Charlotte's Journey

With every special occasion, holiday, season change, or milestone, we remember where we were 3 years, 2 years, and 1 year ago.  We experience a vivid flash back. And for the last 3 years, we thought we were winning.  We believed it. When her June scans revealed her cancer had returned, everything turned upside down. Even though we knew the relapse rates, understood the importance of continuing to monitor her scans every few months, we believed she had beaten it. That her cancer was gone. That she had won. We claimed this victory and thanked God for it every single day. We were ready to spread hope and help others. We were ready for anything else except for what we saw on that scan. She hadn't won. It wasn't over. Brian and I are in agreement that finding out her cancer was back was harder on us then the initial diagnosis. Now we knew more, we saw what she had been through, what we understood and witnessed....it changed everything. And if I'm being honest, we are still tryin

I’m laying here awake trying to decide if I should tip toe off to my comfy bed or fully commit to sleeping in this tent here in our upstairs rec room ....Charlotte’s birthday vision—a backyard camp out. BUT it is 41 degrees here tonight 😆 You all today is our amazing and sweet girls 6th birthday. I will write more tomorrow but for now I just wanted to share this with you all. Our birthday girl had a GREAT day! She is feeling good! She’s been going to school since first day we returned! She is happy and seems carefree and is just THRIVING amid it all. Brian and I just keep trying to look at all of this through her own eyes when we can. God is so good. So today, I brought her lunch and ate with her in her lunchroom. She shared a birthday treat with her class. After school, we played one of her favorite board games as a family (Hatchimal), has a 70s music dance party, opened some gifts, and made her favorite dinner (orange chicken and fried Japanese edamame rice and vegetable zyogas

If you were at LaGuardia Airport in NYC today, you might have seen the blur of a sweet little girl in her cute turban hat running as fast as she possibly could along side of what appeared to be her mom who looked like a cross between a Sherpa and an octopus as I tried to carry all of our stuff at warp speed to see if we could hopefully  get home on the much earlier flight (because our girl got sent home with flying colors from clinic today!) And we did it! We took the last 2 remaining seats on the much earlier flight home! Home sweet sweet home. And the 3 amigos played and laughed and hardly let go the entire night. Thank you Childrens Cancer Partners of the Carolinas for your generosity—they set up and paid for our flights💞 Thank you all so so much for all your love and prayers! Thanks for our village for surrounding us once again with meals and groceries and help with the children whether care or rides or play or gifts or love. You helped get us back here together again. Your TLC

1) Charlotte crushed today and the pain rescues were very effective for her this time! This round of 3F8 is over thank you God! We remain until Monday due to some unlikely effects that can happen post treatment but overall the side effects she is having this week are being managed. The newest one is some internal itching that’s been pretty bothersome but hoping things quell over weekend. 2) Can we just talk about her little hairs growing in? Charlotte is proud of this and asks me to take pictures of her head now so she can zoom in and check out how things are progressing up there😂Hope that gives you all a smile on this Friday because I feel you right here with us and we all need a light heart when possible. Thanks for the love and prayers village❤️🌈 #charlottestrong #charlotterocks Grow hair grow! She asked me today if her hair grows when she’s resting. Then she asked me to take a picture of the back of her head and agreed it has grown today while she needed some sleep😆