September is Thyroid Cancer Awareness month

As you now know (if you read my previous entries, that is), my sister has thyroid cancer. She is currently in isolation in her home after receiving her RAI (radioactive iodine) pill on this past Wednesday. Please read the press release below and BE AWARE - a quick "neck check" at your next dr. visit wouldn't hurt!

Please continue to pray for my sister, Rebecca, and her family. Thanks!!!

PRESS RELEASE

ThyCa Invites You To Help Raise Awareness for Thyroid Cancer
Awareness Month -
ThyCa Volunteers Urge Everyone To Ask for a Neck Check for Early
Detection

Free Downloadable Tools and Tips Available at www.thyca.org

Thyroid cancer is one of the few cancers that has increased in
incidence over the past several years. It will be diagnosed in a new
record total of 33,550 people in the United States in 2007.

This is one of many reasons why ThyCa: Thyroid Cancer Survivors’
Association, Inc. sponsors Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month.

September will highlight the year-round activities of ThyCa
volunteers to:

• Increase thyroid cancer education;

• Raise awareness of the importance of early detection, treatment,
and lifelong monitoring; and

• Inform the public about ThyCa’s free information, resources, and
support.

• ThyCa also seeks to raise awareness of the need for more thyroid
cancer research.

ThyCa encourages everyone to ask for a neck check the next time they
visit their doctor. Signs to discuss with the physician include a
lump or fullness in the neck, lymph node swelling, difficulty
breathing or swallowing, or voice changes. A neck check can be done
quickly. Most thyroid cancer is treatable if found early, but some
types are aggressive and difficult to treat.

ThyCa's web site has a section titled Raise Awareness
http://www.thyca.org/awareness.htm
It has a radio public service announcement, plus numerous
downloadable materials. Among these are flyers entitled, “Find It
Early” (http://www.thyca.org/findearly.pdf) and “Know the
Signs” (http://www.thyca.org/knowsigns.pdf), a fact sheet titled
"About Thyroid Cancer” (http://www.thyca.org/AboutThyroidCancer.pdf),
and several additional publications.

Free wallet cards and free awareness brochures featuring actor and
thyroid cancer survivor, Catherine Bell, co-star of the hit TV series
J.A.G., are also available by mail.

ThyCa invites everyone interested to help with thyroid cancer
awareness efforts in their communities. Among the activities and
events during September:

• In Pennsylvania, on Saturday, September 8, from 8:30 a.m. to 4
p.m., the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and ThyCa are
sponsoring the Pittsburgh Thyroid Cancer Seminar, with numerous
physician speakers during the day.

• In Maryland, on Saturday, September 15, from 10:30 a.m. to noon,
Leonard Wartofsky, M.D., thyroid cancer specialist and past president
of the American Thyroid Association and The Endocrine Society, will
speak and answer questions at the monthly meeting of the ThyCa
Washington, DC, Thyroid Cancer Support Group.

• In Indiana, a volunteer is working with her surgeon on an awareness
campaign using the literature and materials from ThyCa.

• In Michigan, a volunteer plans to place an article each week in
September in the weekly employee newsletter at her workplace.

• In New Jersey, a corporate nurse will give a presentation and
distribute thyroid cancer awareness brochures and wallet cards to the
company’s more than 400 employees.

• Local support group meetings will bring thyroid cancer survivors
and caregivers together in person in September, as well as every
month, around the United States and in Costa Rica and Philippines.

• Survivors and caregivers around the world are wearing and giving
awareness wristbands and pins and giving awareness brochures and
flyers to their friends and relatives.

The web site www.thyca.org has more than 600 pages of information
about all types of thyroid cancer, diagnosis, treatment, research,
clinical trials, and questions to ask your doctor. It also has
numerous downloadable publications plus details about local support
groups, e-mail support groups, a calendar of coming events, the Rally
for Research, and the 10th International Thyroid Cancer Survivors’
Conference, to be held this year on October 19-21, 2007, near San
Francisco, California.

