Enjoying ourselves...

...yeah we are! We are at home now, and will be for at least two weeks. Noah is scheduled to be back in Vancouver on June 24 at 10:30 am. Whether he will be ready to go remains to be seen; he went for bloodwork this morning and his Neutrophils were at 0.00. They only found two when they looked at the sample! So basically that means he has 0.00% chance of fighting off any infection while he is here. Hmmm.... maybe he shouldn't have gone to Timmy's with me this morning for breakfast... or to school yesterday... or .... or... sigh. This is one of the hardest things about this part, telling him,"no, you can't do that, it's too risky, etc. " He is generally feeling fine, but he looks very pale, so I was sure he would need a transfusion today. But no, his red blood cells are actually up from Friday, so that is good news! He did go to his friend's house today - their house is WAYYY cleaner than this one at the moment, so it was ok, lol! (and no one was sick there...) He has been eating a bit better - it is almost 10:30 and he is still up, having a snack. Dr. Davis told him he needs to gain at least a kilo while he is here. He is doing ok, but supper time is still a struggle.
We have had some fun here; our church had its church picnic and worship service on Sunday out at Rough Acres Bible Camp. It was so nice to see everyone who was there, eat good food and enjoy RABC, one of my favorite places on earth. I'm sure going to miss it this summer!
Yesterday a very cool thing happened. There are some girls in our school, four sisters who have long beautiful hair, who have been fundraising for us. Yesterday afternoon they cut off their hair and donated the ponytails to the Canadian Cancer Society to be made into wigs. They were able to raise a lot of money (over $1800!!!) plus three flights!!! Thanks Veronica, Gini, Tori and Tessa! If you haven't seen the pictures I posted on Facebook, here is the link; for some reason, blogger won't let me post the actual photos....

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150202042525940.309663.541555939&l=e62ac56445

They let Alyson, Miranda and Noah cut three of the girls' hair; it is so thick, it was quite a lot of work! Poor Miranda had to give up cutting Gini's hair and hand the scissors over to someone else to finish the job, lol! Noah, true to form, decided it would be funny if he showed up to cut Tessa's hair with a huge set of pruning shears! The look on Tessa's face was priceless! What was even more comical was that they had planned to give him nail scissors to cut with! It was all very funny....

The people in Smithers and Telkwa are amazing. We have been overwhelmed by the unbelievable generosity of the community here. On Saturday our good friends Elaine, Stephanie, Maria (actually, we don't know Maria, but she helped anyway - wow, thanks!) Diego, Rhonda and Dorothy held a BBQ fundraiser at the BV Home Centre tool sale. In a few short hours they raised $2000!!! We don't know what to say, except a teary-eyed THANK YOU. We have been rendered speechless, and that is quite a feat, considering who we are talking about here!!
We have decided to put a lot of this money toward a new van. Our 1998 Astro has been a good friend to us, but recently the transmission has been acting up and we were advised by our good friend, who is also our mechanic, that it is time to look for something more reliable, especially because we will likely be driving back and forth from Vancouver a few times this summer. We have decided to buy a used Toyota Sienna. We have been driving it since Friday and it is very nice and should be a good van for a while! Some of the money will be put aside for travel as well (for flights, etc).
The next phase of Noah's treatment is completely different from what has gone before and what will come after. He will need to be admitted to the hospital for 3-5 days out of every 14 this summer. So, basically 4 days on, 10 days off. All summer. And I think, so far, that we can be home or wherever for the 10 days off. As many of you know, Tom is a teacher, so that means our entire family will be able to spend most of the summer together!!! As much as I was unhappy about the delays Noah experienced the last couple of starts, it turns out (again...) that God knows better. Who knew, lol? If he had not had those delays, that phase would have started in May, and we would have had only part of the summer this way. We haven't yet decided how much time we will all spend down south or here. I don't think we can really plan that yet. We do know we would like to go to Camp Goodtimes but that is all. I am so happy... : )