planned so well to have all her presents here on her birthday. It really did make everything very special.

This was a present from Uncle Adam and his friends that came down for Aaron's birthday, Zach, Matt and Mike. When they were visiting they were all very concerned with how Livi was doing and I said, as usual, "really good". I had told them that I needed to get a shirt for her that say's "Cancer Shmancer" because she's kickin' it's butt. When she unwrapped the package (with stuffing as empty soda cans, and Christmas wrapping paper... "very resourceful" says Bill) I saw a white T-shirt with pink lettering and my eyes welled up with tears. I knew exactly what it was. Thank you guys so MUCH! Livi was excited to try it on and "show her muscles"(all 34 lbs of her, on a good day). It is absolutely perfect!

Olivia, we love you. Happy 5th Birthday sweetheart!

Turtles, Pizza, Epoxy and more...

What a crazy week we've had...

Tuesday started with a playgroup playdate 

at Peter Piper Pizza. Not great pizza by any means, but the kids had a blast.

Wednesday was a hearing test for Livi. The final step in her really bad ear infection saga. Surprisingly to me she passed... I've always thought that her hearing was a little too much... "Ellison", turns out it is "Ellisonesque"  aka: selective. She has perfect hearing. 

Thursday was Aaron's BIG day. It was his 1st day of school! Well just speech, and only for 1/2 an hour but it was a big deal. We packed his backpack with a: toy, pencil, piece of paper to color, crayons and snack. Oh, and he made sure I didn't forget his water bottle. The simple fact was, I wanted it to be a big deal for him. With everything over the past year I don't want him to feel like he's an after thought, so this was perfect. Olivia was great about the whole thing too. She kept saying, "Wow, Aaron. You're such a big boy. You get to go to school! I don't even go to school yet. Good job Buddy!" (too cute) Livi and I just sat in the office foyer and she read her book to me. (Tuesday when I registered him he went to the classroom with his "teacher"/therapist for maybe 10 minutes. When he came back and saw me he started crying and told me, "Go away mommy, me rige 'kool buk. No me go home 'ik u."  (translation: Go away mommy, me ride school bus. No me go home with you.) My heart broke. Luckily for Thursday I was able to explain that our house is too new to have the school bus come to it. He was okay with that.)

Thursday night we got to feed Frank and Fiona, the turtles we are sitting for some friends. They are super cute. Apparently they are in hibernation and so eat every other day and do nothing in between. Very much the ideal pet in mine and Bill's minds. We've decided, instead of getting any type of pet we will simply pet sit for our friends' turtles!

Friday, today, we lost access to our garage and driveway which translates to loss of access to 

 front door. Allow me to explain. With the rain as of late we noticed that our garage had been puddling, a good 6-8 ft in! I spoke to the home builder's construction manager and

explained the situation. His paving company got in touch with me and started work Thursday. They had to re-slope the garage floor in that corner and so to make the whole garage look uniform they are laying epoxy down! Cool huh? I love how epoxy garage floors look but could never see myself paying for it. Lucky us. The driveway also had to be re-sloped,  so they tore part of it out and started over. I'm impressed with the whole thing. I was really only looking for maybe a re-pour, not epoxy!

All Hail to the Chief

What a great holiday President's Day is. I'll be honest, I never really thought much of it before, but today has been great. Bill has the day off except for this evening when a special someone, whose name I will not disclose at this time, will be coming in to town, so we all got an extra day together. This morning Bill and I took turns going for a run around our community, which was great. There's a steady incline for just shy of a mile which was great for the ol' ticker... When I got back I told Bill, "It's so pretty here. There's snow on the mountains all around us and we don't have to deal with it! How great is that?!" After lunch we took a trip to the mall together. The kids had a great time playing in the play area and each got a new pair of tennies as well. It was so fun to watch them help pick out their new shoes. Of course you have to see how fast you run in them, and no way are you not going to wear them out of the mall! They were so gracious. Aaron, more so than Livi. Livi said thank you but Aaron always knows how to make you feel good. "Ooh, I 'ike geeze. Kank'u Mommy. Geeze are nik." (Translation: Ooh, I like theses. Thank you Mommy. These are nice.) What a sweetie. Best thing of it all is that now both kids are asleep. It definitely helps that it's a rainy afternoon and no sunshine is bursting through their drowsy lids. I'll take it any way I can.

Hospital Happenings

This last week could not have gone smoother. Everyday, Livi received several visitors all of which were willing and did spend plenty of time with her. It was so great to have all these people from our new ward visit, whom

we hardly even know, and friends that we met upon moving to Vegas. 

