A BLESSED BREAK

Well, it was a great run!  In case you didn’t know… Team Medford has an addiction to our National Parks.  We LOVE them;-)  We have a goal of hitting all 59 of them before Lexie leaves our home, which seems to be approaching at ever hastening speeds, so there’s no time like the present!  We’re only about half done so we need to get on it!  Having Eli romp around in the dry desert air was healing to his body and soul!  It was H.O.T!  Like up to 110 degrees hot!  It was awesome!

We started at Death Valley National Park in Nevada…the hottest, driest and lowest place in North America.  There honestly wasn’t much hiking we could do as the temps were just too hot!  We took a trek to the salt flats there and did some car touring instead.  The kids enjoyed tasting the salt (see Emily below)!  Road pic compliments of Lexie, our future National Geographic photographer;-)

 

After that we headed further west to Channel Islands National Park off the coast of California.  We chose to take a 3 hour boat ride and visit Santa Rosa Island.  It was stunning and one of the more secluded national parks we’ve been to.  There’s nothing like a national park being on the ocean!  We enjoyed some hiking, picnicking, playing on the beach and some serious marine-life sightings on the boat to and fro.

Next we headed to Disneyland for lil’ mister’s 6th birthday.  He requested a visit to see Mickey and had he not been persevering though cancer treatment these last 8 months, I would’ve never even considered it.  But, glad we did as he/we had an awesome day!  And yes, we are ‘that’ family that has Disney shirts on…. albeit not matching;)  I can only take so much.

We also had to do a quick tourist stop at the Hollywood sign.  The kids were expecting to stand on it and take selfies so were quite shocked at the distance between them and the infamous sign;-)   You may need your magnifying glass to see it!

Finally we headed down to Tuscon, Arizona to Saguaro National Park.  Home of the Saguaro cactus/cacti/cactuses (we had quite the discussion about the spellings/pronunciations!)!  We had a family cacti ‘arm’ contest going and Emily took it with a 23 arm sighting win!  It was a huge cactus!

 

We also hauled birthday celebrations across the country to celebrate this sweet pea turning 13 and our handsome lil’ guy turning 6!  Wowzers;-)!

Being away allowed us to focus on some super intentional family time, which was GREAT!  We’re very grateful for it;-)  It gave some of us renewed strength to begin treatment again.  For others of us, it allowed more time for anxiety to creep in as the Maintenance Phase date approached.  So…Eli began treatment yesterday.  His remaining protocol will be chemo through his port every 30 days, 5 days each month of steroids, daily ingestion of two types of oral chemo and spinal taps once every three months.  This will end in September 2019, if all goes according to plan.  We’re praying for strength, health and complete healing as sometimes they see kids fall backwards with their counts as they begin this phase.  We have faith that Eli’s counts will stay put, if not increase.  Eli goes back to clinic in two weeks to make sure his counts are reasonable.  If his counts have slipped they’ll reassess the dosages on all the different chemos.

Our friend, Lois, sent this Scripture that she heard on a radio broadcast given by a mother that has a daughter fighting leukemia as well.  I loved it and claimed it too!  “When they drink deadly poison, it will not harm them at all.” Mark 16:18.