5 Years with Madison Lee

To My Sweet Madison Lee,

Happy 5th Birthday my baby girl!

I have truly enjoyed watching you grow & learn over the last 5 years!

I cannot wait to see what the next 5 bring!

We have watched you pass all your milestones with flying colors,

you are amazing and sweet, a true joy to be around!

You care about others, you are fiercly loyal to your friends!

You are smart, and funny, and wacky!

You are a wonderful girl and we love you very much!

Now a look back...

On the day you were born, such a sweet face! You were such a

great baby from the very beginning!

Madison's 1st Birthday, you did NOT like the cake! ;-)

Your 2nd Birthday, at a local park! It was lots of fun with family & friends!

Madison's 3rd Birthday at the Little Gym! It was Scooby Doo Theme!

(And you had that left-over black eye from a shopping cart incident!)

At your 4th Birthday party, we shared a party with your very best friend, Evan!

It was a Halloween Costume party!

Happy 5th Birthday my beautiful girl!

Madison's 5th Birthday Party

Madison's 5th birthday is tomorrow, 10/27! My baby girl will be 5yrs old! Where has the time gone? And who is this magnificent little girl before me?

Our 1st official birthday party in the new house was quite a success! Madison was so excited to show all of her friends her new house & "playground" she couldn't wait for the party to begin! We all had a great time!

Let the WAITING begin

I met with the new surgeon yesterday. She was GREAT! As much as I truly adore my ENT surgeon that did my 1st major surgery, I wish I had this doctor from the beginning. She was cool as a cucumber, not afraid of my massive scar and even more massive history. She was collected and very well educated, she explained things in a way that I completely understood, she even drew pictures! That being said, it would have been nice if my other doctor had sent her all of my medical records BEFORE I arrived so that we would not be wasting her precious time, or mine for that matter. But I guess when you collectively have a TEAM of doctors they can't be bothered with exchanging paper! Seriously, that's another rant for another time though.

Now we will wait. As I have learned, having multiple doctors, means having multiple answers, and having the diagnosis change. This doctor, without reviewing my complete medical records, says her 1st diagnosis is to hold off on surgery at this point. To that you say, but you have cancer!! This I know. But apparently due to the size of these 3 lymph nodes (less than 1cm each), and the massive amount of scar tissue that I obviously have in my neck, she would prefer to wait. We will monitor their size every 6 months. At some point they will have to come out, but not now. When they go back into someones neck for a "reoccurance" (which I kept correcting her b/c mine is NOT a reoccurance!!) they do a procedure called "plucking" so much for crazy medical terminology, it is exactly what it sounds like. They simply go in and pluck out whatever lymph nodes that are diseased, and any others in that same chain of nodes. Well, that is a little more difficult to do if the lymph nodes are less than 1cm in size, and if you have significant scar tissue, they won't be able to see them. So now we wait. I'm not sure what is worse, walking around knowing that there is cancer inside me, or having another surgery? I think I'd rather have the surgery and get it over with. But that is my opinion and my opinion doesn't count for much in this aspect of my life. I am under the control of doctors, I now have 5, 6 if you count my OB/GYN (who just about cried at the sight of my scar, i absolutely adore him!!) The new surgeon said I fit the bill for Pappillary Thyroid Cancer to a T, young woman, mid 20's-early 30's. It also occurs to me that that bill also fits most of my friends!!! I do not wish this disease on anyone, so that I say CHECK YOUR NECK! You know your body better than anybody!! A great resource is www.checkyourneck.com!!

Now my next post probably won't be until after Madison's birthday party this Saturday, a much more FUN topic!!! I can't believe I'm about to have a 5yr old!! (WHO CAN READ!!!!) Yes, I am a proud Mommy!!

I took the easy way out!

The kids have been BEGGING for their halloween pumpkins. But what does a Mommy do with a almost 5 yr old and a 2 yr old, they cannot "carve" pumpkins, nor to they enjoy WATCHING Mommy carve a pumpkin. Last year Madison painted hers, well who wants to let a 2yr old loose with paint, I would have green walls! So this year we took the easy way out! We bought this little kit from Wal-Mart for $3.50, it included the plastic pieces for 4 different pumpkin looks! As Austin would say "TA-DA" here are our pumpkin Kitty & pupkin Puppy! They now live on our front porch! We still have the makings for a pumpkin Piggy and another Doggy!

On a side note, for those of you that are interested. I'm passing along my JCPenney discount for this weekend only!!

Below is a link that will allow you to print a shopping pass to receive 20% off. This is the opportunity for me to share my 20% discount for one day in stores, Sunday, October 18th, and two days online, Sunday, October 18th and Monday, October 19th. This coupon can be used in the store, the internet, or catalog shopping. If you shop in the store, you will need to print the coupon, if you shop via JCP.com, you will have to put in the coupon code when you check out, and if you shop via the catalog you will have to give the customer service representative the coupon code when you call your order in. Happy Shopping!!! The holidays are just around the corner…

http://jcpenneyem.com/a/hBKzXHTAlU$WKB7vGJ-AoBYROfr/coupon-0

And if you are wondering, Home Goods has put out their Christmas decorations!! O.M.G.

