The last thing on the list has been checked off. Brinley did great with her port removal surgery. When she woke up and saw it was gone, groggy as she was, the biggest smile spread accross her face and her feet started kicking. We didn't have time to do the echocardiogram, we will do it next month. Those of you who have followed this journey for a while will know what I mean when I say that from here on out, a fever will just be a fever!! Break out the tylenol and take care of it! And from the queen of fevers, Brinley, that will be wonderful!! No more ER trips with $250 copays!!



Getting ready for surgery, wearing her tu-tu the nurses gave her on her last chemo day.





Post-op

Leaving the hospital, still pretty groggy.


She's feeling pretty good this morning, I think she will recover pretty quickly. She already asked to have a friend over, I told her she probably should let her body rest a little before we start that. I love that we are done with this. So, so happy.

To the port!! Tomorrow is Brinley's surgery to remove her port. I thought she would be sad, like she was when we pulled her broviac line and she cried like it was a part of her we were taking away. Nope, she is all smiles, because "then I can't get accessed anymore!" Tomorrow is also her first off-treatment check. So she will get a blood test to see her counts and look for cancer cells. She should also get an echocardiogram to make sure she does not have any heart damage from the chemo.

To be honest, today has been a worrisome day for me. There is always a worry when there is a surgery involved, but then I also worry about the cancer. It's not very logical, Brinley is feeling great still. I'm sure everything will go fine, I mean they have been checking for cancer cells for two years now, and haven't seen any yet!!

If you could just give Brin a shout out in your prayers tonight, it would be much appreciated!! Will update tomorrow.


FESTIVAL OF TREES

For those of you who don't live here, Festival of Trees is a HUGE annual fundraiser for Primary Children's Hospital. We had someone in our neighborhood contact us who wanted to do a tree in Brinley's honor this year. It was called "I'm Dreaming". I was beautiful and touching that someone would want to honor her this way. She loved it, and it sold, so someone has it in their house for Christmas this year :) Diehl's and Debbi, we can't thank you enough.


PARK CITY

Here's some of our Park City adventure from the time-share my mom and dad donated to us to celebrate. First let me say exactly what was intended with this little getaway. To enjoy each other's company with not a care in the world. Mission accomplished. The hotel we stayed at was beautiful. We had so much space to just veg...
They had crafts in the game room scheduled that the kids could attend. Taylor even enjoyed them, as you can see.
We arm wrestled, and I was the champion.
For a minute.
Show off.
Poor little Mylee got the stomach flu the second day. Vomited all over at the pool. But really, what's a little stomach bug when you've been dealing with cancer for a couple years. Life goes on. Although you can't look at this little face and not feel bad..
Brinley got pink-eye too. As I was staring a $100 co-pay in the face for quick-care, I decided to call the on-call oncologist to see if they would save us. She did. She called in a scrip and all was well again!

TV. Lots and lots of TV. I have no shame in admitting it. We rented movies day and night and caught up on movies we've missed.
Our ONE DAY out was to go tubing. It was so much fun.


Taylor and I literally watched Hannah Montana and Wizards of Waverly Place until we couldn't keep our eyes open any more. She was in heaven, and I discovered that they are actually pretty funny. Who knew.
Ahhh, the best part. A heated outdoor/indoor pool. Swimming in the snow, you can't capture that on a picture. It was awesome.
Okay, two days out. Our last day we went bowling.
Friday night, our last evening there, we had a surprise party and sat the kids all on the couch. Once we had lured them into thinking mom was going to go off on some mushy ordeal about how blessed we all are, we silly sprayed them! They each got their own can and we started our party off with a silly string war. It lasted all of 4 minutes, maybe less, and then 45 minutes of clean-up. But the memories of mom and dad attacking them with silly string, I think it was worth it. We played WII together and had a great time.


So to summarize, TV, junk food, sleeping until 9, staying up until 1am (SOME of us), swimming, tubing, bowling, games. I'd say our trip was a huge success to celebrate no more chemo. We all loved it. Mom and Dad, thank you for giving us those memories.