He looks so good!

These are some more pictures from our trip. I forgot our camera the day Grant went to ski. :( So we had to stop on the way up the mountain to buy a disposal camera. So, these pictures aren't great, but they are all we've got of Grant's first ski experience.

Grant went to the clinic again on Monday and got another great report. He had to get accessed, which results in about 90 seconds of pure torture everytime. From the time she opens the package with the noodle in it until he has been stuck is awful. Everyone involved (3 this time) is usually sweating and holding their breath throughout the process. But, it's short! He handles everything else so well. So, we will just continue to prepare ourselves for the painful 90 seconds and then move on. The only problem is that Grant is getting bigger and stronger and holding him when he doesn't want to be held is getting more difficult. I keep telling them that they have to get a fan in there.

Grant gets such a great response when we go to the clinic. Many of his fellow patients were there. The nurses always seem so excited to see him. And Dr. Heym recognizes the cry he hears when Grant is being accessed. It's so encouraging to go and hear ALL of them say how absolutely great he looks. In the words of Dr. Heym, "This is what maintenance is supposed to be like!" He is doing amazing, which we know is the hand of God. We want to be careful to give God the glory for the miracle-worker that He is.

Grant was very excited to show everyone pictures of his ski trip. He colored, did puzzles with Ms. Cathy, watched a movie and had lunch. What's so bad about that?!

We went to storytime at our local library this morning. Grant loves this kind of thing and got to bring some books home with us. However, I was a bit nervous. Right after we got there, a little girl started sneezing and coughing all over her hands and the books. I pulled out the hand sanitizer and gave Grant and Trent repeated "squirts".

On a Trent note, we sit around and laugh at him continuously. He is talking so much, mostly things that family can understand. I stopped at Sonic last night to get some burgers for dinner. Trent was wearing a stocking hat. He had been playing with it - pulling it off and on. When the girl brought our food, she smiled at him and laughed. When she walked away, I turned around to find him with one eye out of his hat and the other covered with a big grin on his face. I said, "Are you being silly with your hat?" He just smiled and said, "I'm cute." I asked what he said to confirm I had heard correctly. He repeated it and I died laughing. He had never said that before. To all of you that tell him that ---Stop! ;)

It's been a while

Well, we've been busy. We got to take a vacation to Pagosa Springs, CO with my family. Grant was ok'd to leave town as long as we got his numbers checked before we left town.

When we went to the clinic, he did so great. He picked which finger he wanted to get poked while we were in the car and he held it up the rest of the way. I guess he didn't want to forget which one it was. We had a plan to try to count to 40 before Maribel got finished squeezing his finger. It was a good plan, except Grant told me he needed to say 'ouch' before he counted. That's exactly what we did, but we only made it to 20. She was fast! No crying! His numbers were "normal" and we were free to go.

We left last Friday night and drove all night to arrive in Pagosa Springs about 6 a.m. on Sat. The boys did great sleeping in the car. Grant was SO excited about going to Colorado. We did a little of everything. We snow skied 2 days. We went snowmobiling and sledding. We got massages. We even played a little racquetball and wallyball. And, of course with my family, we played games every night. :) There were 10 of us that went. We had a blast. I think it snowed everyday, so the snow was great. Grant absolutely loved skiing. I think he wore out his Grandpa and Uncle Keith. He loved riding on the swing (lift) and looked over the front like a puppy dog out a window. He skied with an "edgy-wedgy" on his skis to hold them together. By the end of the day, he was wanting to ski on his own and begging to "go one more time". I'm so glad he liked it. One great thing was, that for the one day that Grant went skiing, I forgot that we were treating leukemia. I guess I just was more worried about him getting down the mountain safely. ;) Or maybe that we were just doing "normal" things. Trent liked being out in the snow and loved wearing his snow boots. But, he had on so much to keep warm that he couldn't get up if he fell. He would just yell "tuuuck" (stuck). The week just flew by. We left Colorado on Thursday night to arrive home early Friday morning to over a foot of snow and some rough roads. Now we are just trying to recover from vacation and get back in the swing of things.