A Soccer Mom

It's official: I'm a soccer mom. We signed Eli up to play soft soccer on Saturdays and Sundays for the next three weekends (four, if you count the two games we played this last weekend) and I couldn't be more excited. Brad and I were pretty hesitant to put Eli in sports because we weren't ready to one of those families and we really like to protect our time as a family. We always knew change was inevitable and that the time would come when we'd be heading off to various sporting activities, but you would have thought we were making some life or death decision as we discussed and discussed and debated and debated whether or not Eli would play soccer for four weeks. Sheesh. After this weekend, we feel pretty good about the whole thing.

Eli had a GREAT time!! This just might be the most exciting thing that's happened in his life thus far. I had a lot more fun watching him than I ever thought I would, too! I think soccer might be the most perfect little boy sport because it's basically a lot of running without too many rules. Well, not too many they enforce, anyway. We were given two pages of "rules" at the first practice, but I don't think most of them are adhered to since it's hard to actually see what's going on when 8 four-and-five-year-olds are running around in a crazy bunch!



Don't worry, he's not hurt. We've decided Eli is either the clumsiest boy on the team or the most dramatic. He fell A LOT! Hmmmm.


Here's what Phoebe did during the games.


Some of you might be wondering how I became an assistant coach. An uncoordinated, unfit, apathetic (at best) sports spectator like little ole me? I should mention first that I've been demoted. Now I'm just "Team Mom." The gal who was originally going to coach has been recently diagnosed with MS and some other health issues and is unable to coach. A friend of hers stepped up to be the coach and I volunteered to "help"...hence the assistant coach. Well, it turns out I don't know anything about soccer and the original coach's husband decided to assistant coach so I became "Team Mom" or "Ruler Of All Things Organizational." Mostly I just make the phone calls, get parents to sign up for snack and to referee, take pictures, and basically just make sure everything runs smoothly. I consider it more of a lateral move than an actual demotion and way more suited to my personality. Either way, I knew ya'll were all just waiting with bated breath to find out all about that! :)

In for a penny, in for a pound, I guess.

Before And After

When I dreamed of having a little girl, I always imagined her with a perfect, precious little pageboy haircut that was combed and held back with a bow or a headband. It would be blond and thick. It would look adorable with all the smocked frocks I was going to dress her in everyday.

Well, things didn't turn out quite the way I had imagined.

Most mornings, my darling daughter's hair looks like this...or worse. She looks thrilled to be having her picture taken, doesn't she?


To put it mildly, she has a bad case of bedhead. I'm going to blame this on her Nena and her aunt Carrie because they too have wild, crazy hair. My hair is "curlish", too, but it happened after I had children so I cannot be blamed for this mop of hair. It's a little scary to look at my sister's baby pictures and see my daughter. Except for the color, their hair is very similar. Truth be told, I'm pretty happy about this because Carrie has always had great hair and one can always color her hair, but you can't have good curl unless it's put there by God. Can I hear an Amen? However, Phoebe's hair does pose a bit of a challenge. I have to spray it with water every morning because it looks like a crop rooster feathers growing out of the top of her head after sleeping on it all night long. Then we "scrunch" it and let it dry to it's beautiful curls and then we fix it. Even "fixed" it looks a bit wild and untameable, but I have vowed never to tell my daughter to go comb her hair. My mom was a curly top in a family of straight-haired girls and her dad was constantly telling her to go comb her hair. It never did any good...and to be honest, my mom's curly, crazy hair is just gorgeous and fits her better than any straight, perfectly coiffed hair ever could. Hopefully that's the legacy my daughter will take with her. A legacy of being a curly top in a world of straight hairs. A legacy of being true to herself when everybody else looks and acts differently. A legacy of making her own path despite the one I have imagined for her. A legacy of strength and humor and love in the face of absolutely anything.

Seriously, who knew hair could bring about such passion?

And just so you don't think Phoebe looked like the above picture for church. Here's the "After."


At least, for now, I can still exercise my love of all things smocked. I know the day will come all too soon when she will put aside even those to go her own way.

A Wild Friday Night

This is what we spent our Friday night doing...playing with the webcam.









