Ouch

Charlotte's ANC count was still not high enough to start but it's at least starting to climb, it was at 0.30 and it needs to be 0.75 to start.  We are scheduled in for next Friday at 9:30am.  She'll have to fast that morning - 9:30 is the latest start we have ever had to do with fasting - not looking forward to trying to distract her from food and drink for that long - hoping it's not a scorcher like it's been.

We have been enjoying the sunny weather and trying not to overheat!  The past couple days we have all been a bit irritable at times, a combination of being sick for Charlotte and the heat and constraints of the bubble for the rest of us. 

Wednesday we went up to Belcarra Park for a dinner picnic.  Charlotte is all about the picnic these days!  We had a lovely meal and a little playtime in the park.

Nathan is everywhere.  I need to find him some knee pads as he is managing to scratch up his legs pretty good with his adventuring!  Here is my little daredevil climbing a slide....  Yep - my 9 month old - climbing slides!

After the picnic we did a little driving to explore beautiful Belcarra as we weren't quite ready to take our babies back home to the (hot) bubble......

Unfortunately this happened - ouch!

We are all okay (or seem it so far).  The kids were pretty scared at first but were able to be calmed down after a couple minutes.  Hopefully it won't be too much trouble to get everything sorted out.  Our car will be in the shop for at least a couple weeks.  We have already been given a rental car, and tomorrow we'll hit costco to replace our car seats.

We have a couple fun things planned over the next week to help us get through another week in the bubble.  We will try to hit Buntzen one day to cool off a bit as well (literally and figuratively).  Hope everyone is getting to enjoy the beautiful weather!

PS - big thanks to Scott Rickard for helping us out with clearing out and trimming of some of the trees in our front yard!

Anniversary (and update)

Charlotte's ANC was less then 0.1, basically as low as it can go, so Charlotte is not ready for the next phase yet.  Right now we are scheduled to start next Friday, but I'm guessing she won't be a go then either.  While she's been pretty good, she hasn't been quite herself, cranky and nausea spells.  Similar to where she was at just over a month ago. 

We are thankful for a bit of a delay with this gorgeous weather.  And, it's our 5 year wedding anniversary today - so we will be able to go out for dinner once the kids are in bed - a bit better then the dinner we were planning to have in Charlotte's hospital room!

Yep - 5 years!  We were one of those couples who married on 777 - July 7, 2007.

In 5 years we have gone from this....

 To this.

Stefan always hits it out of the park with anniversary presents.  I don't how he does it.  The 5 year theme is wood - I woke up to this lovely basket! 

 My favorite items were the wood picture frame with our kiddies and the beautiful bracelet!

Happy 5 years to the best hubbie ever!

Canada Day Update

Happy Canada Day!  We got out of the house and went to the Port Moody Firefighters pancake breakfast and spent an hour at Rocky Point Park to hit up the petting zoo.  Charlotte has no immune system right now - but since it was all outside - we ventured out!

We finished up the consolidation phase on Wednesday.  We are scheduled to start the interim maintenance phase on Friday but this will be count dependent again.  Her platelets have to be 75 and her ANC has to be 0.75.  Since we were delayed an extra 2 weeks at the midway point of this last phase - I have low expectations that we will actually start on Friday.  We will be getting blood work done on Thursday and will know that afternoon.  This next phase is roughly 2 months, with 2-3 night overnight hospital visits every 2 weeks.  She'll be getting a new chemo drug called High Dose Methotrexate (along with a few others) and we will be staying in the hospital until it's out of her system (typically 2 nights but could be a bit longer).  I'll get more info on the first day of the phase on the side effects, what to expect, etc.  I'll share once we know more.

Some pics from today....