Heat Wave!

So things have been going rather swimmingly over here at Old McDonald's House.
Even though Sam isn't able to go swimming....(that's a little cancer humor for ya...)

And man has it been hot! So there's been a little of this:

 Some silliness in the art room:

Thanks to the Tatelli family for this awesome t-shirt

A lot of napping...

David came home for just two nights between sessions at OSRUI. All of the kids were overjoyed to be together. David commented to me, "I really like it here (at Ronald McDonald)" -- and then he quickly clarified, "I mean, I don't like WHY we are here. But it's really nice here!"

Yep, that kinda sums it all up for all of us. We are very much making the best of a difficult situation. Luckily, Sam is feeling well. The side effects of these chemos have been minimal so far, and we are just enjoying every day as much as we can. Sam has regular checkups in the hospital clinic and receives daily medicines in addition to the oral chemo he's taking in order to maintain his health and well-being. So far...so good.

David has since returned to OSRUI to finish out his summer there. I think we're all jealous! (Well, maybe not on these super hot days...)

We're even hanging things up on the wall and making our room feel as homey as possible.

This arrived from the Cook family and we are totally in love with it! Thank you!

Last year we embarked on a couple of projects to collect things for both the HOT Unit and the MACC Fund Clinic. Since we've arrived here at Old McDonald's House, we've done the same thing here. (We started by sharing this out on Facebook, but thought we'd share it with those of you who are blog-readers-only!)

We noticed that there are movies to borrow but their collection was relatively out of date. Solly is in love with the playroom and noticed quickly that while there was a train table and a lot of tracks, there weren't any trains to zoom around! So we put together a wish list on Amazon with those two things in mind. We have been overjoyed at the response and we are so grateful to all of you so far who have helped us out and allowed us to feel like we are making a difference even as we are the recipients of such generosity within the House. The Wish List is here at Amazon.

Here's one of the deliveries:

 And Solly had to help test out the trains right away:

And that's where we are. We have to wait out the whole cycle to see how it's working, but we are starting some of the process for the transplant in a VERY tentative way, hoping that the results are moving in the right direction. But truthfully, we won't know until we know. While that's totally frustrating and anxiety-producing, there's so little that we can do beyond keeping everyone happy and healthy...and so we wait and hope and zoom trains and watch movies and draw pictures and swing on the swings and read books and....pray.