Sweet Rayne and siblings pictures

Today’s pictures are the new ones I’ve been promising that Trish sent the other day. I needed to see them so much! It’s so hard to be clear down here when we have a new baby so close to home! The Edmonds duo have been so precious, and they’ve kept us going, but we sure miss our babies.

We live far away from most of our family, but we’re within 2 hours of Trish and Davy, so we usually hold ourselves together by getting to see them a lot. This year we missed so many of Bruce’s baseball games, and we usually make nearly all of them. This year we even missed his world series. Trish has delivered 6 babies at home and we got to be at the first 5, but we missed Raynie’s birth. We got to go home and spend two days with them, but we’re so greedy; we sure wanted more. These are near and dear things that we didn’t expect to miss, but we did.

This year we missed Elena’s birth, and she’s growing like a weed and we miss it. Gretta sent pictures, but I had her send them to the house because I thought we were leaving yesterday. Gretta and Gina and Jeff live so far away, we know that all we can do is chase after them as much as we can, but we count on seeing lots of Trish and Davy and their families; this year we’ve learned that we’re supposed to be counting on God to hold us together. Duh. He is so good to bless us so richly with family and health and happiness. I thank Him for all of our children and their children and for the times that we do get to spend with them.

So, enjoy these pictures with me. This is Sadie, who is 10 holding Summer Rayne. The next one is Sadie and Mason holding Raynie. Mace will be 7 next month. The last picture is Raynie in all her 8 pounds of glory; she’ll be a month old this week. Besides these three, Trish and Rob have 3 more precious kids. How blessed are they! Next week we’ll go home and then the following week I hope we can go to see all these kids and collect some hugs we’ve been missing.

Minor report: I had enough hair to get me through church today because the wind doesn’t blow here to reveal the bald spots. I’m not even sure if there are bald spots, but it is really thin, and I don’t touch it if it’s not necessary. My scalp is so sore. I never expected this sore scalp! If this is the worst side effect I get, I won’t complain. I fully expect this to be the last week of hair; it can’t continue to come out at this rate and keep covering my head. As soon as there are obvious bald spots I’m buzzing it off. I think it’s too sore to play with designs; we’ll just buzz it. It’s an interesting process.

I see the doctor on Tuesday and I’m eager to hear what she says. We have lots of questions to ask her. I really think she won’t have many answers at this point, though. Likely she will be seeing me to make sure I’m not in trouble with the treatments. I’m doing just fine unless something bad happens between now and Tuesday. I feel lots better than I did the last time she saw me because I was battered from the tests at that time. All my biopsies and port insertions have healed, so I’ve only got a sore head, now. I think we just have to give the chemotherapy time to do its job. We’re so thankful to have had great places to stay here in Houston, but it’ll be good to get home and complete the chemo. Home is sweet! God is great and takes care of us wherever we go. PTL!