Transplant Today!!!

Rob's dad is having his stem-cell transplant today, so keep him in your prayers, and keep your fingers crossed. He's just been through 5 days of chemo, a full-body radiation, and now he's on just about every medication possible to prevent infection and organ failure. Around noon he'll receive his new stem cells through infusion in his central line. It's a rough road ahead (not that it hasn't been a rough road for the past year), and they are pretty apprehensive, but optimistic. It takes between 4-6 weeks for the stem cells to engraft in his bone marrow, and start making new blood. It's a really scary process, but he's got a great team of doctors and nurses caring for him. Rob has been able to spend quite a bit of time in the hospital with him this last week, and will be with him a lot over the next several weeks. His sister Tara is there almost every day too, and sister Sena is coming in for the weekend. Grandma stays with him day and night.

We love you Grandpa- you are constantly in our prayers!

Jump...Jump...jumP

Abby our Jumpin' Girl
My mom made this baby jumper, patterned after one that her mom created. I think we have 4 of them that get passed around our family. They are awesome, and our babies jump like crazy in them. I've put our babies in one right at 3 months old, when they are strong enough to hold their head up really well. It's amazing what they can do while so young.I had book club at my house the other night (it was really fun! Thanks to all my friends that came!). I put Abby in the jumper, and boy did she put on a show. We all gathered around and watched her jump for 45 minutes! Some of them were even taking pictures and video of her. I promised I would post a video of her jumping, and show how it's rigged up.

Sometimes our whole family gathers around and just watches her jump, and jump, and jump. We love it, and so does she!

This video is when Abby was first getting the hang of it. It took a few days, but she figured it out. Nathan and Sarah were pros immediately, while Matthew never figured out how to jump, but liked hanging out in the jumper.

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, How Does Your Garden Grow?

We were really late getting a garden in this year, what with just moving in, having a baby, and major work to do on the house and yard. We felt like frontiersmen, cutting a farm out of the new frontier. I almost didn't even bother with a garden, because we were so late, but I glad we did it! This is our garden about a month ago.

Every day I bring in an armload like this. I've got zucchini, crookneck , and straight neck galore. My cucumbers are producing great, and so are my peppers, eggplant and basil. My weeds are growing even better.

I told the kids they'd better just learn to like zucchini, because we were going to be eating it for dinner every night. When the kids ask what's for dinner, Rob usually reminds them, "zucchini." I love it, but the kids and Rob don't. I need more creative ways to serve zucchini and summer squash. HELP! I boil it, pan fry it, make bread and brownies... Tonight I shredded some and put it in spaghetti sauce; they didn't even notice:)!

I'm not sure why I planted 8 eggplants. I love eggplant, but 8 is a little over-the-top. We had yummy eggplant parmigiana tonight. Any eggplant ideas?! Anybody want some eggplant or squash?!

I picked these beautiful blackberries at our farm today. YUM! They are huge!

We have been salivating while patiently watching our corn grow. The other day the kids picked a few ears. Some of it was too young, but some was just about there. We ate it anyway. It makes me giddy! Hooray, we just picked our first tomatoes the other day.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!!!

Nathan is so silly. He made sure that I would post this picture.

Matthew has to copy everything his brother does. I'm not sure if they're appeasing the corn gods or what.

Yeah for gardens! I was so disappointed at first, when the bugs ate all my beans, pumpkins and winter squash that came up. I thought everything was going to die, but luckily we had enough pull through. Now I have a fall crop of peas growing, along with spinach, radishes, carrots, beets, swiss chard, beans, lettuce and cabbage. I love that we have space for a big garden, especially since I don't have my dad around this year to grow everything for me. As the shirt my sis-in-law made says, "self-reliance rocks!"

Whew!!! My Pictures

Our hard drive crashed a few weeks ago. I had all our business, pictures, and documents backed up on an external hard drive, but I can't get it to work either. We had been talking about getting a new computer soon, so this just sped it up. Rob built us a new computer, installed our old hard drive and was able to get our pictures and docs off of it. Whew! What a relief. I was so worried that I had lost all those pictures.

I just opened up some random files and chose a few pictures that I am so glad I didn't lose.

Sarah and Nathan

Nathan

Sarah

Nathan and Matthew

Matthew with Grandma Z.

Thanks lievert!

Grandma's Birthday Ride

A few weeks ago, we celebrated Rob's mom's birthday. We had the normal cake and ice cream...

the kids played with cousins... Tara snuggled Abby... We all laughed as we watched the kids play games...

then came the unexpected!! Friends of the family, Dennis and Gail (and most of their kids) had come for the party. Gail had decided that Shirley (Rob's mom) should do something wild and crazy to celebrate her birthday- like ride a motorcycle!!! Yes, Rob's mom that hates anything fast, crazy, loud or fun- for example, when they went to Magic Mountain (Six Flags), she sat in the car and read a book the entire time, rather than ride on rides. At Disneyland, I only saw her ride on Pirates, and we forced her on Soaring over CA. Now Gail doesn't take no for an answer, so before she knew it, Shirley was decked out in Gail's helmet and leathers (and even her socks and shoes- she didn't want Shirley out of her sight for even a second to get her own shoes.)