Not Me Monday - The Good Version

What if I was good today...What if I was so good that everyone went on their merry way this morning with fresh homemade pumpkin pie bread for breakfast (with a drinkable yogurt for the kids)!What if I put Madison's favorite outfit in her dance bag so she would be excited when it was time to dress for the day!What if I packed clean nap stuff and put it in each child's cubby 1st thing this morning, rather than doing it tonight when there is more time!What if I remembered to bring a new package of pull-ups to school for Austin, and they only had to remind me 1 time!What if I even got to work an extra 10 minutes early!What if I already had dinner planned, all parts of it purchased, and ready to make when I get home! What if I already posted a new post this morning, complete with pictures! In an effort to sometimes seem like I am pulling it off, today I actually DID!!Then I got to work...UGH!!

Gonna be a LONG one!!

First of all I would like to say a big HUGE THANK YOU to Anne for my new header!! LOVE IT!!


And now for our BIG REVEAL!!! It's Extreme Bathtub Makeover - Hoffman Edition!!

BEFORE...SO BLAH

AFTER!!! MOMMA GOT A NEW BIG GIRL TUB!!!

And my little people needed to test it out!!

Can you see the size of that tub??? WHAAA HOOO!!!

I managed to sneak in 2 tubs yesterday!! LOL!! Doesn't take much to make me happy!!

And for those of your who enjoy crafts, I would like to highly suggest you go to Calloway's Nursery and take one of their classes! These things sell for $40-$70 each! But you can take the class and make it yourself for like $25!! If I do say so myself it's a pretty cute centerpiece!! And don't tell anybody, it was SUPER EASY!!

(And yes those are REAL pumpkins, even the funky grey one!)

HAPPY MONDAY!!

Well...

I'm not really sure how to start this post. I hate to be Debbie Downer and all. But we found out yesterday that my cancer is not gone. This is not "new", this is not a 2nd round, this is some leftover that was missed in the 1st surgery. A month or so ago I went for a ultrasound of my neck because, for those of you that have seen me, I still carry a lot of fluid under my chin/neck area. We did the ultrasound to see if they could tell why. In that ultrasound they discovered 2 lymph nodes that looked "suspicious". There's that dam word again. So they sent me to a specialist to get a ultrasound-guided biopsy, not fun. Yesterday, Jeremy & I met with my endocrinologist to go over the results. What they discovered was more tumor cells in 3 lymph nodes in my right neck. Now on to what I am viewing as the positive part. #1 - There is surgery involved, but never again will it be as big a surgery as the 1st. This one is called a micro-surgery, with a special surgeon. #2 - They can use my last incision, but the new one will be MUCH smaller! #3 - Micro-surgery results in only 1 night of hospital stay for observation!! #4 - There will be more radioactive iodine, but this time my new endo says NO to the locking me in a hospital room making me crazy, but more check in to a hotel. This time I will not have to spend 2 weeks off of my thyroid meds, which was really what made me nuts, but I will have some thyroglobulin shots (which will cost my insurance company a fortune but I do NOT care!) then I will have the RAI (radioactive iodine) and go hide out in a hotel for 5-7 days. I will have to be on that dreadfully AWFUL low-iodine diet again, but that is just par for the course.

I'm not really upset. At this point I'm not really sure WHAT I AM. I'm viewing this as leftover from the 1st surgery, NOT a reoccurance. That is helping. I will update as more information is given. I go to see the new surgeon on the 20th to get my PLAN.

WHEW!

We made it, we are still breathing, and everything is MOVED! Things are beginning to take shape at the new house! We are waiting on internet installation, which has been a royal PAIN! Let me tell you about Grande Communication, apparently we have moved to the black hole of internet where Grande is the ONLY company that services our neighborhood. So far I am less than impressed! More on that later I am sure.

But on to bigger and more FUN things! I have been a busy little bee for the last 5 days! Kitchen = DONE, kids bath = DONE, living room/master/kids rooms = in progress! LOL!! I've begun hanging pictures which always makes things more FUN! But now I am quickly realizing that bigger house means MORE stuff is "NEEDED"!! LOL!! I find that all my things that FILLED the old house to the brim, now merely scatter around the new house! But I'm working it! I've hung some pictures (if you've been to my house you know that I LOVE pictures!!) we've been to IKEA, that was dangerous! Madison needs shelves, desperately, we took advantage of all the built-ins she had at the old house, now it's very clear that she has too many "babies" and more crap than 1 kid needs! Austin's room is taking shape nicely, if you can manuever around all the cars/balls/toys to do anything in there! He's really enjoying the new house! We took this moment to transition Austin into the "big boy bed" again and he took to that like a champ! He goes right down every night about 830 with no issues (KNOCK ON WOOD!!) They played on the new "playground" all morning Saturday, it was great! Madison is scared at night and doesn't want to sleep in her bed! UGH!! So we're working on that! So far we are truly LOVING the new house! The drive in to work today for the 1st time, while long, was not too bad!

House-warming party will be coming soon, probably early November, by the time we get settled!

Happy Monday!