Visit from Cody & Ashley

Cody and Ashley and their 3 kids came to visit us in Texas! They live in AZ and flew out to see all of us. Kips mom came in from Utah half way through their trip too. It was fun seeing everyone. We won't be able to go anywhere over Christmas because of Jaylie's chemo so this will be the last time we see them for a while. We are so glad they came and had so much fun with them. Cody is my husband, Kip's, twin brother. They are so much alike and are best friends. I get along super well with his wife Ashley. We are a lot alike and have a lot of fun together. Their kids are about the same ages as ours and they have so much fun together too. Can you tell we love them? We are hoping they will move here and the twins practice dentistry together :) Here are some pictures from their visit.

 Lexi and Jaylie had so much fun together.  They were so cute and wanted to be together all the time. They loved doing tricks into the pool.

 All the kids minus Korver in the bath :)

 We did smores in the fire pit one night. Crew's face is so funny here. He is such a funny kid and always is making us laugh.

 

Cutie girls

Eating smores

 Jaylie at radiation.

 Showing me her non tired face

Lexi went to radiation with us everyday and went to chemo with us too. She was so interested in what Jaylie was doing and was so supportive of her, even at age 5. Love these 2 girls!

To make chemo a little more pleasant for the kiddos, they have popsciles, ice cream, snacks, drinks, x box, dvds, coloring stuff, books, you name it, they proabably have it. It is helpful and makes it where she doesn't mind going as much.

Lexi fell asleep on the way home from chemo. It had been a long day of appointments.

Crew and Korver were so funny. They are in their matching jammies that Grandma got them. Love these two!

Krispy Kreme Donuts

Trey, Breklyn, Lexi and Jaylie waiting for the parade on the 4th of July.  We went and got Round Rock donuts that morning and didn't realize there was a parade there. We decided to stay, it was fun for the kids. And yes most of the kids were in the jammies, we didn't know we would be going anywhere else :)

Breklyn and Trey watching a show 

Uncle Cody with Jaylie and Lexi

 Eating at JJ's. They have the best breakfast ever. Their breakfast tacos are to die for, soo good!

 Crew and Korver in their matching shirts :) Ashley and I have really close to the same taste. We had both gotten these shirts and didn't know it. Our furniture is a lot the same too, its weird! The twins married girls who look similar and who are similar. We are both tall and thin and have dark hair and dark eyes :)

 My parents have this fun sign in their yard. Here are the 4 kiddos.

 Ashley, Cody, Korver, Jaylene-Kips mom, the kids, Me, Crew and Kip

Kip and his mom Jaylene eating tacos from The Mighty Cone. They are super good.

These funny guys down on South Congress performed for the crowd. It was interesting and super funny. This big guy on the left reminded us of a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and Will Ferrell.

We got a sitter one night and went down to Mighty Cone and Hop Doddy's (soo good!) and walked around on South Congress. It was fun. They have the best caramel and sea salt shakes. We took these pictures by a wall, its kind of famous now.

 

The kids had a good time with the babysitters. They made these little beds for their animals :)

Lexi and Jaylie opening a gift that came in the mail to her. It was from our friends in our ward in San Antonio. So much fun and cute things in there! Thank you Kizerian's!

Breklyn posing with her new purse Grandma bought her at Sam Moon

 Breklyn waiting by the door for Grandma to finish her bath :) She loves Grandma! She was able to stay for a few more days after Cody and Ashley left.

 Grandma playing with the girls in the play room

Last Day of Radiation

Jaylie's last day of radiation was yesterday!!! We are sooo excited! She wanted to make cookies for the radiation techs and Olivia (the front desk person). So we made them cookies and she made them cards. She did awesome as always when getting her radiation. The techs and nurse had a gift for her when she was done, it was so sweet. They gave her a Hello Kitty wallet with a gift card to the Hello Kitty store. She loved it and was soo excited! It was kind of sad to see her say bye to everyone. She went around and said bye and gave everyone a hug. Earlier before we went to radiation Nana asked her if she was glad its over or if she was going to miss it and she said she was going to miss it. She has gotten so used to going  and playing Hello Kitty songs in the car on the way there with Nana, and then seeing everybody and taking her "rest". She started to really enjoy resting and listening to her songs. Then she would say bye to everyone and so would her Hello Kitty. I think she really will miss the routine of all that and miss all the people there. They were all so wonderful. It was really weird not having to go today, but great too. I will be able to get so much more done I think. We had to go down to the cancer clinic after radiation to do her labs and exam. It went well, the ativan is working :) Her blood results were good. Her hemoglobin was 10.6 and during radiation they have to keep it above 10, so it is a good thing we are all done with radiation. If it would have dropped below 10 then she would have to get a blood transfusion and the nurses say they take a while, so we are glad we didn't have to do that. Her other counts were awesome and she is doing great. We set up all of her appointments she needs in the next few weeks until chemo starts up again. I was thinking we would get a good break, but there is more appointments than I was hoping there would be. We have labs, tests, scans, etc.   Hopefully the next 7 months will go by fast so we can be done with all this.  After chemo we picked up Breklyn and Crew and went to the Hello Kitty store in the mall. Kip met us there too. Jaylie loved everything in there but ended up getting a lunchbox, water bottle and backpack. We told her she could still get a new backpack and lunchbox even though she can't go to Kindergarten. She is really sad about that, she has been looking forward to Kindergarten for a while now. We figured we could get her all the stuff like she was going to go and let her use it at home on the days a teacher comes to the house. It will make it a little more fun for her I think. The stuff she picked out was really cute! Thank you everyone at radiation! After that we went to her favorite restaurant, Chili's. She loves that place, she asks to go there probably everyday:) She loved it and we celebrated with a molten cake which is her favorite dessert. We couldn't be more proud of her. I am still amazed that she got through 6 weeks of radiation and did not even once need anesthesia. Congrats to Jaylie!!!!

