Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Celebrate good times... Come on!

It was time to celebrate! We had beaten cancer and after our first great doctors appointmen...t we were going to party, and party we did! My dad planned the whole thing, no one knew where we were going. I love suprises! We were told that we had to be ready on Saturday at 5:45 and we were going to be picked up at our house. We were definatly suprised! We were just sitting in the living room, patiently waiting and the next thing I know I'm staring at a very large Hummer limo sitting in front of our house! It was awesome! Drew and I climbed in to find the my parents, Drews mom, Brad, Lindsey Austin and Kate. It was so much fun to all be able to ride together and have a wine toast to start the celebration and to give thanks to God for being the Great healer. We headed out to Grand Rapids for dinner. It was a suprise to all of us until we pulled up at this BEAUTIFUL old manison which has been converted into a resturant called Mangiamo's. We had a nice secluded room and had an amazing dinner.It was so good to be able to look back and reflect on the last 6 months and talk about what the struggles, high points and amazing people that we are surrounded with who walked with us during this journey. After the great dinner and conversation, he headed back into the limo and headed back to my parents house. We the got into "birthday" mode! We were also going celebrate Drews birthday coming up! We opened gifts, and also  had strawberry shortcake!( a staple in our family since most of us dont like cake) It was a such a great night and a great way to celebrate the ending of one chapter in our lives and moving on to a new one! Thank you SO much dad for all the planning that you put into this AWESOME celebration! We are so blessed to have you as a dad! You are amazing!


You can see Drews head peeking around the curtain when the limo pulled up!


Recaping how shocked we were when the limo pulled up!



Cheers, Yay God!


Group shot

Mangiamo's


Dinner time!

Drew and I

Brad and Lindsey

Austin and Kate

Drew and his Mom

Limo!

Laughing a funny card from Austin and Kate

Opening gifts!

Monday, April 18, 2011

Hallelujah!

We had our first post cancer appointment today with our oncologist. It has been about 3 months since Drew's surgery in Indiana. We were getting pretty anxious about this appointment because the last time that we saw our oncologist, he told us that the chemo hadn't gotten everything and sent us into complete panic mode, so just the thought of going back there was a little anxiety provoking.This appointment was very different than the last. It  all good news. Drew's lab work(his tumor markers) came back perfectly normal. He also had another CT scan which was clean! YAY! It was such a good feeling to have a little closure. The doctor told us that we will have to do it all again in July and October ( both labs a CT scan) for continued follow up, but hopefully after that we will go done to every 6 months then every year. We are looking forward to that time when we don't have to think about when the next appointment is but right now we are just so excited about the big victory of being cancer free!
On another fabulous note, Drew has been rocking another new look. For those of you who haven't seen him in a while, Drew's hair has grown back curly! His hair was PIN straight before chemo and now has some serious curls! He is pretty excited about it but the oncologist says it normally doesn't last. He said is usually lasts about a year, but we will enjoy it while it last! I think he is seriously good looking either way :) We will try to post a picture of it in a little bit!
We are SUPER excited about our next little adventure. We are going to be going on a vacation with 2 great couples to the Dominican Republic in less than 2 weeks. We will be going as a little celebratory "we beat cancer" vaca and lands perfectly over Drew's birthday! We will post pictures when we get back!