Today is the first day of school for Isabel and Gabriel!

Isabel is very excited to be in the same second grade class as her best friend, Jaz.

Gabriel started kindergarten this morning!

We checked out the classroom, found his cubby and settled in on the reading couch.

Gabriel loves school and is a very social guy, so he was ready to start his elementary school experience.

We said our last goodbyes and I left, feeling very strange to be driving away in such a quiet car!

Another afternoon spent at the pool. It was the perfect way to beat the 90 degree weather.

It's the last day of summer vacation for the kids! Their first day of (year around) school is tomorrow!

Isabel got her ears pierced today! It was all very exciting. I took her to a piercing shop to get it done by a reputable piercer who it turns out is also a phlebotomist.

She thought Isabel was the coolest for finishing leukemia treatment and having dyed blue hair.

Isabel has been considering pierced ears for the past year if not longer, but it wasn't until recently that she solidly wanted it. With everything Isabel has endured during her cancer treatments, I knew she was mature enough to handle the care of her piercings.

She got scared for a minute when she sat on the big dentist chair. I think it reminded her of the hospital and that broke my heart a little bit. I kept joking around, trying to lighten the mood.

She wanted me to hold her hand while it was being done and Rachel, the piercer, was great. She had Isabel take a breath and inserted the needle as Isabel blew out. Thanks to the numbing cream I put on her earlobes, she literally didn't feel a thing.

Gabe took a bunch of weird angled photos while it was being done and I took one of Isabel and Rachel afterward and she requested that I give her a copy to hang on her studio wall. I will because I think that's awesome.

I'm so glad I went to the tattoo shop instead of Claire's boutique. Rachel really took her time and made sure the dots were lined up and straight and talked Isabel through it all and I thought it was a hoot she was in the medical field as well. So, that was exciting. I was a little ferklempt at my tween girl.

Hurrah!

Happy 33rd Birthday, Alan! Isabel and Gabriel helped make fresh whipped cream for the angel food cake with sliced strawberries.

Isabel and Gabriel "surprised" Alan by pushing his face into the cake! He hammed it up to their delight. I'm hoping we didn't start a new tradition!

Arts and crafts day at the library!

The kids made a wide array of creative things. I love seeing all their different ideas come to life.

Isabel had another wonderful off treatment blood draw and check up! Her physical shows her as a great big healthy growing 7 year old. Her blood draw was fast and painless and her counts are perfect across the board!

The oncologist was so utterly unconcerned with anything and ended up talking about his upcoming visit with his family in Australia. He even googled Tasmanian penguins and showed us a photo of them on the computer!

I can't describe how surreal it all was. This was the same man who had to let us know that it was a very real possibility that Isabel would die when she first had Aplastic Anemia (before her leukemia diagnosis). This is the man who was there during every single hideous, horrible surgery, procedure, infection, hospitalization. Everything. And now? It was like talking to our neighbor. He was so la dee da about everything. It was weird and wonderful and I kept thinking about how he would walk into the hospital later to meet with another family, shell shocked and just starting their cancer journey. He even walked us to another part of the hospital to show us a huge rubble filled lot where a new hospital will be built. He thought Gabriel would like the big construction machines (Gabe was unimpressed). Then he winked and casually said, "see you next month!".

We've always kept our sense of humor about dealing with cancer. Laughter is the best medicine, you know!



After the appointment, I picked up the neighbor girls and took us all to the local pool where Gabriel suddenly learned to swim! I knew it would be this summer, I would say "by the end of the summer, Gabe, you'll be swimming!" I knew he was on his way, but he surprised me by learning just exactly like Isabel did. Something just clicked and there he was, head under water swimming toward me!

It was a good day.

Snow in July! The kids had a blast making fake snow from a science kit they had. It's supposed to be kept clean to be used over and over but slip sliding around the backyard was too much fun for them to care!