Feeling good

Elizabeth has been feeling pretty good the last few days.

She started school for the very first time ever last Monday. She loves it! We go (since I stay with her) from 8am until about 10:30am every day. Then we come home and bring little brother Matt to PM Kindergarten at 10:55am. We pick him up at 2:25pm when he gets out. It's been a little busy with all the back and forth, but thankfully Dad is home with Matt and Danny and can run things in the morning while we are in first grade. Elizabeth loves it. Her teacher (Mrs. Preis) totally rocks and the kids in the class adore her. They are so sweet, and one little girl gives her pencils and pens and always sits next to her during rug time. It has been so good.

Elizabeth started thalidomide on Tuesday last week and it kinda knocked her out for a few days. One of the side effects is sedation, but we've moved her dose up from 8pm to 4pm and that seems to help. She's not as tough to wake up in the morning now. Her dose increases this Tuesday, so I expect she'll need to adjust to the higher dosing again and we'll probably see some more grogginess. This week we're also supposed to add etoposide, but we're still waiting for the pharmacy to call us with the delivery information...

Elizabeth has also started on glyconutrients. We are friends with a family that has a survivor (way to go McKenzie!) who has only good things to say about the products, so we're trying them. At this point we really have nothing to lose and everything to gain. It's been only a couple days, but Elizabeth seems to be feeling better physically any way, so that's good.

We had a lot of fun at the Make-A-Wish event at Cold Stone, hanging out with pirates and Miss Kathy from Make-A-Wish. Dave, the Cold Stone owner, was a perfect host and really took great care of us. Miss Kathy even bought us dinner! We met a lot of people who came for ice cream and really took the time to meet Elizabeth and Dave made sure everyone knew she was fighting cancer. So many kind people promised to pray for her. There were a couple times people came up to meet her with tears in their eyes. It was amazing to see how touched they were by my little Princess and her struggle. It did me a lot of good.

On Saturday we got to see our Michael Hoefflin Foundation friends at a Family Day event the Paseo Club in Valencia hosted. We love all of them so much. Sue and Chris Hoefflin do so much to help us in our everyday lives. We got to see our friends Ayesha, Eric, and Candye, who do a lot of volunteer work with the foundation as well. And of course the other families! It was a good afternoon full of swimming and candy and bouncing.

We took the kids to Disneyland Sunday evening. It was the first time for us in about 4 months... we haven't been there since Elizabeth's birthday at the end of May. Elizabeth only spent half the time in the stroller (instead of all the time!), so I know she's feeling pretty good. I can only pray that the only tumors she has are in her lungs, and that the supplements will help the chemo work better, and that she will beat this. We've already been told that the fight is over and that we're just buying time waiting. I know the reality. I'm just so hopeful because she is feeling so good right now. Maybe it's because she is on minimally toxic chemo, and things are a little better before they get much worse, but I'm still hoping it's a miracle in the making.

Please keep her in your prayers. Thanks for checking in.