Here are some pictures from her last day of radiation.

 This is a picture of the inside of the card she made for the radiation techs. It is a picture of her laying on the table with her tweety mask on (yellow face). The two girl techs are standing by her helping her and she drew the radio on the desk (she loves her music).

 I wanted to get a picture of what she does the second she lays down on the table. She puts her chin right up into place and closes her eyes. I started taking pictures so she opened them. She is amazing!

 Jaylie with the radiation techs. Two of the guys who helped through most of her radiation were not there. One of the guys works at another location sometimes and the other was a student and got transferred somewhere else. We appreciate all of you!!! Thank you for making this a good experience for Jaylie.

 Opening the wallet she got from them.

 She got to take her tweety mask home with her. Whenever someone tells her she looks tired or asks her if she is tired, she opens her eyes really wide like this. I had just asked her if she was tired :) This girl hates to admit she is tired.


Here are some photos I found that I think did not make it onto the blog.

 Breklyn and Jaylie with Nana at one of the radiation appointments.

 The girls love playing doctor and putting their animals through radiation and chemo. Here is Kitty with the radiation marks on her and then below she is getting radiation.

 Eating after chemo one day.

Caring Bridge

It was just brought to my attention that some people were donating money on the CaringBridge website and thought the money was going to us. It goes to CaringBridge to help run the site and what not. If you want to donate to Jaylie's medical fund you can go to teamjaylie.org and do it through that. We are so thankful for all the prayers and support on our behalf. We are blown away at how amazing people have been through all this and how blessed we are. Thank you!


If you want to follow on CaringBridge you can go to http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jaylie. I update this blog a lot more though :)

Jaylie Update

I haven't been able to update because we have had visitors here with us all week and have been staying at my parents guest house on their property. Kip's twin brother and his family came (they have 3 kids around the same ages as ours) and we had so much fun. It was great having them here. Jaylie feels great and has so much energy still, it's pretty amazing. I was worried how she would do all week but she kept up great and had just as much energy as her cousin. They are only 6 days apart and they get along so well. I will put some pictures up when I can.

Jaylie only has 3 days left of radiation!!! I can't believe it! I'm so excited. It will be so nice to be done with this phase of treatment and not have to go everyday. It gets old and tiring. It is also scary to be done with radiation because that means the real heavy duty chemo is right around the corner. I'm scared for that. We have 5 weeks off then the chemo will start and will last about 6 months. She should be done with her treatments around mid February. She will have an MRI done sometime in the beginning of August to check for cancer. We are hopeful that she will be fine and hopefully there will be no signs of cancer. You have to be hopeful and positive in situations like this or it's just too hard. Jaylie is a fighter and has done so amazing through the radiation. If I keep zofran in her right before radiation she is not nauseous, she still has tons of energy, and  skin looks great, you can barely even see the faint red where the radiation was on her spine. We were told it's normal to be red, peeling, blistering, or hurting. Her ears are a little bit sensitive but are not too red. We are so blessed that she has done this well. The radiologist said she is doing great. He said there are a couple other kids they are treating full brain and spine like Jaylie and Jaylie is doing exceptional compared to them. He said to us that when a child does this well through this you just have to sit back and say wow and be thankful. We sure are thankful. We hope that she will do better than the normal through her chemotherapy also. Those 6 months are going to be so hard. I'm not looking forward to them. I wish we could just fast forward time and have it be over. We are just going to try and enjoy these few weeks of no radiation or chemo. We still have to go to the cancer clinic to get her blood checked every week, which means she has to get her port accessed (poked). She hates that so hopefully she will continue to get more used to it because we will have to get her blood checked every week until treatments are all done.  She is getting better about taking her medications. She still hates to do it but she usually doesn't fight it too much anymore.

Kip and I are doing pretty well considering. Some days are hard, some are good. It is a roller coaster all the time. Sometimes the littlest things will set us off whether its seeing a picture, hearing a song, or just our minds thinking about things. One minute we will be fine and then the next we will be balling. The good thing is that we usually don't have hard times at the same time. Kip is great and I am so glad I have him to cry to and with. It helps that Jaylie is doing so well and that she is so happy most of the time. It makes it a little easier to deal with everything knowing she is ok. She is so amazing and we feel honored to be her parents.

Ann Beck Photography

My friend Erin who lives in Dallas works for a photographer, Ann Beck (annbeckphotography.com).  Erin set up a photo shoot for us when Ann came to Austin a couple weeks ago. She was so nice and it was the easiest photo shoot we had ever done. She took photos at Jaylie's chemotherapy and radiation and also did family photos for us. She was great! Thank you Ann and Erin! We will forever treasure these photos. Ann put this video together and it is perfect.  Her daughter wrote and is singing the song, so sweet!

My husband, Kip, played football in college for BYU, one of his team mates, Brady Poppinga, now plays for the Green Bay Packers. We just received a message from them on the teamjaylie.org website that they are doing a football camp in honor of Jaylie. They do a camp every year and use the money to help out children around the world. We feel so honored that they are going to help our little Jaylie this year. We are so touched and so thankful for them and for everyone else who is doing so much for us. You can sign up for the camp through their website.

http://www.poppinga51.com

A huge thank you to the Poppinga family!