Phoebe and I were making chocolate chip cookies during these festivities so we weren't able to participate. It probably saved us from some disturbing images. They were so disturbing, in fact, that they actually made Phoebe cry. Nothing a warm cookie and milk couldn't fix, though.

What did you spend your Friday night doing?

And We're Back

We broke down and bought a laptop. I spent yesterday evening and this morning figuring it out and apparently a few things have changed since we bought our old computer almost 6 years ago. I know, it was time. Actually, most of it I can figure out, but I'm having a little trouble with getting my pictures off my camera and onto the computer. I can get them on the computer, but I can't figure out how to organize them the way that I want to. It'll just take some time, I'm sure.

Here are the things you've missed around the McCall household since I've been gone:

* Phoebe has learned to move her time-out chair all around the house as her own personal step-stool. Now she can get into almost anything! Yippee.

* I went to Sam's today and bought 6 lbs. of boneless skinless chicken breasts for $1.67 a lb. I also bought 18 rolls of paper towels, a delicious flat of raspberries, a case of Diet Cokes (I have a serious Diet Coke addiction), and two bakery loaves of sourdough bread. I was tempted, but did not buy, a 24 oz. container of hummus, a giant bag of pretzel chips, a big bunch of asparagus, and two large bags of Multi-Grain Cheerios.

* I have caught up on my laundry and vacuumed my closet. I've also swept the floor multiple times everyday each day this week. I've decided we need a dog.

* Eli informed me that he was going to learn how to read this summer so he didn't have to go to school everyday next year. I think kindergarten is going to come as a huge shock.

* Brad brought home some Amish Friendship Bread so I've been trying to remember to "Mush the bag" at least once a day and keep track of which of the 14 days of instructions I'm actually on. I only do this because I love my husband so much and he loves this bread so much. If it were up to me, I'd chunk the whole thing in the trash. Seriously, Amish Friendship Bread is a testament to True Love.

* I have become the assistant coach for Eli's preschool soccer team. I'll post more on this later because I'm sure that most of you who know me well have laughed out loud. My parents' both did.

While I know that so many of you are extremely jealous of the high-profile, exciting life that I lead, please know that it is not all that's it's cracked up to be. We are just like all the rest of you and our family is just as normal as yours. :)

Iron Infusions

There hasn't been too much going on around here lately. The weekend was spent lying around and putting up Christmas. Literally. I accomplished no house projects or laundry or bathroom cleaning.

Today I spent the day getting my first iron infusion. And I mean the ENTIRE DAY. I went in at 8am for labs, then it was off to the oncologist's office to discuss the infusions and course of treatment for all my low blood counts over the next few weeks and then it was off to the "chemo delivery room." I'm not sure what the real name for it is, but it's where everyone is lined up in hospital recliners all hooked up to IV's receiving various methods of chemo. Well, except for me and one other guy who was also getting iron treatments. It was a little surreal. I got there around 9:30am. They checked my temp and blood pressure and started the IV. Only two sticks this time, thank you very much. Then I had to get a bag to saline into my system. Then a small bag of something that had something to do with anti-rejection. It started with a "D." Then a bag of Benadryl to help with allergic reactions to the iron. That pretty much knocked me out. After that, they did a test run of the iron. One in three people have an allergic reaction so they test you first to make sure you can tolerate it. I've had reactions to blood transfusions before and apparently the reaction to the iron is pretty similiar. I was fine. Then it was time to start the Big Dose. They started that a little after noon and it took over 2 hours! I didn't get to leave until 2:45pm. It was kind of like going on a really long car ride without actually getting anywhere and there really wasn't anything to look forward to. Brad kept the children at the house all morning. He tried to work and when Eli just wouldn't leave him alone, he called another little boy down the street to come over and play. When his mom, Kristy, found out what was going on, she became my knight in shining armor. She let Brad keep her son while she ran her younger daughter to ballet and then took my children home for lunch and to play all afternoon. It was an absolute life-saver. About that time, I was getting really bored and antsy so Brad was able to come and hang out for the last hour of treatment and then take me to a really late lunch. More like a lunner! I had taken a book with me but the anti-rejection medications made me very dizzy and it was hard to read and they had a TV there you can watch, but it was kind of a common TV and the "chemo room" is very quiet and depressing and I just felt a little bad turning it on. There were snacks, too, but one can only eat so many granola bars and cheese crackers. Unfortunately, one of the side effects to the iron infusions is feeling like you have the flu once the benadryl wears off. It gradually tapers off and by tomorrow I'll feel as good as new...maybe even better if my blood counts do what they are supposed to. While we were at lunch, Brad had a work emergency he needed to go see about and I just needed to go to bed so Kristy just kept my children at her house. She even offered to feed them dinner, but we had bowls of cereal waiting at home. Seriously, we're pretty upscale around here sometimes! :) Thank you, thank you, thank you Kristy!

