Halloween show at school

On Thursday Will and I went to the Halloween show at Beach Manor.

All the kids wore their costumes and there were some really good ones.  Lots of princess fairies, Buzz Lightyears and Spidermans. 

Sophia's costume was definitely recognizable and there was only one other little girl dressed in a Jesse costume, but she was in the 2-yr old class. 

Lilly dressed up like Little Orphan Annie, minus the wig, which I'm going to attempt to return.  It did not look right at all and was more of an auburn color than a bright red.  It's a good thing she actually has red hair. 

Some of the moms I talked to recognized Lilly's understated costume, but for the most part nobody realized who she was supposed to be.

Later that day we were running a few errands and one lady stopped me to tell me that she loved Lilly's costume.  

I love the wolf costume in this picture. His name is Davis and he's in Lilly's class.  Next to him is Olivia, then Lizzie (Lilly's best friend), Lilly and finally Victoria. 

I'll try to post the videos soon....

 

Thanks Aunt Carole

The girls received Halloween cards with Target gift cards in them this week from Aunt Carole. They literally dragged me out the door so they could "spend" their gift cards.

Sophia picked out a Rapunzel doll and Lilly choose a beauty salon kit complete with hair bows, a stylist tool belt and fake makeup.


Lilly loves copying me and there is a straightening iron in her kit which she knew exactly how to use. The blow dryer takes batteries and actually makes noise, but doesn't blow any air.  They've been fixing each other's hair and playing "patient" all week.  I think it's hysterical that they call it patient instead of client or hair salon or anything else.  How cute.

Lilly actually came with me earlier in the week when I got my hair cut. She was on her very best behaviour and sat quietly in the welcome area eating her lunch and looking through the books they have for little kids.   

Off to school...

Just looking cute...

Lilly's turning into quite the artist lately. 

Sophia loves playing with her doll house these days.

 

We are soooo ready for Halloween!

I finally got my van back!

Actually, I got it back yesterday after not having it for a total of 8 days!  I didn't mind driving around in the Explorer, but dealing with the girls struggling to get in and out of the back doors solidified my decision to buy a minivan with power, sliding doors!  Believe me, I didn't need back-up proof at all.  I still love my van. For one thing, it doesn't driving like a truck. 

Seriously, the only thing I will miss about cruising around town in the Explorer is the awesome sun roof!  Instead I think I have a built in luggage rack on my van.  Blah...who needs that with Stow-and-Go storage anyway?  And, it's not like we take a million vacations (I'm seriously counting down the days until we go again - only 792!) Does anyone want to come with us?

Save the Sea

I donated to a charity last year to help "Save the Sea".  The girls are wearing their shirts today since it's going to be a bleary, dreary, muggy, day.  We're supposed to have severe storms this afternoon...

They wanted to be twins and both wear pigtails in their hair too. 

I had to take a photo.  Forgot to wipe the powdered sugar off of Lilly's mouth. 

As you can see from Sophia's hands, we painted their fingernails this morning too.  Lilly has already picked all of hers off.  Sophia is trying to preserve hers until her first Girl Scouts meeting tonight. 

Another Lilly-ism

This morning I saw Lilly picking at her eye. I asked her what she was doing.  She said something was in her eye and she showed me.  I could tell there was a sleepy eye booger in the corner of her eye. 

When she finally got it out. She announced:  Oh, it's just a seed!

Ha ha ha 

Little Hams

The girls asked me to take their picture yesterday before church and again today before school.  Perhaps it's because today and tomorrow are fall picture days at Beach Manor.  Sophia's scheduled day was today and Lilly's scheduled day is tomorrow. 

They are each wearing a cream sweater for their photos so I can place the photos side by side on the mantle.  

Sophia told me that Ms. Sue grabbed Lilly from her classroom when it was Sophia's turn today and they took a sibling photo.  I can't wait to see it because their outfits definitely did not coordinate.  We'll get to see the photos before we buy them. I love that part.


When we had their dance studio photos taken last year, I was required to purchase the day of the photo shoot and didn't get to see any proofs. Oh well...of course they looked great!

