Happy Halloween!! This was our first “holiday” since Gray’s diagnosis and we had to celebrate a bit differently then we normally would. There are some things we had to change that we never would have thought about before and some things that pretty obviously had to be done differently. First of all, when Gray was released from the hospital after his surgery and first round of chemo, we were told that he could not be around fresh fruit, particularly the skins of fresh fruit. We were shocked to hear this but it became all the more real when none of our family was able to carve pumpkins for Halloween. Something so routine, like carving a jack-o-lantern, has suddenly become life threatening for Gray. We couldn’t risk even having pumpkins at our home so instead we pulled out the ol’ plug in, light up style pumpkin and let that be our decoration. We also couldn’t allow trick-or-treaters to visit our home and we couldn’t go trick-or-treating ourselves. When you have a child with cancer you view the world, and all its germs, in a whole new way. Suddenly, everything has the potential of compromising Grayson’s fragile immune system. Instead, though, of marooning ourselves into our home, in fear, we made the best of our “new found normal” and planned an alternative and yet very fun Halloween celebration! We invited over some close family friends who have two boys that are friends with both our kids and had a mini Halloween Carnival in the backyard!! We played games like “Ring Toss Around the Pumpkin”, “Bean Bag Tic-Tac-Toe” and “Pin the Nose on the Pumpkin”!! Both of our boys had fun and we felt better to keep Gray in a controlled environment. We, of course, loaded up all four boys with TONS of candy and had pizza and cookies for dinner!! It was a fun night!!

After our at home party, we did take the boys to our church’s annual Fall Festival. They had set up Trunk-or-Treat in the parking lot where the children could go from car trunk to car trunk and receive candy and then could go inside and play games, get their face painted, jump in the bouncy house and enjoy yummy treats like snow cones and nachos!! Our friends, who came over for our alternative halloween party, took Seth inside for some fun but we chose not to let Gray go in. With the jam packed crowds and huge tubs of candy where every coughing, snotty nosed, child has reached their bare hands in we couldn’t, in good conscience, let Gray go there. Seth had a blast, though, with his friends Ashtyn and Maddox and he came home with WAY too much candy!!

Halloween was alot of fun and it felt good to be able to plan something that all the boys enjoyed that also included Grayson, but I have to admit that this first holiday in our “new life” was a huge reminder of what is to come. Thoughts of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter begin to flood our minds. You can’t escape it. Will Gray be able to sit around our Thanksgiving table? Will he be able to hunt eggs with all the other kids? We so desperately want to push these questions from our minds but we can’t. Not because we don’t want to but because they must be dealt with. I know that Gray won’t know the difference and he’ll have fun with whatever we plan. He doesn’t know he’s missing anything. But as a mom it’s so hard to see your child sit in the car watching a movie while all the other kids bob for apples. Sigh. Please keep us in prayer this week as Gray has three blood tests to monitor his white blood cell counts. His tests are on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. When his cell counts drop we will again begin to give Gray his daily shots to help raise the white blood cell count back to a normal level. We also desperately ask for your prayers for Wednesday as Gray goes in for his first post chemo bone scan. After the scan we should get results on whether or not his chemo treatments are working. We will soon find out if Gray’s tumor is shrinking. We’re scared. We will also very soon begin giving Grayson double his daily shots (the same shots that raise his white blood cell counts) in order to raise his cell counts to an extremely high level before Gray is admitted to the hospital to harvest his bone marrow. Although, we know in our heads that this all must be done in order to make our son better our hearts are screaming out to protect our baby boy from more needles, sedation and surgeries. It’s a daily, if not hourly, battle we fight within ourselves. We’ve been told that when we double up Grayson’s shots it could make his bones ache even more then they already do because his bones will be producing cells so rapidly. Sometimes it’s scary to me that we even know all this information let alone know it about our own child. We truly thank you all for your continued prayers. We know they are keeping Grayson strong and keeping our family just as strong so we can be there for Gray and help him in his fight. It’s one day at a time for us right now. One breath at a time. One glance at a time. One smile at a time. One sigh at a time. It’s one moment at a time.

“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things.”  Ecclesiastes 11:5