It was the first time I'd actually been around people who were getting IV chemo. My treatment has always been surgery or a pill. That place is a little depressing. The nurses are really great. They bring you warm blankets and coffee and share their personal pumpkin spice creamer when the waiting room is out of creamer and make sure you have everything you need, but everyone in there is just sick. No way to get around that. There were people there shrinking their tumors so they could have a mastectomy and people there on their last chemo treatment after having done it for twos year and people there with more tubes than you can count. I felt a little guilty just getting iron. It gave me lots of time to admire people maintaining their dignity in the face of the horrible. People of all ages and races and walks of life just doing what they need to do.Not too many visitors stay for the IV part, it seems. There aren't many extra chairs. Plus, what are they gonna do? I did learn that a normal chemo treatment takes about 1 1/2 to 2 hours so the caregivers usually go do a little errand running or medicine picking up or whatever. If it didn't mean that someone I loved was sick, I would have rather been one of those people.

The best part of today was that I was told I only had to get one iron infusion this week. They are going to check my blood counts on Wednesday and Friday and give me B-12 shots on those days, as well, but no iron infusions until next Monday. It should be faster next Monday, too, since they don't have to do all the preliminary testing to make sure I don't have a reaction. It should only take about three hours on Monday. Sheesh. I'm going to make Brad let me take his laptop so I can do some catch-up on the blogging. Maybe I'll even check my Facebook account again. :)

A Visit To The Oncologist

Our internet was on the blink the last few days...well, actually my computer was on the blink because we were able to connect with the internet on our phones, but not on the computer. Brad thinks it's time to buy me a laptop (which I would absolutely love to have), but there just seem to be so many more things I'd like to do with the house first. A couch for Brad's office, curtains on all the windows, a dining table, a rug for the living room...the list could go on and on. We'll see what happens. We got it to work this morning, so we won't go buy a laptop today, at least! :)

I had an oncologist appointment yesterday. Just a routine visit, but really when you have to see an oncologist, is it ever really routine? Especially when you take your 22-month-old who is scared of all things medical and decides to pitch a fit while the doctor is examining you and another nurse has to come in and help because your husband has a meeting he can't get out of because it had been reschedlued three times! Fun times. He did tell me that I only needed to have CT scans done about every 6 months so that was kind of exciting and the results from my last scan were good. Nothing has changed so it means the Gleevec is doing what it's job. I personally would love to hear that all the tumors have just disappeared, but that's just probably not going to happen any time soon so no change is good, too. We always discuss my side effects to the medication and while the doctor has a sympathetic ear, he mostly just says they have to be endured so the medicine can do it's work. The only thing of note was the fact that my white blood cell, hemoglobin, iron, and B-12 counts were all very, very low. He doesn't think it's because I'm bleeding internally or anything drastic like that (although there have been some tests ordered just to be sure), but more likely the iron and B-12 counts are due to malabsorption (I've had this problem since I was 11) and the hemoglobin and white blood count to the Gleevec and maybe other levels being low. It does explain the extreme fatigue I've been experiencing, though. It's not something I talk about too much because I think it just sounds like whining, but fatigue has been one of the hardest side effects of the cancer/medication. I'm not one that sits still well or rests easily. When I can't do anything but lie on the couch and I'm even to tired to read to my children, the guilt is an actual weight I can feel and my thoughts and feelings of inadequacy get a little overwhelming. Now I have a reason for feeling like this! :) Mostly the course of treatment will be a folic acid vitamin (it has something to do with absorption of iron or B-12...I can't remember) and probably iron and B-12 injections. They are going to monitor my blood counts pretty closely which means weekly visits to the blood lab (yeah!) and we'll just figure it out from there. I am glad we finally got an oncologist here in town, though. It makes me feel like I'm being taken care of just a little bit better.

