Today we watched Elizabeth join her class to walk into JK!! She was so proud in her new dress from Aunt Jenn, her new backpack and sporty new hairdo. She didn't miss a beat heading in to class and reported that it was a lot of fun. Speaking of fun, we had a great week at the cottage. The weather was amazing and the cottage was on a sandy beach on Georgian Bay ~ a little piece of heaven for sure. The kids were awesome and spent the week playing in the sand, swimming and just hanging out. We couldn't have asked for more. I took Elizabeth to Sick Kid's Thursday morning and she had her port removed. The surgery took about an hour and then she recovered there for about 4 hours. She said it was sore over the port site but didn't seem to be in any distress at all and was given some tylenol. She ate and drank very soon after waking up to the nurse's surprise but not mine as she's now woken from anaesthetic 23 times! She walked into the surgery room with me and didn't remember being there before. She thought it was funny when I told her she had been there before when she was littler than Clarke. She also made a joke when getting on the gurney ~ she looked at me and said 'am I going to wake up somewhere else and say "who put me in this room??" in a really funny voice and her eyebrows all raised....it was cute. In recovery after having a ton of food to eat (she'd been NPO for about 18hrs) we went to the playroom and she had a visit from 3 Snowbirds pilots ~ I think she was less impressed than her mother who for some reason had scenes from TopGun going through her mind! We were back up to the cottage around 7 pm and although it was a long day it was a relief to have that step over. It feels more like a finish line to me. She couldn't get the bandages wet so no more swimming for her but she didn't mind too much and never complained. We are soooooo thankful that she has reached this milestone and look forward to many more! September is childhood cancer awareness month and we must pause to remember our friends and the kids we don't even know who have heard that terrible word cancer. My thoughts today went to Adam and Alexis who don't get first days of school because of this horrible disease. We must figure out a way to prevent this disease from taking any more of our kids. Rich and I are both competing in the Muskoka 1/2 Ironman triathlon next weekend (my first in 6 years!) If you'd like to make a donation to POGO please go to www.race4kids.ca and sponsor an athlete (I'm not on there but you can do it through Rich's name). It is also the same weekend as the Terry Fox run which benefits pediatric cancer research so you could donate to that in Elizabeth's honour at your local event. I pray that this is the end of our cancer road and we stay on the survivor road forever. Elizabeth will have bloodwork monthly for a year and will not be officially "cured" for 5 years. Instead of focusing on the 5 years we have learned to take things one day at a time and enjoy every moment given. Thank you SO much for all of your support along this road. Please don't hesitate to drop me an email to say hi or see how we're doing ~ my email is along the sidebar. As much as I fear tempting the whammies by saying this is my last update I feel it is a good time to close. Thank you!
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