Faye's baby shower, 6/19

Here's Faye with a crown on her head and baby Jules in her belly. Aren't they both so cute? Javier's sisters Letitia and Veronica were the main enthusiastic planners. They made a diaper cake, planned co-ed shower games, headed up the decorations, helped Norma and I and May plan the food etc. Hats off to them. It was a fun, magical evening for all!
Here are a few of the many presents
Niko with his big brother name badge, Mr Tough guy! Brothers, Grandmas, Grandpas, Aunts and Uncles all wore these pretty pink name tags. Nathan and Maceo refused to have their pictures taken with theirs
Faye and Javier's table under the arch with baby toys hanging down.
Overview of the party area at La Casa Gonzalez. This is a great place to have a party and they probably have every family get-together under these trees with magical fairy lights
One of the party games, who can drink lemonade out of a baby bottle the quickest. Javier was disqualified when he took the top off and drank it that way! May and I went to the dollar store before the party and bought prizes for the games, all in pink!
Another of the games the guys had to pretend they are pregnant ( balloons) and lean over and tie their shoes as fast as they can without breaking the balloon. A good time was had by all. We had more food than we could eat and it was all delicious. We were having so much fun. We looked down and it was 9pm so Faye and Javier decided to open all of the presents the next day.

More MacIntyre pics

Kirsten and her Dad and the kids. We had a great visit. Our biggest outing was a visit to the Children's Museum, Carolina's (Mexican food) and MacAlpine (ice cream sunday's). Carolina's in a hole in the wall barrio mexican food place which my family has gone to as long as I can remember. It has great Mexican food and freshly made tortillas. MacAlpine's is a soda fountain which my Dad went to when he was in High School.
Rowan, Dilly and Papa
Kirsten, yours truly, Dilly and Rob
We went down to the ditch for a picnic. This is a area about a half mile from our house that really reminds me of growing up in South Phoenix. It is an open ditch surrounded by cotton wood trees just off the canal. As a child, I walked to school each day along a ditch like this, but it was much deeper having been dug out many times. We had paths along the top of the ditch and it was an adventure to get to school and not fall in! Other times we played in the ditch catching frogs, crawdads and finding tadpoles to take back to the house to watch turn into frogs.

We have boats which we throw in & catch downstream


Papa reading to Ro and Dil
Drying off after a romp in the irrigation
It was late afternoon and the irrigation was just starting to fill the yard. The kids remembered playing in the irrigation other visits and had to wade even though it was sorta cold.
Making pizza
Grandma Coral taking the kids for a ride in the basket of her bike
Grandma and Dilly riding down our street

Faye's shower #2 & RoRo and May's Birthdays

Javier's getting ready for the big day
This was Rowan's 3rd birthday party. She milked turning five for all it's worth celebrating at all three grandparents!
We celebrated both May and Rowan's birthday at Faye's shower. We tried to get as many celebrations in as possible! I'm all for birthdays. Julian and I just celebrated our birthday on June 9th (yes it's the same day). It is great fun as we get many calls, e-mails, cards and facebook greetings. We seem to spend the whole day talking on the phone. We started the day with a call from India and Kirsten, Rowan and Dylan singing Happy Birthday. We had Happy Birthday sung to us a total of 4 times. I think that is some kind of a record!
These are the letters that Ro and Dilly gave to Faye and Javier to decorate baby Jules nursery, shades of pink, green and brown. The picture below shows the painting of the letters. The kids painted them, then Kirsten and Julian painted the dots and stripes.

Mac pictures and fight cancer update

The kids and grandkids left last Saturday to fly back to India. It was a short (9 days) but very sweet trip. We mostly just did things together close by. Family get togethers, playing in the irrigation, sailing boats in the ditch and hanging out. Quote from Dilly (after going potty by himself), "I tan do anything! I am strong! I tan even fight dinosaurs!
Kirsten and Rowan, picture taken by Niko who has quite the camera eye. He always gets great shots!
Kirsten and Dilly
Another hug for little brother and big sister.
Kirsten, Rob and Grandma Coral at Faye and Javier's house.

Back to Julian and an update. He had treatments the whole time they were here, but he was still able to spend time with them around the house. We saw both doctors in the past 2 weeks and they both say that he is done with treatments at least till the end of June maybe longer. He will have more tests at that time and they will decide then. They were all very pleased about how well he tolerated having both radiation and chemo at the same time. He's tough, I tell you. His WBC counts especially are low now, but his bone marrow will slowly build them back up. He still is very tired and has postural dizzyness. We think that he's a little better each day, but it's slow. Eating is a struggle. He's able to eat, but I can give him 5 or 6 choices and get maybe one that sounds good. The radiation people tell us that it will still be working fight the cancer cells for 2 weeks after the last treatment. Of course it's hilarious how each doctor thinks that the other doctor's treatment is the worst and causing the most problems. There was a cartoon in the Sunday funnies today that was very appropriate to the doctors working together (or not!). Dr. McBride and Dr. Kukkonoor talk about having philosophical discussions about the best treatment.



We are trying to keep our sense of humor with all this. We really appreciate your prayers and cards. Thanks so much!