For information and free materials about thyroid cancer, ThyCa's free
support services, and the conference, e-mail to thyca@thyca.org, call
toll free 1-877-588-7904, fax to 1-630-604-6078, write to PO Box
1545, New York, NY 10159-1545, or visit www.thyca.org.

###

Help spread the word…
- September is Thyroid Cancer Awareness Month
- San Francisco, California, October 19-21, 2007—The 10th
International Thyroid Cancer Survivors' Conference
- Free year-round support services, awareness materials, and education
- Visit www.thyca.org for details

###

Trains, Trains, Trains

As you probably already know, we have a great train enthusiast in our household. This summer we had planned to go and ride the steam train down at the Rusk/Palestine State Park. We called, made a reservation and thought we were all set to go until they called us back and said they needed to reschedule due to the heavy rains causing washouts on the track. Disappointed, we rescheduled and again thought we were all set. Fast forward to the new date 2 weeks later, I'm speedily packing up for a long weekend and the phone rings. You guessed it, they cancelled again. There had been a major washout and all train rides were cancelled indefinitely. Sigh. Oh well, I thought, at least I can stop stressing about getting all the packing done. I asked when they thought the train would be running again and was told they didn't know, but to call back in a few weeks. Sigh. Thankfully, Mr. E wasn't too upset...I believe he said something to the effect of "well, we can go to the zoo then" ;)

So, I was thinking about the train rides again today and wondering what the status was on the tracks and found this info.
http://www.texasstaterailroad.com/
Can you imagine being on the train the day this happened? Yikes!

Well, the American Heritage Railroad is taking over the train rides - I believe the State Parks lost their funding. From what I can see here, we could still go ride (as soon as the tracks are fixed), but it looks like the rates are higher as we suspected would happen.
http://www.texasstaterr.com/

Maybe we'll go sometime in the future, who knows. Or, maybe we'll stay a little closer to home for now and drive over to Grapevine to see what their trains are like.
http://www.grapevinesteamrailroad.com/depot.asp

Ah well :) For now, our little conductor will have to be content with running his batter-powered Thomas the Tank Engine trains around his tracks....in his room :)

Just goofing around...

We were just goofing around taking some pictures the other night and I thought I'd share a few - never got a good one of Miss E or Mr. Baby, but here are some of Miss A and Mr. E. :)
Please ignore the chocolate face in the last picture - I don't know what he does when he goes to wash his face!

Just goofing around...

We were just goofing around taking some pictures the other night and I thought I'd share a few - never got a good one of Miss E or Mr. Baby but here are some of Miss A and Mr. E :)
Please ignore the chocolate face in the last picture - I don't know what he does when he goes to wash his face!

Please pray

As some of you may know, I have a sister :) She and her family live up in East TN. What you may not know is that she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer a few years ago. She has had a thyroidectomy (in 2005) and is now in the final preparatory steps to have a RAI (radioactive iodine) treatment. She will go to the Nuclear Medicine part of the hospital tomorrow for her dose of RAI in the form of a pill, then she will go straight home and be in isolation for 3 days, and modified isolation for a week thereafter. She will not be able to kiss her babies for that whole week. Her children are ages 5, 3 and 2. There's so much more I could say, but mainly I just would like to request prayers from y'all for her. The RAI's purpose is to destroy the thyroid tissue that the surgeon was not able to remove when she had the thyroidectomy due to the proximity of the thyroid and vocal cords - there's about 3% of her thyroid that remains. The hope is that the RAI will destroy the remaining tissue, thus, hopefully preventing new thyroid tissue and possibly cancer cell growth in the future. I covet your prayers on her behalf and on the behalf of her husband and children. Also, for our parents who are lovingly and selflessly staying with them to help around the house and most importantly to care for the children while her husband is at work.

Thanks so much!
If you're interested, you can learn more about thyroid cancer at http://www.thyca.org

Here's a pic of her and her family from Thanksgiving 2005 :) (sorry sis, it was the only one I have, hope you don't mind!)



