Dad, cont.

Dad will be having surgery early, early Monday morning, at the Salt Lake Regional Medical Center.   The surgery will take at least 6 hours.  They will be doing the same surgery they did 5 years ago, except, hopefully, they won’t have to remove any of his liver.  He doesn’t have much left.  They do have to remove an inch of the bile duct that has the lump in it, and they will do a biopsy to see what it is.  They will also fix his incision from the previous surgery and the hernias that he has.  Dad has a liver infection right now, which is one reason the surgeon feels it’s very important to get him in as soon as possible.  He doesn’t feel well at all.  They’ve given him an antibiotic, and hopefully it will start working soon, so that he will get over the weakness and get his good coloring back.  Please, please, keep him and us in your prayers.  We’re going to need it!

Dad

This post has been a long time in coming.  My nerves have been terrible, what with everything that’s going on in my family right now.  I needed to wait for a somewhat calm moment to be able to write about this.

My Dad started getting sick again a while ago.  They’ve done tests and found a lump in one of his remaining bile ducts inside his liver.  At the time, we were thinking, okay.  A lump.  It could be anything. It could be a stone, it could be food (given that Dad’s anatomy is different after his previous surgery), it could be something else.  We didn’t think it would be cancer, because Dad looks great!  He doesn’t look like he did the last time they found cancer.  So, they did blood tests.  And they found that his cancer markers went up to 80.  (They were at 3 in September, meaning his cancer was completely gone).  The next week they went up more, to 94.  Yet, still, he doesn’t look sick.  The doctors are stumped.  Dad has to go in to see his surgeon that did his last surgery, tonight, and see what can be done.  He will have to have surgery to find out what the lump is.  But, depending on what they find, we will find out if he has to have chemo again.

We think that the biggest reason he’s looking so good, is because he’s taking this nutritional supplement called Reliv.  It sounds like “Snake Oil”, but, we are coming to find that it has helped him immensely!  (That, and of course, the Priesthood blessings he has been given).

Please keep Dad in your prayers!  Prayers are amazing!

Swimming Lessons

The kids had swimming lessons for two weeks,
starting the 4th of June.
They had so much fun!
Christopher had to be in the “box”, which keeps shorter
kids out of the water more.
Yet, he’d keep climbing the rails of the “box”, and the
lifeguard had to keep coming over, tap him on the shoulder,
and tell him to get down.
Christopher told my sister, Charity,
“You have to stay in da box, not in da wateh”.
(Make sure you read that with a Brooklyn accent, because that’s how he talks.)
:)
I found the kids some goggles at Walmart for 75 cents a piece.
They were so excited!
 

 
 And, here’s Mallie watching.  She looks so enthused.

Bear Lake

So, already this summer has been very busy.
I’ve been trying to keep it busy, though, so that the kids don’t get bored.
A couple weeks ago, we went to Bear Lake for a Quilt EZ/Cullumber Family get together.
Here’s some pics of the place we stayed at:

So, this place is for sale.  It’s only $600,000 or so.
Ivon and I thought that we should buy it.  And, if we were buying one,
we might as well buy TWO!  But, since there’s only one for sale,
we are going to have to pass.  :( 
The next day, we went to the lake:
 Mallie had fun with the sand.  I had fun getting it out of her mouth.

The kids loved the boat rides.
Christopher fell asleep under his blanket for a couple hours.

CUTE!
We got nice and sunburned, yet we had a lot of fun!