Let me start this post by telling you about the past 12 months. My husband took a job a couple of hours away in March, when I was 6 months pregnant with child number 3. He was working out of town 3-4 days a week until June, when the kids and I could move up with him. On June 12th we had baby #3, Beckett, the happiest baby you will ever meet. We were so excited to have another healthy, beautiful child. Three weeks later my husband found out that he had cancer. To say it was a shock to us would be an understatement. My husband is a very strong, healthy man, something I had taken for granted until then. I was scared. I tried so hard not to show it, but I was scared.
One week later, we closed on our house on Wednesday, Thursday he went in to surgery to have the tumor removed. Friday, with him still in the hospital, my mom and I closed on our new house and moved our stuff in. Saturday afternoon he joined us in the new house. A couple of weeks later, we found out that the surgery did not get all of the cancer. He was now going to have to go through three rounds of chemotherapy. In August, my daughter started kindergarten, my son started preschool and my husband started chemo within a week of each other. My days were filled with dropping off and picking up children, checking on my husband, grocery shopping, unpacking our house, and everything else a typical house wife does on a daily basis. The hardest part was watching my husband, who just the summer before was stronger than he has ever been (thanks to our addiction to the gym), now coming home worn out and in pain. I wished that I could trade places with him, but he says if I was the one going through chemo, then we would all be in trouble. In October, he finished his nine weeks of chemo and his blood work came back clear. We were thrilled!! The first of December he went in for a cat scan. His lymph nodes appeared swollen, which is a sign of cancer. We were once again scared. What if it had come back? After weeks of waiting, he was finally able to go in for a full-body pet scan. The Friday before Christmas we got the call that he is 100% cancer-free! It was the only Christmas present that I needed. I am so excited to have my healthy, on-the-go husband back. Meanwhile we have also begun the remodel process on our new house. I guess our life wasn't busy enough.
I titled this post "counting our blessings" because so many good things have come out of this year. My husband's attitude through this process has been absolutely amazing to me. He has chosen to look at his cancer as a blessing. It has changed so many parts of our lives for the better. We still have a long way to go to become the people we want to be, but feel like this year has been a nice wake-up call to get us going. Which brings me to 2014. I'm in the process of setting goals, coming up with challenges for our family, working on budgets and designing meal plans for us in 2014. I had a lot that I wanted to do this year, but there is no way I could have known what my year would be like. I wanted to run a half-marathon this year, so guess what one of my big goals for next year is. Sometimes we are lucky just to make it through the year and don't meet all of our goals, but we end up accomplishing things that we didn't plan on. New challenges will present themselves along the way. You can't get discouraged or disappointed, you just have to take it one challenge at a time.
I don't know what 2014 will be like, but I learned this year that we have some amazing family and friends to help us get through whatever comes along. I want to say thanks to everyone in our lives who sent up prayers for us, sent us cards and gifts, called us to see how we were doing, brought us meals, watched the kids for me, helped us move, and so much more. I especially want to say thanks to our parents, we could not have made it through the year without you. It all meant so much to us and we feel so blessed!
I plan on keeping up with the blog this year. So get ready for lots of posts on healthy eating, running, challenges and more!
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