I did give myself a break this morning though. I didn't set my alarm and the children didn't get up until almost 8:00!! It might have had something to do with Brad letting them stay up past bedtime, but I was too tired last night to enforce any kind of bedtime routine. We cuddled in bed for about 30 minutes and then I gave them cereal for breakfast. (We don't usually eat cereal because I'm a big believer in a hot breakfast, but they think it's a great treat!) Now it's almost 10:00am and the children are still in their pajamas. I guess we're having a home day. :) It's probably good because the kitchen needs cleaning, the bathrooms are gross, and there is laundry to do...all after I drink my second cup of coffee, though!

Lover Boy

On the way home from KU yesterday, I mentioned to Eli that Ms. Heather and her children were going to stop by and look at our new house. Her daughter Kinsey is just a few months younger than Eli and is up at KU some in the afternoons after kindergarten since Heather is the director. He replied, "Kinsey blew me a kiss at school today, but I karate chopped it apart (insert karate chopping motion here) so it didn't get me! Then she kissed me on the cheek and I rubbed it off and then I fell over (pretend to faint here)!"

The boy really has a way with the ladies.

The McCall Christmas

Well, we're just going to try this again. I tried to post a blog yesterday and just before I went to publish it, the entry vanished. Apparently into thin air because it wasn't saved in drafts or anywhere else on my computer that I could find. I was so disgusted that I gave up and did two more loads of laundry instead. Maybe today it will work better. :)

We had a very nice Christmas that seemed to stretch on for days and days. The Monday before Christmas we tried something new and opened our "family" gifts with just the four of us. Since we are always out of town for Christmas day visiting grandparents, it gave us something that was just ours...and we didn't have to haul presents both ways! Then Tuesday we headed to Albuquerque to spend the holiday with Brad's parents, four brothers and their wives, and ten grandchildren (including my two). It seemed like a whirlwind of Christmas fun! We even experienced a white Christmas...sort of. It snowed late Tuesday night and then again on Friday. No blizzard, by any means, but enough to make you feel warm and cozy inside the house. When we got there, most of us headed into town to see the moving "Bolt" (pretty cute) and afterward Brad I stole away for a quick trip to Barnes and Nobles by ourselves! We got Starbucks and I was allowed to wander around to my hearts content. The evening was only marred by the fact that I had lost my cell phone (again) at the movie theater and we had to go back and get it. I found it and all was right with my world again! :) Wednesday we had our annual bowling competition (I'm not sure how "competitive" it really is since most of us are really terrible...although the four "boys" tend to get a little competitive) and Chinese food "lunner." You know, too late for lunch but too early for dinner? Brad's parents have some friends who hail from China and own a Chinese food restaurant there in Albuquerque and they hosted us for this "lunner." This is where we discovered that Phoebe may be part Chinese. That girl ate more food than I have every seen any small child eat. Cream cheese wontons, egg rolls, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, noodles, crab legs (which had to be pulled apart by me), and egg drop soup were not safe from her gobbling mouth. Then we had dessert. They were that fruit (I cannot remember the name) that looks like a canned apricot but tastes really sweet like canned peach or pear. Phoebe ate ELEVEN of them!! Her great-grandmother, who was sitting next her, was in utter awe. Seriously, the child is going to way 400 lbs. by the time she's 16.