Here are some photos from yesterday morning and this morning.  The last two pictures are Lilly from this afternoon. She asked me to take her photo right before we left to pick up Sophia from school.  She ran right out to the sidewalk and posed for me.  What a great smile!

Jungle Golf

We went to play miniature golf on Saturday at the beach. It was Jungle Golf and the girls got a kick out of all the enormous animals scattered throughout the course. We saw a gorilla, an elephant, two rhinos, and a few giraffes. 

Sophia got a hole in one!  It was awesome. She was so proud of herself and I have to toot my own horn.  I got a hole in one - twice!  Will always gets a little bitter when we play mini golf because I always beat him. This time the score was 35 to 33 in my favor.  I chalk it up to my years of practice working at Putters, my aunt and uncle's mini golf course. 

Here's some cute pictures that I took.  

 

Halloween

The girls have settled on their Halloween costumes.

Sophia is going to be Jesse from the Toy Story movies.  We already have Sophia's costume. It's cute...complete with red cowboy boots. 

Lilly is going to be Little Orphan Annie.  I found the perfect dress today.  I had to order a wig and the heart locket from amazon and they should be here next week. 

Sorry, no pictures...no sneak previews....

Let's wipe out blood cancer together

Sophia and I are going to walk in a fundraising walk** on November 5th to support her friend, Abby. Abby is a fighter and is going through some really serious medical treatments right now to help her blood cancer stay in remission.  Click here to meet Abby on our team page and read a little about her amazing strength.

We'll wear red that night (a team ABBY shirt, actually) because we are supporters.  Abby will wear white, the color for survivors. I can't help but think that the girls (who may be a little too young to fully understand what they are participating in) might just think it's similar to Rapunzel's story and the lanterns.

We're raising money for a very important cause, through The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light The Night Walk:  finding better treatments and cures for blood cancers so patients can live better, longer lives. I'm asking you to help by making a tax-deductible contribution!  Please use the link below (or click here) to donate online quickly & securely.  You will receive an email confirmation of your donation as soon as it is made. We thank you in advance for your support which will make a difference in the lives of thousands of patients battling blood cancers.

We really appreciate your generosity!!

If you would like to make a donation or would like more info on the event, please visit http://pages.lightthenight.org/hr/VABeach11/SAlexander

Girl Scouts

I'm officially a Troop Leader of the Girl Scouts.  Sophia is a Daisy Girl Scout (grade Kindergarten and 1st).  We're going to have 12 girls in our Troop and they are all in K this year (and we know all of them).  I worked to get the girls I wanted.  There are 22 others on the "waiting list".  

So far I've been organizing lots and lots of info for the moms and also doing/receiving a lot of training!

It's going to be really fun and I can't wait to get started.  We have our first Troop meeting on the 19th. 

Last weekend (on Sunday) I hosted a Troop Meet & Greet at the AMF bowling alley.  I was able to get free passes for all the girls and even their siblings.  Of course, Lilly was our tag-along.  She won't be able to do everything with us, but I'm hoping she can participate as much as possible.

Some of these names will be familiar, but here's a list of our Daisies...
Sophia
Haley
Addie

Elizabeth

Caroline
Abby
Mia
Allison
Mary Price
Megan
Grace
Maggie

While the cat's away, the mouse...

gets a flat tire.

Will is in California this week. On Sunday night we dropped my minivan off at the Chrysler dealership because it started making a strange squealing sound (it turns out to be a bad shim on the side of the alternator for those of you who understand what that means) and we also had two recall notices about the van to take care of too.  One was on the electronic, sliding door and the other was for the drain tube for the windshield washer fluid.  The verdict was that I won't get my van back until Thursday (tomorrow).  Did I mention that on Friday afternoon I got 4 new tires put on the van and also got oil change?  (not cheap)

In the meantime, I'm driving the Explorer, which Will had to put a new battery in on Sunday when we realized it wouldn't start.  On Tuesday morning when I woke up to take the girls to school, the Explorer had a completely flat tire!  And, the spare was flat too! 

