A spring break

Here are a few pictures from our short trip. We had fun despite the rain. Best of all, my parents and sister came along.

On Sunday night, my cousin, Alison, came to visit with her family. Here her son, Eric, challenges Steven to a chess game.



We (I mean they) played lots of games.



We braved the rain for a little exploring. Andrew sounded like the little boy in Up, complaining about his feet hurting, etc.



We found lots of bright, interesting moss and we took lots of pictures of it.



We tracked a moose and luckily never found it.



Here is Kirsten, overcoming the no-tv-at-the-cabin situation. We normally don't need one in that beautiful place, but the rain was incessant!



The sun was up the next morning, but with it came runoff. The river was high and furious and water seemed to be dripping off all the trees and seeping out of the rocks. It's a good thing they have sand bags.



All said, it was a good trip. It was nice to be away from home, the kids loved it. I was even able to forget about the cancer a bit.

No escape

One of the hardest thing about this cancer thing is that I feel like I can't escape it. Even when we aren't at the hospital, when I'm not giving shots or pills, when the home health nurse is long gone, when Steven is at school--somehow all my thoughts come back to cancer.

It isn't because I'm not trying. I am sleeping pretty well. But in every dream, Steven has cancer. I pick up books to read, and every once in a while I can, especially if they talk about cancer. Movies are hard--I just can't sit still long enough. Today I helped the younger kids build and paint a house out of a furniture box. I enjoyed every minute of it, but I think I owe that to my newfound respect for life and how fleeting it can be.

I will keep trying. We just entered spring break in all it's glory here. Steven went to school today for the first time this week--I am glad he did so he can appreciate his time off. His ANC was good on Thursday (although his red blood cells and platelets were pretty low). We won't need labs again until Wednesday and then he's scheduled for another round of chemo Easter weekend, so hopefully we can sneak away for a night or two before then. And if we are lucky, we can sneak away from the cancer thoughts, too.