Malia is 4 years old today!  We celebrated with a trip to Build A Bear (thank you Elizabeth) and she had a blast.  She made a panda bear and named it "Fluffy" and he hasn't left her side.  He still has to share Malia's embrace with Wendy but that's fine.  As I type this, Malia has fallen asleep on the floor in front of the TV and Wendy is tucked sweetly under her arm and Fluffy is off to the side, a good foot away.  We all know where her loyalty lies.

To celebrate her birthday today, we took a trip to an auto body shop to get a repair estimate.  Yesterday as we were out and about we unfortunately were side swiped by a young driver.   All was fine, nobody was hurt except our faithful Sienna.  It's not too horrible - just a long dent down the sliding door...ugh!  After the body shop we went to Build A Bear and then to Paradise Bakery for a cookie.  Later in the afternoon we baked a cake and I tried to frost it - it looks absolutely horrible but I don't think it will really matter.  I tried to mask its unsightly appearance with some chopped macadamia nuts which helped but not completely; it still looks like a complete mess! 

We had a birthday party for her this past Saturday and she had a great time.  Her cousin, Colin came and stayed with us a few days while his parents were in Hawaii and the two just ran around and giggled all three days with the exception of one fight on the day of the party (they quickly made up).  After that though she was wiped out and for the first few days of this week she was going to bed very early.  In fact on Saturday after the party, she passed out at 7:00 and didn't wake up until 7:00 the next morning...she's a party animal!

Anyway, Malia had her clinic visit at the end of April and all looks great.  It was a full day at PCH because not only did she have her regular clinic visit and chest x-ray but also had to have another hearing test.  She was very congested with a cold at the time so there were some readings that showed some declination from the last test but the technician was fairly confident that it was from the cold.  She doesn't think we need to do another hearing test until her next regularly scheduled test which will be next quarter.  The lab, however, unfortunately ordered the wrong test on Malia's blood sample so we didn't get the AFP number this time around.  My assumption is that it would be in the same range as the test in January which was in  the "normal" range.  Malia's Oncologist was also confident of that especially after looking at her x-rays and felt comfortable with waiting until July's visit as long as we were comfortable...so we'll wait.

It's really starting to heat up here in Arizona and up until a few  days ago it was consistently in the 107 range...kind of early for that which makes me think we'll have a long summer.  The last couple of days however, we've had some odd rain which cools it down but also makes it kinda muggy...something I'm not used to anymore.

Hope you're all having a wonderful May and we'll keep you posted.

Hugs!