Maya Road and Me

back

gosh i hate when my mind goes out on me. i had been pretty good about remembering all my passwords and even when i make changes to them but for the life of me i could not remember what i changed my blog password to. figures, huh? i racked my brain for a couple of days on it and nothing. then suddenly my friend posted something on facebook that reminded me of something else that reminded me AHA SO THAT IS WHAT I CHANGED MY PASSWORD TO! and voila, i am here.

it's been a busy couple of days since my last post. my dad is doing a lot better.  his chemo will start again this week but i have him and my mom taking olivia out for walks every morning. i tell them don't come back for at least 30 mins - 40 mins. i think they must cover a mile or so but it is good for them and olivia too. i told my dad that tomorrow he needs to get some 3 or 5 lb weights and start doing some lifting to keep his body strong as we continue on with treatment.

in the meantime, here we are celebrating my mom's birthday:

we had a nice time eating out and then celebrated with some cake.

then noah and i did our very first fun run together on saturday. noah was so excited for this. he had to get up at 6:30 am (which is very early for him and me) to get ready:

we did our run with one of our dear friends. the race was on a cold (well cold for dallas) saturday morning. it was a mile. i am not sure my dear sweet boy knew how long a mile was.  here he was at the start:

then about 200 yards in (on a BIG hill) noah said "i think i am done" so we walked a bit. he whined a bit. then he ran a bit. then he whined a bit more. we repeated this scenario about 10 x. finally, he decided he did want to finish and get his ribbon so we continued on:

and noah finished and was happy. he then hopped into my jogging stroller so we could do the 5k:

noah was very happy under his cars fleece while being strolled.

but i am so proud of him - he finished the 1 mile race (at the age of 4 and without training) in under 17 minutes! he is so happy with his new race ribbon and to top it all off he won the costume contest that was held after the race wearing his lion costume . he ended up winning a barnes and nobles gift card which he is super excited about since he loves to read. my son noah is a generous soul, he even told us he was going to buy his baby sister olivia a book with his gift card. he is definitely a kind old soul in a young soul body. i love him so much. and his baby sister too. here is a peek at olivia in her halloween best:

i have a ton of work to do so i will be back tomorrow (since i remember my password now) - with my costume i made for noah this year and some peeks at projects. promise.

 

rrrooaarrr

will be back tomorrow to show you what i have been working on - for now enjoy my little lion (and the little girl behind him who was quite scared of noah in costume).

 

(whispers) - i am still here.

of course, as soon as my dad is well enough to come home, my little girl catches a virus from someone at daycare. lovely. so between keeping my parents sequestered in a bedroom and holding a little girl who is super grumpy, well i am still doggie paddling to stay above water.

will be back soon. going to power up and get some work done while everyone is asleep.

so excited!

it has been a long week since i last had time to post. we are working on getting everything lined up for our early Winter Release which will be coming soon. lots of fun surprises in store for you all. can't wait. as part of this early Winter Release, we had something special planned for our retailers and customers - a Maya Road Christmas Memories Kit:

the talented lisa pace from our design team created this kit. it is chock full of MR goodness. as part of our new Retailer Education Program, these limited edition kits will be something we put together a couple of times a year. these kits can only be ordered through retailers and no where else. i am humbled and so excited that we sold out of the kits we had planned in under 24 hours! so be on the look out for these kits. we won't be releasing them anymore past this but have some other awesome ones planned for the spring!

this week has also been tough as my dad was in the hospital for some side effects of the chemo. we expect him to be home with us soon. still a long road ahead but we are getting our house ready for my dad and mom to be back.

