Evan is Six

My boy has turned six and I really must get the post out before he turns seven. 


The month of August did not go at all according to plan. Before Gavin was diagnosed our family was scheduled to go to Disney World with the Thomas family. They had presented us with an amazing opportunity and we couldn't say no. We should have been there August 10-17. Evan's birthday is on the thirteenth. He was so excited to have his birthday in Florida. When things were canceled the kids really took it very well. I have wonderful understanding kids. There was never any whining or complaining. In fact it was never mentioned again. But after all the build up and let down of Disney, I felt that we had to do something special for Evan this year.


Evan's birthday landed on a Saturday and it turned out it was the weekend before Gavin had his first chemo treatment so, the Thomas's and the Graham's went camping. We had so much fun. We went back to the same place we had camped before and it was just as good. On Saturday we cooked a big breakfast then headed up into the woods. When we had hike there before we found a dried up creek that had some really cool rock formations. Well this time that dry creek was full of water and the rock formations turned out to be a natural water slide. The kids couldn't wait to get into the water. We stayed there for a couple of hours and had our picnic and let the kids swim until they were to cold to do it any more.

McKenna had fun on the slide but, she got cold the soonest and we had to wrap her in a plastic poncho to warm her up.

The cold didn't bother Evan. He went down the slide a lot. He tells me that he likes cold because he was born in a cold state.

Of course Alana didn't go down the slide. She really wanted to. I didn't want to get wet so, no slide for her. She did, however, have a lot of fun throwing rocks into the water and kicking and splashing.


When we got back to camp I surprised Evan with some cupcakes that I brought. I forgot the candles so I put in a match and called it a "camping candle." He was surprised and so excited about the cupcakes. He got one little present with the promise of more at his "real" birthday party later.

It was the perfect way for a six year old boy to spend his birthday.

Fast forward two weeks....

 Evan really wanted to have his birthday at Chuck E Cheese. I told him he could invite two friends and we would have a ton of tokens for everyone. He invited Joseph is best friend from St. Luke's preschool last year and Garth Lee the son of my best friend Brooke. They had so much fun.

Evan had a Transformers themed party and Brooke made his cake. She did an amazing job. I have no such talents. We where there for an hour an a half and with the amount of tokens I bought we could have stayed another hour.

He had a wonderful birthday this year and I am so glad that he is mine. I love my boy. It's hard to believe he is six already. I suppose I will be saying that every year one of my kids gets older, but it is true. Time goes so fast and my babies are getting bigger and bigger. 

Next year when he turns 7 we will (most likely) have just moved to a new city still unpacking our new house and have no new friends, yet. So I really wanted this year to be huge so that when next year is much smaller he will be okay with it. Guess we will just wait and see.

Helping A Friend

The last two months have been a whirlwind of emotion. Upon returning from New Mexico I promptly took a shower and headed to the hospital. I did my best to hold it together when I saw Brooke lying in the hospital bed next to her son, Gavin, but it was inevitable that some tears where shed. I stayed with her until late that Sunday night.

Monday - Gavin is intubated because the tumor was wrapping itself around his esophagus and pushing in on his trachea. It's making it hard for him to breath. (This is what brought him into the ER Saturday night.) He's given an MRI so the surgeon can have a better idea of what she will see when she gets in there. They notice that three nodes in his neck above the tumor are larger than normal. The plan is to remove them also.

Tuesday - They take him at 7:30am. As you can imagine it was not an easy goodbye. They allowed Brooke and Garth to wait in his room in the PICU rather than the official surgery waiting room. Her mother and I joined them as we waited for updates.  It was a long few hours but the updates helped. In the end he came out of surgery without any complications. Good news - They were able to remove 99% of the tumor. Bad news - they had to take 27 nodes and the tumor was a lot bigger than the MRI showed. More bad news - based on the color of the tumor there is no doubt that it's a neuroblastoma, a rare form of pediatric cancer.

Post operation - Gavin spent the next eight days recovering from surgery. All this time was spent in the PICU, which was fine with Garth and Brooke. They are both pharmacists and Garth works in the pediatric pharmacy at this hospital. I think it helps a little when you personally know all the nurses that are caring for your child. There is nothing, however, that can make it easier to see your baby hooked up to machines that are breathing for him, seeing blood and fluids drain out of his chest tube and knowing a kiss from mommy is not going to make the ouch away. Gavin did have an amazing priesthood blessing after surgery. This left everyone in the room feeling very positive about the overall outcome of this trial.

After all the biopsys came back the cancer was officially labeled as a stage 2B neuroblastoma. Gavin will have from two to eight rounds of chemo and will not need radiation. As of today he is on his second round.

Gavin has been incredible throughout this whole ordeal. He is too young to understand what is happening to him and because of that he just wants his mommy. She is the only one he wants, which can get difficult at times. He is handling the chemo really well and has not gotten terribly sick because of it. He is, however, starting to lose his hair and that is hard to watch happen.

Life is going on. We all went camping the weekend before chemo started and tried to forget the troubles of life for a while. It worked and we had an amazing time. The kids went back to school. Garth and Brooke both went back to work (Brooke only works every other weekend). The chemo countdown began.

As always we keep Gavin in our daily prayers and take every moment for the blessing that it is.