Life as a Leach

After months of cleaning and selling household items, my grandmother's house is for sale.  While we are thankful to still have her with us, she can no longer live by herself.  It was time to sell it, but that doesn't make saying goodbye any easier. Next to my own house, I spent most of my time at "Mommom's House."  I stayed there on inservice days when my mom had to work.  My sick days were usually spent there.  When my parents went somewhere on a date, I went to Mommom's.  I loved every second I spent there.  I have SO many memories in that house, and I thought I might share a few with you. The tree has long-since been cut down, but a huge pine tree used to be here.  You can see the stump in the ground.  It was the perfect climbing tree, and I would spend hours in it.  I had "rooms," would make up stories, and would read books in it.  It was the best! This stoop was the location of so many mud pie concoctions!  S...

I apologize for the lack of posting.  But...no news is good news in the medically fragile world!  Abby has been doing SO well and we are thankful for the many improvements to her health.  She had a touch of pneumonia in the beginning of February and stayed at home!  This is huge because pneumonia can be a beast for diseased lungs.  She did her breathing treatments like a champ and hung in there just fine.  The last few weeks, her school has been pretty germy.  We kept her out for a week and a half to protect her while the flu made its rounds.  Everything is looking much better now though, so she happily went back on Tuesday.  While she is the one of my kids who I could easily home school, she is also the one of my two who simply loves being around people! Today is Rare Disease Day, and I wanted to share what I have been posting on Facebook with you all here. Cerebrocostomandibular Syndrome, Abby’s primary diagnosis, is extremely rare. T...

I am a little late on this and had hoped to have this written for January 1st, but....at least it's still January!  2018 was such a time of relief and respite for our family.  After a very challenging 2017 that left us wondering if 2018 would be Abby's last year with us, she made outstanding improvement and is the healthiest she has been in quite a while.  We are so very thankful and the valleys we have experienced have caused us to be even more thankful for the mountain tops! January started with the promise of a new year and the hope that 2018 would be better.  Santa had brought us tickets to see Shrek the Musical at a dinner theater, and we were able to enjoy the rare occasion of taking Abby out of the house (armed with Lysol wipes, of course!)  We celebrated Caleb's 11th birthday with pizza and a movie with friends and he got tickets to The Spy Museum and to see Newsies in March.  Matt and Caleb thoroughly enjoyed the Spy Museum when they went later...