Day +86

Today's daily photos are brought to you by Molly and Oly (good friends of our family). The sunset is a real sunset over the mountains in Utah and the other picture is Molly getting ready to run her first half marathon. Way to go Molly! Thanks for the cute pictures! 

 Today makes it 115 days away from home for us. I still can not believe we are were we are at this moment in life. Some days it is still unbelievable to me, how quickly our life changed last March. But we are, were we are, so we might as well grin and bear it. Not a lot happened today. We had kind of had a pretty lazy day as I am still feeling like crap with my sinus infection stuff. So we had more of a lazy day up in our room again and I spent some time trying to catch up on laundry. Jack and I even stayed in the back bedroom while Ariauna did her school time today because I just was not feeling great. For lunch today Ariauna wanted nuggets again, this is getting to be one of her favorite meals, but hey if she is going to eat them I am going to let her. We went down to the main kitchens to do lunch and I have been meaning to take a picture of Jerry the house dog, joining us for lunch every day.  He is the cutest thing and anytime you have food, he is right there wanting to be your best friend.

 I ended up laying down and napping with Ariauna and Jaxon today. I am sure the reason I am sick is my lack of sleep, because just like I am doing now, I put the kids to bed and stay up until the wee early hours trying to blog, write thank you notes, etc. It seems as though that is the best and only time I have to myself. I set an alarm to make sure we were up when the kids came home from school because they were doing a Thanksgiving activity downstairs right after school today. So we all headed down to do the activity. Here are the kids working on making a Healthy Snack turkey. This first picture is with some of our friends- Mason from South Dakota, Cocoa from Saudi Arabia, Ari and Molly from New Orleans.

 This next picture is with some more of our friends, Jaxon, Sadie, and Alyssa and Mason from South Dakota.

Here is a cute picture of Ariauna and Molly. We have gotten to know Molly pretty well and the girls just love her to pieces. She is so great with them too! She has spent lots of time hanging out with us by the fire and staying up late with us on the weekends. We definitely consider her a big part of our RMH family!   

Not sure who these next two hams are!  Silly Sadie and Jaxon :-)

Here are each of the kids with their finished product. They had a great time doing it.

Oh and I always feel like I leave Austin out, so here is a picture of how Austin participates in the activities.

It was not long after the afternoon activity that it was time to get ready for dinner. During dinner we met another sweet family, who has the cutest little boy named Niko. While visiting with his mom and his grandma we found out that he too has Fanconi Anemia. He will be undergoing his transplant soon. He is such a cute little guy! 

This makes our number of people we have met with FA seven  (Amanda, Dawson, Caleb, Isaiah, Katie, Tyler, and Niko) these are all such special kids and we are so grateful that we have been able to meet them and their families and join them in their fight against this terrible disease. Remember, the chances of ever meeting another FA child in Utah is slim to none. But because the specialists are here, there are several that come here to get transplanted. We have been blessed knowing each of these kids and their families in ways I can never explain. Here is Austin and his little shadow Isaiah (another little boy with FA). He too is such a cute little kid and for some reason just loves Austin and loves to follow him around.

We ended our night with the traditional Thursday night bingo. Here is Ariauna and Austin playing and trying their best to win.

 

 After dinner we went up and did our normal nightly routine of trying to get Ariauna hooked up to her IV, her feeding tube, get all of her medicines in and try to do it all before Jaxon starts screaming for me to come lay by him. We had a great night and a wonderful day today.

Today I am thankful for all the volunteers who come to the Ronald McDonald House and for the interns that are working here right now. I am so grateful to them for the time and effort they put in to planning and carrying out the fun activities in the house. I am grateful that my kids have something to focus on other than the reason we are here and that they can have things to help them pass the time until we go home. I am anxious and excited to get home and find out what I can do to help others at the Ronald McDonald  House in Salt Lake.