Normally I would have just hopped into one of our other two cars, but Will drove his Diamante to the airport so it wasn't here and neither was the van.

Luckily we have AAA and we were able to get the Explorer towed to the Firestone service center and got two new tires put on in record time!  The girls were only 60 minutes late for school. 

The girls got to ride in the tow truck and thought it was sooooo cool! 

We walked to the local Food Lion grocery store and they picked out a second breakfast (milk and powdered donuts).  I also found some stickers and blank paper in my purse for them use and we had our portable DVD player and movies in the Explorer so they also had that to keep them occupied while we waited for the truck to be done. They were pretty good considering the fact that they kept complaining they didn't have anything to do. 

Fall Festival at the Farmer's Market

We spent Saturday afternoon at the Farmer's Market for their Fall Festival. The girls had a wonderful time. They got to pet a four week old chick (I think it was a baby duck), dance in the center stage to a live band (we all did), milk a fake cow, make their way through a hay bale male, eat cotton candy, make pine cone bird feeders, take a tractor pulled hay ride (we all did), and spend at least 90 minutes in the various bounce houses they had.  WOW!  They were filthy and exhausted by the time we got home.  It was a gorgeous day to boot. 

Hopefully this link will play a slideshow of all the pictures from the day. 

Paws to Read

Yesterday Sophia and I went to the library for their "Paws for Reading" program.  Basically kids between grade K-5th are encouraged to come and read to a therapy dog. There were six registered therapy dogs there yesterday. Lilly stayed home with Will.

Sophia took her school reader and chose a different section of the book for each dog. There is a dog named Pippen in her book so she thought it would be neat to share Pippen's story with the dogs. I think they really enjoyed it too.

She had a GREAT time.  This will definitely become a monthly outing for us.  Maybe Will can take her next time. 

The performers

Here's a few movies starring Sophia and Lilly Alexander:

A pretty blah Somewhere Over the Rainbow:



Halloween Song:



Goofing Off:



Lilly the Ragdoll:

Disney on Ice, Dare to Dream

Sophia and Lilly both had a fantastic first month at school. Sophia received all "green dots" from her teacher which means she was on her very best behavior every day. (smile)

As a reward for a job well done we decided to surprise the girls with tickets to see the Disney on Ice "Dare to Dream" show. We didn't reveal the "reward" until Friday last week, at the end of the month. Our tickets were for Sunday afternoon. The only thing the girls couldn't believe was that they had to wait 2 days to go to see the show. A few days earlier in the week, Sophia saw a tv commercial for the show and instantly knew she wanted to see it so when she saw her ticket she jumped for joy!

We raced home after church so they could change their clothes. Sophia dressed up in her Cinderella dress and Lilly was Belle.

The show itself was AWESOME! We saw three performances...mini versions of Princess Tiana's Princess and the Frog story, Cinderella's story, and for the grand finale, Rapunzel's story. All of us like Rapunzel's story the best.

Click here to see all the photos from the three shows. I ran out of space on my camera SD card and had to delete while we were there or there would have been a lot more.

Even though the venue didn't permit videotaping the performance, I was able to capture a few minutes of Cinderella's performance. Take a look:

The Pirate Birthday Party

Well, I took Lilly to her classmate, Colin's, birthday party yesterday afternoon from 4:30 - 6:30. If you're thinking this is an ODD time to have a b'day party, so did I! Instead of offering any sort of "dinner" food, there was tons of junk (which the kids LOVED, but all the moms silently resented, I think). They had caramel covered popcorn, a treasure chest cake, chocolate covered marshmallows on a stick, chocolate dipped pretzels, and a cotton candy machine! (Ok, I have to admit they also had a veggie platter, but if you were a kid would you want that?)

This was the party that was moved from last weekend due to rain. Well, it rained again all day yesterday just like it has been for a solid week....

