We just thought we would try to give another brief update on the family and Scott’s recovery.

The rhythm of our daily lives continues to be blessedly slow compared to normal, but even with the slower pace, plenty of appointments keep us hopping.

Scott’s recovery has kind of plateaued, so while we are so thankful that it is manageable and he is able to function pretty close to normal and sleeping most nights now, it’s also still a bit discouraging that we seem to be stuck just south of “normal.” We return to Knoxville for a follow-up appointment in August where he will have a check-up and his first bloodwork since treatment. Our hope is that we will see a nice drop in his PSA, and that this number will continue to drop over the coming year. Those things would indicate successful treatment.

Life has begun to slip back into a more normal routine, though, and that is nice. Here are a few highlights from the past few weeks:

• Dear friends from our early days of marriage came to town, and Scott and I had a wonderful evening out with them. It was so refreshing to do something so normal.
• Caelyn had seven stones removed from her bladder and recovered well and quickly from that.
• Roslyn was seen at Children’s to finalize plans for her major bladder reconstruction surgery on September 13.
• We went shoe shopping for about twenty pairs of shoes. Again, it was so wonderful to be doing something so normal, in spite of the fact that this is always a huge ordeal. Some of the kids had gotten really desperate for new shoes, so we loved checking this one off our list.
• Nathan’s leg has continued to heal so that he is now able to wear his prosthesis for short periods every day! It no longer fits properly after the changes in the diameter of his calf, resulting from his last surgery, so we are in the process of doing the required dances with insurance as we prepare to have a new leg made for him. But it appears that surgery has definitely been a huge success, and he is so thankful to be up and about much of each day — even doing some Frisbee and soccer with the other kids now.
• We were finally able to celebrate the graduations for Robyn and Nathan with a special little ceremony here at home.
• We celebrated our July birthdays (we recently calculated that we average a birthday here every eleven days throughout the year! Wow!)
• We have done lots of swimming during this very hot summer. I can’t even count how many times we have said, “We are so thankful for Lilyan’s Make-a-Wish pool!!” And the deck that allows us to get the kids in and out of the pool without having to lift them over the side is absolutely amazing and such a life-saver. This is especially true for Kathryn who weighs over a hundred pounds now.

Overall, we are doing well and very thankful for the mostly-calm waters we find ourselves in right now. Today is a special day for us as it marks the first anniversary of our meeting with Nolan. I wrote a blog post about that on my personal blog, and if you’d like to read that, it’s here  — “The Little Black Boy Came.”

I’ll close with a  few photos of some of the events mentioned above. Thank you so much for your continued prayers.

Such a special time of rehashing old memories with these dear friends

Crazy day of shoe-shopping

So great to see Nathan on two feet and playing in the backyard again!