A dificult post...



My friend's niece Sterling has been diagnosed with a rare, aggressive and fatal form of brain cancer, ETANTR.  She is only 2 years old.  The diagnosis came about 1 1/2 months ago.  Brain surgery was performed about 2 weeks ago and the whole tumor was removed.  However, she started not feeling well again and it was discovered in an MRI that the tumor has grown back and is about 40% the size of the original tumor.  There is virtually no treatment for this disease….. from what I understand the amount of chemo/radiation needed to treat the tumor is too much for a toddler to handle and would almost guarantee permanent brain damage to the child.  The family has decided against the current available treatments and has made the horribly difficult decision to bring their child home, surrounded by family, and make whatever time she has left the best it can possibly be.

I offered to make their family a nice, custom 12x12 scrapbook to help them cherish these special memories forever. I was wondering if any of my scrappy friends would like to help contribute 1 or 2 pages to little Sterling's album.
For my local So Cal friends, I will be working on my pages for Sterling this Saturday at the September crop in Chino (http://tinyurl.com/8t5go6y) so if you would like to contribue, please give them to me by the end of the crop.

I am also going to make some blank inside Thank You cards that the family can use to send to those who have helped their family in some way. 

If you are not attending the crop, or are not local to me and would like to contribute a scrapbook page or card, please leave me a comment here or email me at paleojenn1{at}aol{dot}com.       (replace {at} with @ and {dot} with .)

Having a 2 year old myself, my heart is especially heavy for this family.  Please say a prayer for this precious girl and her family.

You can follow this family's JOURNEY with brain cancer here:

https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/sterlingteamrockstar

https://www.mylifeline.org/sterlingchronicles/?page=myupdates.cfm 

Finally, a blog post!

Well, much has happened since my last post back in May 2011. 

In July, our 5th child (another girl) was born!

Ripley Lynn

8 lbs 12 oz    22"

In August, Wyatt turned 18 months!

And River turned 4!

August also brought the first day of school for the older girls:

Marina started 5th grade

Kelcie started 9th grade!

In October we got into the Halloween spirit:

The absolute sweetest pirate you ever saw!

Our little ladybug's 1st Halloween :)

November:

Ripley's 1st Thanksgiving

December:

Our family Christmas picture

I hope you all had a great holiday season!  We did :)  I can't believe it is 2012!  Wow, where has the time gone??  Next month Kelcie will turn 15!  And Wyatt will turn 2!  The kids are getting so big, which is exciting and makes me sad at the same time :(  I made a few "resolutions" for the new year, and I'm anxious to get working on them!  Hopefully more consistant blogging will be a resolution that sticks. ;)

I've also been doing some scrapbooking and other projects, which I will (hopefully) post soon!

TFL!