The original invitation stated that the party would be at a neighborhood play ground and would have a bounce house. When I got the voicemail that the party was postponed for a week the mom, Christy, also mentioned that the location of the party would be at their apartment instead of the park. So, in my head, that meant an INDOOR party! I was wrong! Most of the party was held outside! The food was inside.

Their yard was a muddy, swampy pit. Lilly and I both ruined our shoes. They did have the bounce house. Rain was soaking through the roof of it and the entire thing looked slimy and wet. In fact, when any kid emerged from the exit, he would literally slip off of it and onto the concrete sidewalk below! A few kids ended up crying because they would land in an akward position. Not to mention that all the kid's clothes were wet too.

Thankfully Lilly didn't want to go in the bounce house...maybe because all the kids at the party were boys! Not a single little girl from her class showed up. There was an 11-yr old girl (Colin's sister), an 18-month old, and another girl that looked slightly older/larger than Lilly, but she was a neighbor and not a girl from Lilly's class.

On the ride home Lilly told me she had fun, but I think she was just excited that she got a goodie bag to bring home to share with Sophia.

Mommy & Lilly @ Chuck E Cheese

Birthday Parties

Last weekend we had three birthday parties to attend on Saturday...all back to back..beginning at noon. We also had a previously planned church cook-out event for the whole family that I was hosting (from 3-6) at a local park. Due to the rain, we moved our cook-out to my friend's house and luckily the third birthday party was postponed to this weekend (Sunday). It's supposed to be a pirate party with a bounce house and treasure hunt and I'm not sure if they'll be able to pull it off because it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow too!

NOON - 2PM: Chuck E. Cheese...for one of Sophia's classmates, Abby. She turned 5.

2:30 - 4:30: Matthew's house....he's in Sophia's class. He tuned 6. It was a reptile petting zoo party. Will took Sophia while I attended the church party with Lilly.

4:30 - 6:30 TOMORROW: Pirate party at Colin's house. He's in Lilly's class. Turning 4. His mom sent home a note to make a donation to a local charity in lieu of a gift. The girls and I went to the Virginia Beach SPCA last week one day after school and made a donation in Colin's name. We fell in love with a Husky puppy while we were there too.

Anyway, back to last weekend's birthday parties.

Abby's mom found out that Lilly would be coming with us to Chuck E. Cheese for the party so she was included in the fun. That was really nice of them. Elizabeth and Sophia ran around together and Lilly, Will and I tagged behind.

This is Abby. She's a very sick little girl. I want to share a two page letter with you that her mom sent home on the first day of school.

Dear Beach Day AM Kindergarten parents,

Our daughter Abby is in your child's kindergarten class. She also has cancer. Abby was diagnosed with Leukemia, specifically B-cell ALL Ph+. She's currently undergoing chemotherapy and has doctors all over the country tracking her medical care due to the rare and especially serious nature of her particular disease. Chemo and other complications with her treatment will keep her out of class fairly often; however, when she feels well enough, she would like to attend school. We want the same thing. Abby is very excited to be at Beach Manor with her friends when she can.

Abby will share a book with her classmates that she wrote about cancer with the help of her Child Life Counselor at the hospital. Below is the text of the book. It is very basic and we hope it answers some questions that your children will have. We understand that children are naturally curious. When a friend of theirs looks different and misses school frequently, they want to know why. The book's text is:

"Hi. I'm Abby. I like the colors purple, pink and green. I also really like princesses. I am a kid just like you. Cancer is small bad cells inside of me. It only makes me sick. You can't catch my cancer. When you get sick, sometimes you have to take medicine to make you feel better. Chemo is medicine that fights cancer. I need chemo to get better. I will be taking it for a long time. Chemo fights the bad cancer cells but also makes my hair fall out. Don't worry, you're not taking chemo so your hair isn't going to fall out. Chemo can also make me tired and sometimes I get sick easily. Even though I have no hair, I can still play and have fun. My port is how I get my chemo medicine. Some days I will be at the hospital for treatment so I won't be at school. I'll be back as soon as I'm well enough. One day I will be cancer free! Then I won't have to take chemo anymore and my hair will grow back."