 

 

whew

so a month ago, the thought of cancer and the details of treatment never crossed my mind. but i can tell you now that my family and i know more than we ever could imagine. i must say after doing some of the research, i wonder why i didn't pursue a degree in medicine, wait i remember, i don't think i could hack the labs.

 it has been a tough week - doctor's appointments almost every day since they have arrived here. it is going to be the same for the next couple of weeks. this first round has been super hard on my dad (and mom ) too. but i think tonight we saw a turning point in getting him feeling at least ok with his chemo treatments thus far. and we are thankful for that. and something has been gone this week which has been nagging him for the last 2 months. his cough.

my dad never smoked a day in his life but when he arrived his cough was like someone who had smoked for 20 years. but in the week since his treatment started, all of that has stopped and we are very thankful for the small things. the doctor even told us his breathing in his two lungs sound the same now which is good news.

i am very thankful for the flexibility of our schedules here with maya road to help my dad out with getting the treatment he needs. it does mean some long nights of catch up but we are happy they could be here with us so we could help out.

we have been gearing up for our early Winter release which is coming out in about 3 weeks. lots of beautiful stuff coming. we like to have a small release between shows and this one is going to knock your socks off!

i have been working on a project showcasing our release - check it out:

there is still a lot of work to do and i can only do about 10 mins a day on it but i think it will come together quite nicely. working on this is a bit of therapy for me - allowing me to decompress after a day of figuring out this whole cancer thing as well as the business parts of maya road and olivia place. i feel the peace after creating i feel when i go out and run 3 miles. and at 1 in the morning, creating is better than lacing on my shoes and going outside for a run.

and i know everything will be back to some semblance of  normal over time. and we are so glad my parents could be with us. next week we plan on taking them and our kids out to the pumpkin patch so we can enjoy it all together. can't wait.

having my parents here has reminded me that life is too short to sweat the small stuff.

 

 

changes

change is not an easy thing for most people. in fact, i believe that most would feel this way about change:

(olivia with a signature face)

there has been a lot of changes for us since my parents came to live with us. with the copious amounts of doctors appointments, having 2 more in the house, trying to plan good meals for my dad and mom, more laundry, getting the kids adjusted to not sleeping in their rooms for a while, keeping sick kids away from grandparents and dealing with the fact that my dad has a very advanced stage of cancer - all of that has been a lot to take in in this short period of time.

but those that know me know that i am not one to bawl at things like this. blame it on the genes, i wasn't built to cry very often but i am sure that my body deals with these stresses in different ways like the fact i will probably develop a nice bald spot on random places on my head. that is how my body deals with stress. that and i work. getting things done is like a good cry in my book.

i always knew at some point (as did deb) that we would need to take on the role of parents and guides to our parents. i remind my dad to please please please drink lots of water. i have taught my parents how to use the GPS so that if they have small appointments or want to get out of the house, they can do so. i had to stop my dad from inhaling a salami sandwich a couple of days ago and to stay out of the chocolate candy bag for a while. i make sure they take their medicines.

the other night i realized where deb and my antsy work tendencies come - they come from my mom.  she was bored like crazy sitting at my house with nothing to do my dad was napping so i put her to work on some maya road stuff. she loved it. i have also now put her in charge of making some cute skirts for olivia and her cousin and she is right on it. this is how she deals with stress too i think.

all of this change has been a lot to take in but it has been good for all of us. i haven't lived with my parents since i left high school so we are learning about how to handle our relationships outside of 2 week visits here and there.it isn't easy.

i can already see the changes for my kids too - their grandparents are no longer strangers. my baby girl smiles now when she sees her "gung gung" and "paw paw". my son begs to say goodnight to them before he goes to bed.

these are all memories i will hold close to my heart that i can never buy. but it isn't easy. change never is. but if someone were to ask me if i would do this again, i would say yes in a heart beat. david and i already decided that if his parents ever needed the same help, our house would be open to them.

and embrace change because that is what life is really all about.

 

 

together

thanks for everyone's kind words for the post last week. my dad starts chemo tomorrow so we will see what that brings. tomorrow marks 8 days since we started the first doctor's appointments.  everything should be come clearer by next week as to the extent and spread of his cancer and what we can do to fight it.

in the meantime, my parents are enjoying time with their grandbabies and especially snuggling their youngest one:

we might try to hit up the pumpkin patch this weekend so we can enjoy the texas weather and each other's company.

we have lots of cool things planned for maya road - working hard now on our early Winter release which i think will knock your socks off!