Kids visit from India and Jules update

Kirsten, Rob, Rowan and Dylan have spent the last 9 days with us in Phoenix. They live in India and we haven't seen them for a year. One of their first nights here were spent at Faye and Javier's house playing with, "my cousins, they boys" as Rowan calls them. She walked into the door in one of her rare shy moments, hiding behind my legs. We walked into the boys room, they showed Ro and Dil how to play pool and the shyness was gone in about a minute. From there it was rough and tumble fun and games all evening.
Ro and Dilly with Papa. A quick update on Jules: He finished radiation yesterday (Friday) and had his last weekly Chemo on Thursday. The day Kirs et.al arrived (May 20) he was supposed to have chemo, but his counts were too low (platelets). I drove him to radiation and chemo that day because he was dizzy, went to school a little late, left to pick up the kids from the airport, dropped them at home and returned to school. I would have gotten a sub, but alas, none was available. It always takes about an hour to get the blood work results back before they start chemo, so I just dropped him off thinking he would be there all day. As it was they gave him some fluids which helped him feel somewhat better. Mainly he is just energyless and feeling washed out. However, the timing of having to miss one chemo was perfect. He was able to enjoy their visit. They will do another ultrasound in about a month and Dr. McBride (radiation) will decide what's next. He goes back to chemo in 2 weeks and we will see what they say. Right now we are on hold and happy for it. The kids left today,but we had a great visit. I will put more pictures up in the next day or so.
Niko teaching Dilly how to fight with foam padded swords
Niko teaching Rowan how to fight. Notice the fancy leg movements. Later in the evening Maceo was playing hide and seek in a dark room with them resulting in many delighted squeals.
This is Rowan with her sting ray. She got to touch a real sting ray at the aquarium in Salt Lake City and was very proud.

Hangin in there, shower cat, baby shower

Here's Jules on Saturday the worst day of his week. He looks good, huh. He gets washed out over the weekend after chemo on Thursday. He has 2 more weeks of radiation. Eating is getting a little more difficult, but he is still eating. I made him power bars (I can give out the recipe if you like). I made up the recipe, wrote it down cause I knew that I wouldn't remember what I put in them. There were about 30 or so bars and there are now only 2 left. I guess they are good. He sometimes has popcorn for dinner. Pretty much eating whatever sounds good to him or that he thinks he can get down, concentrating on high carb, high protein, high calorie.
He decided to clean out the rain gutters and trim the Palo Verde tree in the morning. After resting and watching the horse race which took about 3 hours for a 2-3 minute race, he cleaned off the patio in the afternoon.
Not bad for feeling washed out. I guess it's called mind over matter, guts, bravery, toughness
This is Merlin soon after he and I took our morning shower. A little scraggly, but clean! I'm trying to break him of the habit of drinking out of the toilet bowl, but not because I'm worried about him getting sick from it. Did you know that there are many, many more germs on desks than on toilets? Toilets tend to have less germs because we wash them more often than most desks, or pens, or phones. So why, do you ask am I trying to break him from drinking out of the toilet? Because he puts his front paws into the toilet water as he drinks and leaves cat paw prints around the house. Sounds cute maybe to a cat lover, to have cute little cat paw prints around the house. Maybe it would be cute if they were painted on and not adding to my dirty house!
This is Faye and Javier, Niko, Nathan and Maceo. Jeremy is 16 now and doesn't always go on trips, you know how teenagers are. His friends are around his Mom's house so he spends more time there. Anyway this is the family that Baby Jules (Juliana) is due to join the end of July. Can you picture those boys holding her, baby sitting, changing diapers? They will probably have long conversations about wet burps, vomit and poop.
Faye's surprise baby shower at school. It was very sneaky and she had no idea they were planning it.
She got so many cute little girl clothes!
Faye and I at the shower.

Prayer Quilt & Tribute to Chris

This is the quilt being knotted and prayed over in church. There is a story about the material. My Peru roomie, Susan who you see reaching up in the right side of this picture bought the material with the forest scene on a trip to Calif. She states that she had no idea why she was buying it, but did
none the less. When she asked what colors and things Julian likes, he responded greens and blues and the outdoors and she know why she had bought the material. It was up in church being knotted and prayed over when he was sick with a high fever. It was delivered on Wednesday the day Chris died just before we left for chemo. The quilt was the one bright spot in that horrible day.

This is Chris. He is funny, caring and a bright spot in the world. He and Jules have talked almost daily for years, jokes, politics, guy stuff. When Jules got cancer Chris called twice a day to see how he was doing and to keep his spirits up. He can built anything, loves to ski (always wanted to ski with Star), loves to make music, eat at Mickie D's, and play practical jokes. Everybody liked him instantly. He likes cats even though he is allergic to them. He always said that our cat Merlin converted him to a cat lover and he would have adopted him in an instant.
We went to the North Rim with Don and Connie and Chris and Mary. We have had great couple times together. We have watched the show "24" together for years. We have appetizers, dinner, watch 24, then half way through have a delicious dessert. We switch off one week at our house, the next week at their house.
Chris and Mary
Mary and Chris and Jules. Chris had fun every day, whatever he was doing. Chris and Mary are really funny together as you can see in this picture. Chris we really miss you. We wish you were still here. I went back and read this and thought, you are still here. However, I being selfish want to be able to talk and laugh with you. It's just not the same.