As we walked out of the house, I asked Shirley if she was nervous. She said, "I'm not nervous, I just think this is silly." Silly or not, we had a great time watching it! In this picture, you can see how pleased Gail is.YIPPEEEE, off they go.

We all laughed and laughed. Thanks for the great memories Gail and Dennis.

Of course I had to have a ride on Dennis' Yamaha 650 as well. I'm not a motorcycle person at all, but I have to say it was pretty fun.

I think Grandpa got a pretty good kick out of it too. I'm sure he'd never imagined that he'd see his wife do anything crazy like this. Happy Birthday Grandma!Update on Grandpa:

Rob's dad is doing really well. He's in remission from his leukemia and awaiting a transplant. They were never able to find a bone marrow match for him, but they were able to find two matches of cord blood, so they are doing a stem-cell transplant using cord blood. I guess it's from blood banked from umbilical cords. The doctor is really pleased and optimistic. They are awaiting the cord blood to arrive from Slovakia and Australia (crazy huh?!). When they get here, he will be admitted to the hospital and given another round of chemo and radiation before beginning the transplant. He'll then have to be in the hospital for 6 to 8 weeks, and then will have to stay within 15 minutes of the hospital for another 100 days. The doctor is giving him a 40% chance of success. There is a huge risk of infection, rejection, and graft vs. host disease, so it's pretty scary. Hopefully there is another miracle out there for him. It's amazing he is still around for this procedure. It's been a whole year now since he was diagnosed with AML, and the doctors didn't even think he would make it through the first round of chemo, let alone make it a whole year. He is one tough cookie. Keep him in your prayers.

My Failed Attempt at Cute Pictures

I really wanted to take pictures of all my kids together in their Sunday best. Instead, this is what I got:
Oh no! Not the sun in Sarah's eyes. The boys and Abby look cute.
Stop forcing me to have my picture taken Mom, it's torture- pure pain.

Not only is this 1 minute of picture taking painful, but also terribly boring.

(Sigh!)

Cherry Harvest 2009

Life is just a bowl of cherries.

What does that really mean anyway?!
Back in mid-July, we made our yearly trek to Rob's parent's place in Oregon for the cherry harvest. They have about 3,000 cherry trees on about 16 acres. Yep, it's a bit ta-doo. There's a lot of cherry orchards in their little town and surrounding area, so every year, the harvest is a big deal. We usually have about 15-30 pickers, and our job is to count the number of buckets they each pick, dump the buckets, and get them to the co-op. Ok, so my job really is to watch the kids... This year was sad/different/frustrating. Rob's parents weren't there, as his dad is still undergoing treatment in Utah for his leukemia. We sure missed having Grandma and Grandpa there, and it was hard for them not to be there too!

Since the cousins that are usually there for my kids to play with, weren't there at the same time as us this year, we picked up my sister Linda's kids in Idaho and took them with us. Thanks Linda, for letting us borrow your kids.

Sarah and Emma loved playing together (and eating cherries together). They even wanted their hair done the same every day.

Sarah, Matthew and Emma checking out the cherry picking.Nathan and Logan made up games, rode bikes and played and played and played, oh, and ate cherries too.Every year, we play at the castle park in La Grande, and the kids love it. Rob even took pictures so he can use it for ideas for new play equipment to build for our house:)

My kids can't get enough of the tire swing, and anything that takes them around and around and around. They certainly didn't get that from their Daddy, he'd have lost his cookies by now.







One day, the pickers were so slow that Rob decided to get up on a ladder too.


Rob's aunt Jan and uncle Ron came up to help with the harvest. Jan decided to pick with Rob. These yellow/red cherries are Royal Annes, and are sold for marchino cherries. They harvested around 40,000 pounds of them this year.It seems that everyone had a bumper crop of cherries this year. That's good for them, but terrible for the cherry growers in Oregon, who are the last cherries to be picked. The market was so flooded with cherries this year, the field man wouldn't even let them pick their fresh fruit cherries this year (the dark red/purple ones). We have a hard time believing that no one in the world needs cherries right now! Anyway, they had to just leave the cherries to rot on the trees because they couldn't find a market for them. How awful! That's probably another 40K pounds of cherries! Rob picked a bunch to bring back to Utah (5 coolers full!). We made cherry jelly, frozen cherries, and cherry fruit leather. We gave a bunch away too.Yum! Isn't it pretty?!

It's so beautiful up there!