Brave, Bald and Beautiful

We had a great weekend. Saturday was Braden's last baseball game and then we went to the baseball party that evening at a pizza place. We didn't win the game, but the boys played really well and the girls always have fun playing with their little girlfriends on the team. Sunday after church, my parents came over and we all just hung out for the afternoon, celebrating Mike and my dad in honor of Father's day of course too. :) Sunday night, my roommate from college and her family drove down from Portland and stayed the night with us. They have three kids and all 7 kids just started playing together immediately. We all just talked and played in the pool and made dinner. It was a little sad because Brooklyn wasn't feeling well on Sunday and slept for most of the afternoon on the couch. When the O'Sullivans got here and all the kids got in the pool, she was so excited to get in too, but after getting all taped up and sunscreened, she didn't feel good and just sat in a chair next to the pool and watched everyone. It just broke our hearts to see her sitting there instead of playing with everyone. She only wanted to eat corn on the cob for dinner and did a great job, but when she had to take her steroid at night, she threw up right after taking it. So, we had quite a bit of corn to clean up then. :) Yuck! It was just a little bit of a problem because we were out of her pills due to the few times we tried different ways to give them to her and she wouldn't take them, and the times she had thrown up and we had to re-do her dose. I talked to our home nurse and she ordered more for us to pick up today. After we got all the kids in bed, it was so nice to just sit up and talk all night. This morning our home nurse came over and took Brooklyn's blood, I went to pick up her steroids from the pharmacy and the rest of the day we all played in the pool. Brooklyn felt so much better today and wanted to play and swim. Before we got in though, I shaved Brooklyn, Braden and Mike's heads. Brooklyn's hair was just falling out faster than you could move and she had some long pieces that just looked bad and she was actually excited to cut it. I think that made it easier for me. If I think about it, I am sad that she is losing her hair from this medicine, but her positive attitude made the whole experience good. Kelly and I tried to get creative and just trim up her bangs and style them but that didn't work, so we just shaved it all. Brian helped give Braden a "mohawk" so he was super excited about that and Mike hasn't had his hair this short since college, but it always looks good on him. Brookie tried to talk the rest of us into shaving our heads, but I don't think I could pull it off as well as they do. :) She had a blast swimming all around the pool with her "woaties", even jumping in off the diving board. It was great to see her having so much fun and feeling better today. She definitely perks up when other people are around and I think it helps her to feel better. When the nurse called with her blood counts tonight, she said her ANC (her ability to fight off infection) went down a lot over the last week, so hopefully it will level off and not drop any lower. If it does, the chemo scheduled for next week will have to be postponed until her counts are back up. I am so thankful that the hair cutting was a positive thing for us and for the fun day in the sun with such good friends.