Praising God!

What a weekend...so full of highs and lows. I promised myself this week that I would never again ask you to pray for an upcoming MRI and then be so rude to not post results, so let me give you a quick update from our last few days.

I'll start from the beginning of the weekend...

Most of you know, but my dad is the men's basketball coach for Grace College and the team made it to the NCCAA tourney this year, and with it being in Princeton, IN (about a 5 hr. trip) there's no way we could not go! Long story short, we won Thurs and Fri. to advance to Sat.'s championship game (HOW EXCITING) to have to play Bethel College (of all schools...our conference rival). The weekend was absolutely nerve-wracking. My dad has THREE NCCAA runner-up titles and we were all so sure that this was our year to win it...but, it didn't work out that way and he now has four runner-up titles. Honestly, I don't even want to go back and re-live the events of that night to fill you in...it was just so heart-crushing...but we lost in overtime. We had several chances to win, but we just couldn't quite pull through. Oh well...we still love and are very proud of our Lancers!

So after a very disappointing weekend, we were off to Indy for the MRI. We were already so far south (in Indiana, that is), we just drove to Indy Sun. and stayed the night. We tried our best to try and relax and just have a fun night Sun., but I'm not going to lie...it was difficult. We were our usual nervous selves and those hotel-night-before-MRI's are horrible. And somehow, Claudia always seems to pull an up-all-night before these big days. She went to bed at 1am, woke up at 3am and was up until we left at 8am. CRAZY! And if we hadn't been so stressed and exhausted, we probably would have enjoyed our selves watching Claudia play. She was pretending she was in a jungle or something and we had lions, giraffes, ladybugs and all kinds of animals in our room. Did I mention she has developed quite the imagination lately? She really cracks me up! Anyway, the day of the MRI went pretty smoothly. I think this was the absolute first time ever that they "put her to sleep" without any tears! PTL! And once again, they came and got us before she really woke up so there were almost no tears waking up either! Again, PTL! We sat in the cancer clinic for over 2 hrs. waiting on results, and finally...THE TUMOR IS NOT GROWING!!!! So for the first time that day, we all had the tears flowing!!! With this good news, our dr. wants to go ahead and take her port out. This involves a surgery but the ongoing risk of having it in seems to be taking its toll...and we were quickly reminded of this. Claudia has had a fever since Tues. As I write, its 101.2 degrees. Once again, dr.'s can't figure it out. They thoroughly examined her...nothing. Blood tests...nothing. I've explained it so many times, I'll spare you all from explaining again why this is so scary (because of her port), but we're definitely concerned. So, we'll continue giving her Tylenol, trying to keep her temp down enough to ward off all seizures. Please pray this temp would disappear and life would just be "normal" for a few days!!! (Wait, what does "normal" even mean?!?!)

Also, I do promise to update with more of our latest events like our trip to Missouri for my Grandma's 90th birthday, and so much more...

Until then, we'll just keep rejoicing and praising our God for more good results! Thank you all so much for your continued, faithful prayer...words cannot express our deep gratitude to our many prayer warriors. We love you!

(Some pic.'s from this weekend...)

Waiting for the championship game to begin...

...still waiting (with my sister Jenny)...
...warming up...my dad, chatting with one of the Moore twins...

...and although so disappointed, sooooo proud of our Lancers!

Hanging out the night before the MRI in Indy at Dan Pablo's...I think Claudia ate an entire basket of chips herself, salsa and all!

(We then walked across the street to Barnes and Nobles...what were we thinking taking a 3 yr. old in there?! We took turns following her around, putting the hundreds of books back that she would take off...telling her, "no, we're not buying that book" every other one she touched! Sorry to all those in there trying to get away and read a good book. Nope...definitely not a stress reliever like we thought it may be!)

I couldn't possibly describe our weekend without a picture of Claudia and Christian at the pool...it was definitely the highlight for her. We had a pool at both hotels, and if I had a penny for everytime she asked to "go to the poow", I'd be richer than Trump!!!

She would start out in the pool, then get in the hot tub, then back to the pool, then back to the hot tub...you get the picture. I had the lame excuse of the "ouchy on my tummy" so I just had fun watching Christian follow her back and forth!!!

After the good news at the cancer clinic!! YEAH!!!! Holding her is Nurse Cindy...and believe me, she is the BEST nurse, Claudia is in LOVE with her. To the right is our Dr. Smith...she too, is WONDERFUL!

(BTW...I had an ultrasound yesterday (Wednesday) and everything looks great! Another Praise! However, the little stinker was face down and breech so no luck finding out the sex...maybe next time! But, it was so cute, he/she was sucking his/her thumb and fingers. I've always heard they sometimes do this in utero but have never seen it...sooooo cute! And to think you can still legally abort at this age (or at ANY age for that matter)...oh my, don't get me started! And yes, for all of you asking, I will TRY :) and post a pic. of my ever growing belly!)

Thank you, Lord for all your goodness to us...we know ALL good things come from you! May our attitudes and lives continue to glorify you through it all!