Journeys

It has been a while since I have blogged. These last 2 weeks has brought to my family many many life changes and other changes for us.

To start off, last weekend, we had our AMAZING Artistic Journey event with The Crafty Scrapper Store in Waxahachie, TX. Here is the group photo we took showing all the awesome ladies who came to our event:

(photo courtesy of marie Q)

When Carolyn and I set out over a year ago to create this event, we put a lot of heart, soul and thought into how we could make an event TRULY amazing. And I think we were able to do so because we relied on each other to bring our strengths to the table. I have never heard so many kind words. We were joined by ladies from all over the US and even Canada. I have to thank our 3 Maya Road teachers (Katie Watson, Lisa Pace and Aubrey Rives) who created some amazing projects to share with our attendees. We packed the goodie bags FULL of Maya Road (and even some Olivia Place) surprises. Every attendee got to spend 4 hours creating a progressive album with all of us along with 3 - 3 hour classes over the course of 3 days.

Here are some photos from last weekend's Artistic Journey:

the albums we used for our make and takes

lisa prepping for the make and takes

dress forms for aubrey's make and take

 

fabraic strips and Maya Mists for katie's make and take

goodie bags chock full of stuff

the window display with tags from everyone who made one for the artistic journey challenge:

some of the food we had for the make and take evening:

it was also carolyn's birthday week so we surprised here with some cake:

make and takes begin:

some of cutest box lunches i have ever seen (we had on saturday)

the crafty scrapper has an amazing selection of maya mists:

more creating:

carolyn and i were so proud of how the event turned out. we heard so many nice compliments  about how smoothly everything went and how we tried to cover all the details. i have been asked if we will be doing another, that is something carolyn and i will discuss in the next couple of weeks as we look ahead to 2011.

when the week of artistic journey arrived, my parents called me and told me that my dad had gone to the doctor and they found something on his lung and he was having a CT scan and biopsy. deb and i had never thought a lot about the big "c" word. we knew others who had it but it had never been something that hit this close to home. we started doing research on lung cancer from life expectancy to new drugs to different types of treatments.

so the tuesday before AJ began, my dad went in to get his results. my dad has stage IV lung cancer. our hearts dropped. how could this be? my dad never smoked. at the end of the day, it didn't matter did it - he has it now.

looking at the results, there it was plain as day - stage IV lung cancer. so my family did what it does best, we rallied around my dad. we decided by tuesday evening, that the best care my parents could have was if they moved here to dallas for my dad's treatment. by wednesday evening, we had found him an oncologist, gotten an appointment and booked them tickets to fly out here 3 days later. there was no way my mom could handle my dad during treatment if he was sick and she had to take care of him.

saturday during the event, my angel of a husband went and picked up my parents and my sister and her family and they came to stay with us. i came home sunday evening from artistic journey (a week ago from this post).

since then my dad has had 4 doctor's appointments. i know more about ports, lymph nodes, stages of cancer, tarceva and other things than i ever thought i would know. next week my dad has 3 more doctor's appointments and will start chemo on wednesday. deb's family left today.

deb and i are realists as well as scientists too. we have read and we know what the life expectancy is for stage IV lung cancer. as much as we have our feet bound to reality, we also have hope and we will help my dad with this fight.we also believe in the power of prayer and having faith. there is a balance though, we know that having faith doesn't necessarily mean getting your way so we definitely are keeping that in mind.

and so we know we have a lot of life changes ahead for us - adjusting to having 2 more in our house. but i think it will be in the end good for all of us. no matter how this fight turns out, we will have the time we have now together rather than thousands of miles apart. my dad and mom will be lifted up by seeing their grandbabies every day rather than 3-4x a year. we will help my dad and mom sweat the small stuff.

with that, i am off to enjoy the rest of the weekend before the hard stuff begins next week!