We received more news from the doctor regarding Brent’s brain tumor. It was not the news we were hoping for. Although they are still doing tests on the tumor at the Mayo Clinic, because it seems to be a rare tumor. The only good news that we received was that 10% of people survive from this, but he is still young & healthy so we are optimistic that he will pull through this!

As for Brent after his surgery, he is really doing well and staying strong throughout all this for a speedy recovery. He has been sleeping a lot and is on so many different medications. He will need to go through radiation and chemotherapy as we just found out that too. The family is anxious to learn more about the tumor as we all want to step up and help Brent fight this. So right now we’re basically just waiting to hear more about the tumor and what will happen next.

Unfortunately Brent doesn’t have health insurance so all the hospital bills from last week are expected to be at around $300,000 and the medications that he needs aren’t cheap. Brent is a single father with an adorable 7 months old baby. His son, Kade, is such a bubbly sweet boy that comes over to visit his dad almost every day for a few hours and stays overnight on the weekends. Brent spends as much time as he can with Kade in between getting better with the help of his parents and other brothers. We’re all taking it one day at a time and just reminding each other to stay positive.

Some people have asked how they can help and we are grateful that you want to help in any way you can. So we recently set up a PayPal account for Brent and his family for those of you who would like to donate. Your generosity, big or small, will surely make a difference in his life.

If you are unable to donate – we completely understand and would love to ask to please keep Brent and his family in your thoughts & prayers!

 

Thank you all for your thoughts & prayers and sweet comments on my last post about Tyler’s brother. I will definitely keep you all updated as we should be hearing more later this week from the doctors.

Anyways, I wanted to share with you what I did for my sister’s graduation party!

My mom and I went through a lot of photos and picked out our favorites of my sister. I also found a whole bunch of pictures I had on my computer and sent them to get printed at Walgreens. Mom and I put them up and I know the zero is bigger than the other numbers but we wanted to include all the pictures.

I made these pinwheels from a tutorial I saw online. It took us a few attempts to get it right.

Mom and I thought it’d be cool to have a photo puzzle of my sister. It was so cool to have the puzzle come in a nice tin box with her photo on it so she can keep it. By the way, that photo we picked was not easy to put together as a puzzle!

We found these cute photo placeholders that were polka dots ornaments from Michael’s. We used these with some other photos we had. I also made some more pinwheels for my sister but used them at the party.

This is my favorite!!! This is a comparison of my sister after her 1st day of preschool and last day of high school…even at the same table & chair, haha!

I saw these graduation pops on Pinterest made by Bakerella. It was kind of a last minute thing so I didn’t get the Reeses perfectly unwrapped.

It was a fun project to do! Instead of using fudge as the “glue” we used pink frosting and it worked like a charm!

Everyone loved them and all of my sister’s friends ate them! The party was a success and it was nice to be able to do this for my sister. Now I’m in the mood to plan for another party….4th of July!?

A few days ago we received a call with bad news that one of Tyler’s brothers (the oldest) had a brain tumor. This is scary since he’s only 28 years old and is so young! It’s a good thing he went to the hospital for the bad headache he was having. We waited around for more news and kept other family relatives informed through text, email & Facebook. It was hard not being able to do anything while we’re here in Arizona and they’re all up in Washington.

The size of the tumor was the size of an apple and it was located in front left side of his brain. They immediately scheduled for surgery the next day. Tyler and I were looking for the cheapest plane tickets to go up for a few days until we received news that his brother’s boss wanted to pay for our plane tickets. We couldn’t believe it and that he wanted to take care of it for us. I emailed him our information and I don’t think I thanked him enough even though I did 100 times.

He replied back with our tickets & said great things about Tyler’s brother and how he wanted to help in any way he could. It’s so nice to see and read all these sweet comments & messages about Tyler’s brother and the family.

The surgery went well yesterday. The surgery was supposed to be 5 hours but it was 8 hours. Yesterday was probably the longest day ever with waiting for an update. I’m sure I was annoying Tyler with text messages asking if he heard anything yet.

We received good news after the surgery that the doctors believed they got the whole brain tumor and that the tumor wasn’t growing within the brain, but instead next to it. He is in ICU now and is already able to speak and recall memories! Unfortunately the doctor says it was malignant and they still have to do the pathology to see whether he needs radiation and chemotherapy.

Now we hope all goes well from here now! Tyler and I will be going up next Wednesday for a few days. Thank you all for your prayers & thoughts since they have been working and helping him get through this.