Abby will be at school when she is feeling well and her immune system can tolerate it. Please take the same precautions for her as you would for others in the class: when your child is sick, please keep them home from school. And just like all kindergarten classrooms hand washing will be encouraged.
** The one request we have is in regards to Chicken Pox. If you believe your child either has or has been exposed to (e.g. sibling) the virus, please notify us or the school immediately. We can then discuss it with Abby's Oncologists for a risk assessment. Chicken Pox exposure for Abby is extremely serious. **

We thank you for your time and consideration. Please feel free to call or email us with any questions at any time. We are extremely open and comfortable with the topic. It is a huge part of our life now, so there is no need to walk on eggshells. Please don't hesitate to reach out with any concerns or questions. We look forward to a great year at Beach Manor with you and yours!

Sincerely,
.....

Page 2

FAQ:

What is Abby's prognosis?
Unknown. Her leukemia is an extremely rare variety. Until very recently, it was highly fatal. Abby did go to Chicago for a Stem Cell Transplant, but while there Abby was put on an experimental drug that appears to be working very well for her. As such, the Oncologists and Transplant Specialists recommended waiting a bit for the bone marrow transplant. The long term efficacy of Abby's experimental medicine is unknown as it has only been used for her type of cancer for about 2 years now, and not all children get this drug.

Where can I learn more about Abby's disease?
Ask us. We're open and will gladly tell you what we know. If you are he googling type, try: Pre B-cell ALL Ph+". The long version of that is: Precursor B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, Philadelphia Chromosome Positive. Our only caution is not to believe everything you read there. Believe us, we're read all of it. Some sites will tell you Abby has no chance, some will tell you Abby is as good as cured. As always, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Wikipedia for "Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia" isn't bad for an opener and toward the bottom, there is a link to "Philadelphia Chromosome" that may be slightly more medically-oriented than you'd like, but is fairly straightforward. "CureSearch.org" is also a very good site.

How did Abby "catch" leukemia?
No one knows how or why some people, especially children, develop cancer. Genetics probably play a role. As a side note, we donated Abby's cord blood to an Oncologist in Europe specifically studying how and why leukemia "turns on" in some kids.

Is it contagious at all?
Nope. Not even a little bit. It would be like catching someone's blue eyes or their blood type. Can't be done.

Is there anything Abby cannot do?
Abby had a port installed, which is a small receptacle under her skin that has a tube running straight to her heart. As such, rugby is not recommended. In all seriousness, she cannot do contact sports. Her energy levels will probably determine what she can and cannot do more than anything else.

Why doesn't Abby have hair? / Will Abby's hair grow back?
Your kids may ask about this - it is our most common child question. Abby's chemo targets, among other things, rapidly dividing cells (like cancer cells). Her follicles, some skin cells and pigmentation fall under this category, too. So it is a normal side effect. When chemo slows down, she may get some hair back. When chemo is complete, she should get it all back.

How long will Abby be on chemo?
God willing, for a total of about 3 years. We say it that way, because the protocol calls for 3 full years of chemo, and we will stay with this experimental protocol as long as it works. Abby is currently in clinical remission. She still has cancer. It is however being managed.

Are you on Caring Bridge?
Yes! Caring Bridge is a medical blog. Go to caringbridge.org and search for Abby Furco if you'd like.

Yep, it's rocked my world as a parent! I can still cry at the drop of a hat when I think about Abby. Sophia and I had a long talk about her and Sophia really didn't ask any questions at all. I just reinforced that she is sick on the inside, but she's taking medicine, etc...

When Sophia found out that Lilly would be coming to the b'day party, she made a comment that Lilly might be scared of Abby (because of her lack of hair, I guess. I waited to see what Sophia would say, but she didn't follow it up with anything).

Abby's not a school a lot. I ask every day... She wasn't there at all this past week because, ironically, Elizabeth's little brother has the chicken pox!

Anyway, the girls had a really good time at the birthday party and I have a feeling that Abby and Sophia are gong to be great friends. That makes me smile.