People did crafts with her (she was hard to find in her room as most of the time she spent in the craft room), brought projects for her to work on, played games and just hung out. The rest of us, Bill, Aaron, Grandpa Ellison, Grandma Michiels, Papa Claycamp, and I all benefited greatly from the visits and

 delicious food that filled the "family fridge" at the hospital. On more than one occasion Olivia mentioned to me how she was the most special cancer kid because she had so many visitors. Especially having most her grandparents there was such a great treat.  Here are a few pics from the week.

This is seconds after the nurse pulled her NG tube out Thursday morning. One child could not possibly have more JOY!

On Friday, for Valentine's Day, some military personnel from Nellis came to the hospital with their bomb disarming robot. It passed out Valentine bags for all the patients. Alejandro, the cutie in the wheelchair and Livi even got to control it. Livi made it pick up a pencil! Very impressive skills.  Livi was the most outgoing of the group and so the soldiers took to her a little more than the 

 other kids. Lucky for her, she got to name the robot. They wanted to name it Olivia, she didn't like that idea. She came up with a different one, they got a Sharpie and made it official.

From the comforts of home...

I will be updating with great pics and info when things get settled down a little more. But just to get it out there, Livi was brought home Friday night at around 8pm. A bit of a surprise to us but wonderful all the same. She's doing FANTASTIC! Thank you to everyone who cared enough to check in on us, in person, by phone, on the blog, or even through prayer :).

Surgical Success

Last night, the kids got to play with Papa, Grandpa, and Grandma! Livi and Grandpa had fun painting together. Grandpa got a little carried away... he started the face painting!

We are thrilled to report that Livi's surgery today was a success. Bill and I took her to the hospital at 8 this morning and at around 9:30 she drove her hummer to the O.R. It pains me to 

think of how scared she must have been going in to that strange room with a bunch of strangers, so I'm just not going to think about it. :) She was in high spirits this morning leading up to it and was very comfortable while waiting with us.

Dr. Kogut came out at 12:30 or so and told us everything went well. They were able to get a lot of fluid out of her abdomen from where the pancreas had disintegrated (for lack of a better word) and also a lot of fluid was drained from the cyst. The gallbladder was an easy removal, the pseudocyst drain was "difficult" and involved "a lot of sewing". All in all very good. 

Bill and I also appreciate seeing her this time resting with a tube in her nose looking much healthier than before. The tube will be in for 2-3 days and she'll be in the hospital in HEMOC for 4-5 days. 

"Extra Extra Read all about it..."

I wanted to give the feel that this wasn't "so" serious... Olivia's CT results came back and showed two things. (Please know first off that Livi is doing GREAT!) The first was that her pancreatic cyst has grown. It used to measure at 3.8 cm and now it's 5.5. So numerically speaking, quite a big amount of growth since September, however Dr. Kogut the GI surgeon says that looking at the scans side by side there doesn't appear to be much difference. The main difference she says is that where before the cyst looked withered now it is very taut. Bottom line, the cyst is not going anywhere and will only continue to grow. Now, let me explain the cyst. When Olivia had her bout with pancreatitis (June '08), the middle portion of her pancreas was obliterated. (Truly the doctors say they have no idea where it went, "it's just gone".) The head is still functioning at a good enough rate to keep her from being diabetic. Unfortunately the tail end is still trying to do it's job as well, and produce the enzymes that it's supposed to produce. But, because the two ends are no longer connected the tail end has no access to the intestines at the head and therefore has no where to dump the enzymes... hence the cyst. It has become the dumping ground for the dead wasted material from the tail end of the pancreas. In no way is it cancerous because it is all dead tissue. SO... we are going in to surgery on Monday morning to connect the cyst to the stomach so it will naturally drain into the stomach. The cyst is so large that it is pushing up into the stomach and so provides an ideal setup for this type of drain placement. 

  So, as we were getting ready to leave the surgeons office after the consult Dr. Kogut says, "Oh! What? Wait... this (the CT report) says she has gallstones!?" I said, "My daughter?" Apparently my 4 year old, because of the TPN that fed her for 3 months, now has gallstones. So the #2 thing is Olivia will be getting a 2 for 1 surgery and have her gallbladder removed at the same time. 

  The doctors don't quite understand how she is not in any pain. The cyst alone (practically the size of a tennis ball) should be causing a significant amount of pain, but with the gallstones showing up on the CT scan (which is the last place they show up), they just shake their heads. I know why. Faith is an amazing thing. (See post "Young Faith" from October '08.) We prayed that her pain would go away and it truly did.

  As always your prayers are welcome as well as visits and phone calls as Livi will be in the hospital for a minimum of 5 days. We'll keep the blog updated to the latest.