Catching up...

I am trying to get caught up on all of the posts I need to do. I tried to get a few done yesterday but something was up with the photo uploader. Hopefully I'll get some more done tomorrow or maybe tonight. Anyway, I realized it is a little confusing that my last post says "5 Months" when Emery is really almost 7 months old now! I am just going back and posting things that I have missed over the past couple of months! Hopefully, I'll have them all done here in a few days!

Bald is Beautiful II - Fundraiser in Houston

The end of May we took a trip to Houston with our best friends Matt and Niki and their little girl Madeline. We had an awesome time catching up with Dan and Lauren as well as Sarah and Miles, Susan, Dad and Marsha, and Doug and Cher. They call came to Houston for the Bald is Beautiful II fundraiser for the Children's Cancer Center. Craig Waibel with the Houston Dynamo started this fundraiser last year to raise awareness for children's cancer. We met Craig at the cancer clinic about a month after we arrived in Houston. He volunteers up at the hospital and is one of Dr. Thompson's good friends. He has such a great heart and does a lot to make the kids at the hospital feel special and loved. He keeps his head shaved and is often asked to talk to young cancer patients who are concerned about losing all of their hair. Craig and his wife have a little girl who is a couple months younger than Emery so he and David got to share lots of new dad stories with each other. They are pretty funny together. Craig and Dr. Thompson tried their hardest to convince David to shave his head in Emery's honor but David was determined to keep that full head of hair! Maybe next year...

Here are some pictures of our trip. I know this is old but I am trying to get caught up. Emery is 6 months old in these pictures and you can see she's got eye brows and eye lashes now and has the most adorable fuzz on her head!







Attacking Dan's nose! So funny!
Madeline hanging out in the swing - looks like she having a great time!

David and Dan taking a break from their washers game to pose for the camera.
Matt and Madeline at the Houston Dynamo game.

Dynamo game
Maddie was a sleepy girl!

Miles and Matt
Susan looking so pretty!

Marsha, Cher (who is now officially done with her cancer treatment!!), Dad and Emery

The whole gang before the game.

Dr. Thompson after he got his head shaved.

Niki, Matt, and Maddie
Lauren and Dan, the best hosts ever!

Matt and Maddie - if you've seen the Hangover, you'll think this is funny...

Doug and Cher who were in town for one of Cher's radiation treatments. Marsha and Dad made the drive and brought Susan with them. It was great to see all of them again.

Lauren and Emery playing at the house.

We had a wonderful weekend with our friends and family. It feels like Houston is our home away from home now and we look forward to going back the end of July!

5 months old and Cancer Free!

Emery got to spend her 5 months birthday in her own home! Besides the one week we had at home before going back to Houston for surgery, Emery and I had been gone for three months! It seems crazy to me now to think about being out of your own home for that long. David and I have loved being home together and enjoy the fun times we have with Emery. She keeps us busy but we're loving every minute of it!

Here are Emery's 5 month pictures!

Emery's Surgery - this is really late, I know.

So I am really behind on posting and can't ever seem to find the time to do it! Emery is super busy these days and I can only get so much done during her naps! Laundry and cleaning up the house tend to take up most of that time. Today I have been vegging out on the couch catching up on posting photos to Facebook and watching a little So You Think You Can Dance that I have recorded! This is so much better than working on the house!

Here are photos of Emery's surgery back in April. She had her tumor removed Monday, April 19th and everything went really well. Her surgeon was able to remove most of the tumor and he said what was left behind looked dead from the chemo treatments. Thankfully, with Neuroblastoma removing 95% of the tumor is as good as 100% because the remaining cancer cells will go away on their own. They can't survive without the rest of the mass. Emery had a chest tube in for a few days and was hooked up to all of the monitors during that time. She was pretty uncomfortable for the first 24 hours but seemed to feel much better after that. She is such a trooper and remained pretty pleasant throughout her recovery. We had to give her a little morphine the first night after surgery because she kept waking up and seemed like she was in quite a bit of pain. It was not fun. I had a hard time picking her up to feed her without aggravating her side where the chest tube was. I hated that. Thankfully, her chest tube came out Wednesday morning and she was moving around and playing soon after. They took off all the monitors at that time as well. It's so much easier to hold her and play with her without all of the wires! We were discharged the next afternoon and flew home the next day. We were so worried about surgery and how it was going to affect Emery, but once again she showed us how strong she is and she breezed through it like a little champ! We are so proud of our little girl and the strength she has.

Here we are waiting to meet with our surgeon and anesthesiologist.

Entertaining Emery to keep her mind off of the fact that she hadn't eaten in 6 hours!

Are you kidding me?! They want me to wear these things? How embarrassing! :)

Baby girl all ready for surgery!