We have had a cold front for the last few days, it got colder here fast, and I had not pulled out all of the cold weather things yet. So out came the tights to go under everything. Meghan took off her jacket, like most of my homegrown kids, she gets hot easily. Can you believe I got all three girls to smile here?
Meghan being sassy, she was pretty funny egging on her little sisters, and she looks HUGE next to them, though she is a small girl, still in size 5-6.
Can you believe these two are only 5 months apart? Where Kara is stocky, Amanda is tiny, thin bones and muscles, they will never have the same little body frames!
Check out my sweet Amanda, in the last few weeks she seems to be coming alive, not as depressed, and even beginning to watch Enchanted with her sisters. We are so grateful to see her happy and engaged. I am still trying to get her bangs cut evenly, she will not sit still for it. LOL
Getting all three to smile was a challenge, but you have to love the look on Kara's face, and the smiles on her sisters. :o)
Now it is Amanda's turn to sit and stare! For you vintage Gymboree folks, Kara is wearing Winter Hearts and City Sidewalk leggings, a no name tneck, plus La Belle Epoque tights...talk about line mixing. Amanda is in Park City Luxe with TCP tights and Meghan is wearing TCP.
Click on the picture to check out Kara's lips, she loves to blow bubbles. Meghan only just began to enjoy it, and you have to love non-spill bubbles (thanks Kathy!)
Everyone was giggling, these little gals can be challenging, but they give us so much joy!
Kara and Amanda, some days they have fun together, mostly they fight over who gets to play with mommy, they are doing better...
Check out those dirty feet, neither Kara nor Amanda will keep shoes on, I give up on both of them.
Yes, we can survive cancer, but it leaves it's mark on your soul, and it shows you how short life truly is. When we finish treatment; for me it was just surgery and chemo, we cherish every little thing from that point forward, the wind in your face, a butterfly landing on a flower, the smell of rain, a child's giggle, hearing your daughter sing, seeing your son in a play, feeling your daughters arms around your neck, talking to your sons about ANYTHING, and bringing two precious little girls into your home and your heart after you thought you may not be there to see your oldest daughter graduate. Just one second of life is precious, the world even with all the sadness, is truly beautiful.
The immense gratitude you feel for just one more day, the swelling gratitude in your heart the incredible joy, it shapes how you look at everything in your life. Right after my cancer treatment ended I remember feeling so very grateful just to wake up each day, I would pray, "Thank you God for the gift of this day". That never really went away, but as I get busy and cancer is a bit in the background, I do not pray in gratitude enough.
Today it was renewed for me, seeing Ed's family gather to remember him. However, it also made me remember planning my own funeral as I had read too many studies that told me, women with my cancer subtype did not survive past 3 years. I picked the songs I wanted to be sung when I would be in my room alone, too tired to move... I picked a song from my old church; "I Stand All Amazed", though it had been many years since I have attended the LDS church, the teachings and the music are a part of who I am. I can picture my mother sitting next to me in Sacrament meeting singing in her clear sweet voice, this beautiful song always brought tears to my eyes, and as I lay in the stupor following chemotherapy, it would play in my head and heart, and I would feel my mother next to me, comforting me. I knew should I pass, that this would be one of the songs I would want to be played to comfort my family.
Lord of the Rings is one of my all time favorite movies, and when I the last of the three was released in December 2003, and I heard Into The West, I knew, it too would be a song I would want in my funeral. I was not being morbid, but I was trying to prepare myself, my cancer was serious, something called triple negative breast cancer, and in the 5 years since my diagnosis, I have lost three friends with the same pathology.
I thought I understood cancer and the emotional damage it wrought in our lives, I lost my mother after she fought it for 4 years, she was barely 45 years old, I was 16, when she left me, I truly was alone. My father lost in his own grief and guilt, my sisters far away, one who just gave birth and missed Mom's funeral, and bless her heart, she still feels grief over this, another living with our aunt 100 miles away. Nothing would ever be the same again for any of us. Until I found my breast tumor November 9th 2002, I thought I knew everything about breast cancer, as a daughter who lost mother, but when I felt that lump, I realized, I knew nothing about cancer. The floor fell out from underneath me and I knew in an instant, it was not a harmless cyst, this was something that would challenge me for my life.
I tried for months to deny this thought, the doctors agreed, it was likely a deep infection following a massive breast infection, a lumpectomy April 15, 2003 showed we were all wrong.
If you have never had cancer, would you know how it feels to lose a beloved friend, a sister really, or how you feel when you survive and they do not? Until you walk in my shoes, or those of the millions of people before me, you cannot imagine the pain of loss or the bittersweet joy of survival. My life, me being alive and doing well, is truly God's miracle. What having cancer and surviving has done for me is simple; I no longer tolerate hateful attitudes, immense greed, prideful gloating, or unkind actions. I cry more easily, I feel more deeply than I did before, and I was an emotional woman to begin with so I am usually found weeping over many different things daily. I get hurt more easily and I truly cannot understand why anyone wants to hurt another, how can they, when the life we are given is such a gift? I want to be, as Gandhi said, The Change I want to see in the world. This quote is posted before me at my computer desk, to remind me of my purpose in the life I was given back.
In the 70's Richard Nixon declared a war on cancer, today, the cancer rates have increased, and survival is about the same as it was then. We are losing that war, do not let ACS tell you differently, all they did is include pre-cancers into their data to make the numbers look better, statistics, who can truly trust them? Maybe we need to FINALLY do what we can to prevent it in the first place, beginning with our environment, the foods we eat and the products we use. Maybe our children cannot have this threat in their lifetimes? We can pray it is so.
I took all 4 girls to the health department today, Julia needed a booster TDAP, the school had decided, she could not come back without it (this really irks me BTW) So we loaded all the girls in the van and proceeded to wait for two hours while Julia waited in line. I was thinking the doctors office may have been a better idea but they were too busy to see us today so...