Pictured - my sister, and her family

On the road again....

Hmm, maybe that should be the name of our blog since we always seem to be on the road....

Ha, just kidding :) I did promise, didn't I? ;)

Anyway, as y'all with preachers in the family well know, preacher's families sometimes travel A LOT! We have been on the road a lot over the course of our 7.5 year marriage and this weekend was no exception.

We traveled down to Madisonville, TX to attend services at Fellowship PBC where we moved our membership recently. For those who do not know, our 3 eldest children joined the church and were baptized there just a few months ago.

Miss E joined 3rd Sunday in May and was to be baptized 3rd Sunday in June. When we went back to Madisonville 3rd in June (DH's appointment at that time), Miss A and then Mr. E both asked for a home in the church as well (good thing we brought clothes just in case - Miss A had told us she wanted to join the church for the entire month preceding, so we figured it would be best to bring clothes for her and just in case for Mr. E since we weren't sure if he might decide he wanted to as well based on some conversations he and his Daddy had had).

Somehow between going back and forth to help each of them with getting ready and then drying off afterward, I managed to get a picture of each of them before they were baptized and then we had someone take a picture afterward of the whole family. I'll include them here for those who weren't able to be with us on that wonderful day.



Here's a quick pic I took of the church house as we left after services yesterday:

Fellowship Primitive Baptist, Madisonville, TX


After services we spent a little time outside taking a few other pictures (that'll be another post since the photographed haven't seen the pics yet ;) ) and ran into a few more creepy crawlies than I care to think too long about - here's one of the most noteworthy as it was incredibly huge (yes, things in Texas are definitely bigger, but in this case, I'm not so sure I'd say better!)

Now, I'm not a spider expert and honestly not interested right now in looking up exactly what kind of spider this is (Sis, got some time on your hands next week? Anyone? If you find out and find a link supporting your info, please comment here so we can all learn!), but I'd say it's some sort of very large garden spider - ick. Thanks to Steven for spotting it before I walked right into the web....and "it". (shudder)

All the children were tired and ready to head home after lunch and visiting awhile. We loaded them all up and Mr. Baby fussed for about a second and then dropped right off to sleep, whereupon he slept the whole way back home (well, except for a brief interval when we stopped at Sonic on the way out of town and I chose the worst bay to park in - next to a huge LOUD pickup - we moved to another spot, but too late, Mr. Baby was awake and crying - thankfully a sippy cup full of chocolate milk later and he was a sleepy guy again). Hooray! Amazingly, he slept through the night just fine later on as well - yay!

(pay no attention to the messy car...oh wait, I cropped that part out....well, mostly)

All in all we had a very nice weekend - it was hot, but not unbearably so and we enjoyed getting to see family and visit a little bit. Hope you had a nice weekend too!

Just one more reason to homeschool our children

Watch the video...

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=57327

Absolutely frightening.

Here we blog again

Ok, ok, this time I am happy with our URL and blog title :) I promise I won't change it again.

Sorry y'all had to go through another invite process! Forgive me? Pretty please?

Anyway, I'll start off with a few pics from a recent trip just so y'all can see some recent shots w/the children and we'll go from there!

We've been scoping out a few of the State Parks up in N. TX since we moved up here and these pics are from a day where we spent the day out driving and popped up into OK first and visited Lake Hugo State Park - the park was alright, but what we liked most was how the cabins looked and can definitely see ourselves spending a long weekend there this Fall. Then, we dropped back down into Texas (whew, it was good to be home) and stopped at the Bonham State Park. We'd passed by it many times on other trips and it was high time to see what it was all about. The park itself was pretty small, as far as what you could see from the road driving through, but there were many nature and bike trails in the woods that we hope to explore on another visit.

Here are a few pictures from that busy driving day.







After I hopped out to take this rather exciting picture, I noticed a sign immediately to the left of my open car door - see below:


Ooops....