Christmas morning was Christmas morning with Santa and chocolate peppermint muffins. It was only us and Brent and Paige at the grandparents' house since the other two brothers live nearby. They came over later for the tree and another "lunner." (I'm trying to see how many times I can use that word in this post alone.) Eli's Christmas was made when he unwrapped the Lego Star Wars Wii game and exclaimed, "I'VE BEEN WANTING THIS FOR YEARS!" and then proceeded to play it non-stop for the next six hours. Literally. No lunch. No bathroom breaks. Just the Wii. Sometimes he played with Brad, sometimes with his cousins, and sometimes by himself. I'm hoping his little brain has recovered from gorging on "boyness" to be functional enough for KU today. We've been much more judicious about the Wii play time since then, but it was Christmas, for goodness sakes! Well, at least I have been more judicious. Brad is kind of sucker for video games. Christmas Day was completed with a "Pageant" put on and directed by Morgan and starring all the cousins. Well, all of them except Eli who was still mind-melding to the Wii. They all had sweet/funny/ridiculous parts to play, but Brent and Kevin stole the show when they moon walked. I'm not sure any of us will ever be the same again! :) Friday was deemed "Wii Free" and Eli played with his cousins and we just relaxed. Then we packed up and headed back on Saturday. I told Brad that I felt like one of those "snake in the peanut can" jokes and when we opened the doors to our car our stuff was just going to explode all over the garage. It didn't and I was able to get it all put away and the laundry all done before heading to Dallas for the funeral.

*Sigh* It was so much fun. I just love Christmas. Maybe that is the real reason my Christmas tree is still up and not because I dread taking it down.

A Proper New Year's Eve

I've never really enjoyed New Year's Eve. I'm kind of a homebody who enjoys going to bed pretty early so it never made any sense to go out (in the cold) and stay up really late. Unfortunately, I'm married to someone who believes you should stay up past midnight and celebrate the new year. It always makes me tired. This year I had exactly the kind of New Year's Eve I don't ever get to experience. Aunt Bess's funeral and graveside service were both on Wednesday and we were out of the house by 7:30am. Then it was an emotionally exhausting day and by the time my parents and I finally got home at 7:00 that evening all any of us wanted to do was eat dinner and go to bed. My dad built a fire and made his very yummy garlic herb shrimp and pasta and then we all went to bed...before 10:00pm. It was quiet and it was awesome.

We were up and at 'em early the next day though because me, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law drove all the way to Amarillo all jammed into my brother's Ford Explorer with all the Christmas presents and luggage. It was a tight fit and I was so glad to get home to see my babies and my husband. My sister and her new husband flew in this evening and we are celebrating one last Christmas tomorrow morning. (I know, most of you probably have all your Christmas packed up and put away, but we still have a mountain of gifts to open!)

How did anyone else spend their New Year's Eve?

Aunt Bess

My great-aunt, Sarah Beth Yarbrough, passed away early Sunday morning. She wasn't the sort of great-aunt from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation...a little dingy, a lot old, and definitely not one to be missed. She was a vital part of our family. My mom's mom was the oldest of four children (three girls and then a boy) and they still all get together with their children, their children's children, and now their children's children's children at Thanksgiving or Christmas and other times during the year. I don't know too many families that do that. We spent Thanksgiving with them this year. Aunt Bess, as we all called her, never married. She lived all her life (with the exception of college) in Fort Worth and was a teacher for 45 years, mostly art and drama. I remember her attending my ballet recitals, t-ball games (that one year I played), birthday parties. She was the great-aunt who would take you to see the trains behind her house when you got bored with all the grown-ups. She was the one who would hold one of her gazillion cats so you could pet it. She was the great-aunt who was always last in line for dinner. She drove the same car most of her adult life (a 1970 green Camaro)and always told you she was 97. She was the great-aunt who painted and collected art and took you to see the great works of art at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth. Family was important to her as seen by her relationships with her sisters and brother and nieces and nephews. She was stubborn and strong and just a little eccentric, and she made the best darn Watergate salad. Oh sure, someone else will make it for Christmas next year, but it won't be the same. She will be greatly missed.

This is my grandmother (the oldest), Aunt Bess (#3), Marianna (#2), and Charles (#4) at Thanksgiving. I wish I could find a picture of Aunt Bess as we all remember her, but I couldn't find one on my computer since I lost so many pictures summer before last.


Oh, how she will be missed. But I don't think she'd come back...even if she could.