Catching Up

I want to share a few items that were direct answers to our prayers in hopes that it will encourage you.
The pictures here will give you a better idea of a few of these things.

1. I was able to take Sarah and Hannah (along with Granddaddy) to their first Auburn game at Auburn. (We went to the Cotton Bowl here a few years ago to see Auburn.) This was very special to me because my dad starting taking me to Auburn games when I was 3, and it became our family tradition to go each season to the home football games. For so many years, we just never scheduled a trip along with a football game, so with our new outlook on life, I did not want to postpone something that was very special to all of us. I believe my dad is still smiling.

2. While we were able to travel to Alabama, we had a "Thank You" party for our extended family and friends there. I was able to take my city girls out into the country, and they did great. Our family in Alabama has been such an encouragement to us in our journey, and it was great to spend time with them.

3. Hopefully, in the picture above you can see Sarah jumping on the trampoline at gymnastics. Yes, she enjoyed 2 hours along with Hannah. This is huge because of how fast she is healing from the intensive chemo. She recently received her 6 month assessment from her physical therapist and our therapist said she has never seen someone recover as fast as Sarah. Six months ago Sarah scored a zero to 1 on many of her skills test such as standing on one foot. Her initial assessment said she had the mobility of a 4 year old. Thanks to our wonderful and amazing Father, she scored very high on many of the tests this time. Most of the tests, she was back to the 7 to 8 year old range. We still have more therapy to go as she still cannot run normally, so please keep her in your prayers.

4. We were given tickets to the last day of the State Fair of Texas. Sarah was able to see Big Tex for the first time. Again, it is such a blessing for us to do "normal" things as a family. Many years before we moved to Hong Kong, we complained about the crowds at events like this, but now it seemed normal to us even smaller compared to China!

In all of this, we still have difficulties as Sarah is having problems with her liver. Her metabolism of the toxic chemo chemicals is too slow which is causing her liver enzymes to shoot up. They are going to give her a mixture of the current daily chemo pill at a lower dosage along with another chemo pill that does not cause the same issues. The problem with this other chemo pill (6TG) if given in high dosages can cause a more serious liver problem. They saw this side effect in almost 20% of kids taking this pill years ago and that is why they do not use it for maintenance now, so we will probably be going to weekly or biweekly visits for the rest of the maintenance (next 2 years) just to monitor Sarah's liver. This of course was not exciting news as we thought we would be at monthly visits at this point, but we know God will provide the strength for this.
EXCITING EVENTS!
We are looking forward to this weekend when Sarah will be the honored guest at the Grand Opening of Tiff's Treats in Addison to raise money for Make a Wish Foundation. Look at this link http://www.cookiedelivery.com/dallas/grandopeningaddison.asp and come by for your $3 box of warm cookies and even win prizes! We will be there from around 1-2pm.
Then in the evening, our family and some friends will be walking in the Light the Night Walk on the Legacy Campus. http://pages.lightthenight.org/ntxok/Plano10/SarahGrace

Thanks so much for your prayers and please keep them flowing!