LONGHORN UPDATE: They caught the bull about 2am, finally! One of our neighbors roped him and they loaded him on a truck and took him home.

Anyway with all of the hullabaloo about the bulls running through he neighborhood, I forgot to update you on Johnny. Tuesday night he wasn’t feeling too well from the chemo on Monday, he didn’t go out to play or skate, so I knew he felt yucky. I kept him home Wednesday and took him to the clinic to get his labs. We didn’t stick around afterward to get the official word, I just said call us with the numbers.

About half way home we got the call that said Johnny’s ANC was 150, everything else was fine, but he can’t be around kids/crowds/germs until his next visit on Tuesday. His ANC has to be at least 500 for him to be able to go back to school. At least the kids get the whole week off for Thanksgiving next week, that should give him plenty of time to recover. Today we made him get dressed so Mike could take him out to lunch.

Johnny has a cough and runny nose, hopefully it won’t get much worse. I think it’s because his oral chemo is up to 75%, then all of the hard chemo on top of that, it just makes him feel weak and yucky.

For Thanksgiving, everyone will be in Galveston — we have so much to be thankful for. I’m thankful for Mikey, my family, his family, buttercup, and that Johnny is still with us and will be for a long time. I read and keep up with families at TCH what they have to go through, transplants, harder protocols, longer hospital visits, and then still lose a child. Since all of this started, and we’ve made friends with other families, there have been about 3 kids a month that have lost their battles with cancer. All different types of cancer, circumstances, male or female, all ages, some babies as young as 6 months. So when I think about Johnny’s counts only being 150, I’ll take that any day, over the alternative.

I’m thankful for everyone that has supported us, wished us well, and said a prayer or two, it gives us strength to make it one more day.

We’ll see how sappy I am next Wednesday after F I V E long days with the kids. Maybe then I will be thankful for tequila, wine, and Xanax!

Oh, and school photos.

JOEY! I can’t believe that he will be E L E V E N in a week!

When people told me that Mike and Joey look like twins, I always went along with them but wasn’t 100%. Okay, so Mikey is sporting a perm and a stand-alone mustash, and other than the resemblance to Napolean Dynamite, he and Joey could be dead ringers. Luckily after the perm wore off, Mike’s grandmother never let him do it again. I think he learned his lesson.

When we moved to the beach house I thought it was really cool when we saw lots of toads hopping around the house at night, and even the stray crab or two. Then earlier this summer coming home on my bike from my parents house about dusk, I saw a fox running through the yard. The boys were even on the slip n’ slide, but the fox didn’t seem to mind too much.

Sandy, our neighbor across the street told me that last Friday night she saw a coyote jump up from our ditch in the front yard and run across the street. WOW. You don’t see that in Houston. Gordon, our neighbor behind us, was telling Mike and I a story about a coyote that was trying to play with his dogs at 2am few weekends ago. Cool stories to hear about, but this one takes the cake:

Okay, the photos are difficult to see at best, and yes, that is the local Sheriff in front of our house. Nothing out of the norm you say? Well most of the time I would have to agree with you, but this time it had nothing to do with us. They are looking for a bull. In our neighborhood. In our yard.

I first saw the crew (do they still use the term “cow-hands”?) going up and down our street about 8pm. They were in a huge pick up truck with one of those “cop spot lights” looking under the houses. I thought maybe they were looking for the coyote, and then my “city” instincts/mind started working — “I bet it’s a burglar! Quick lock the doors!!!” About an hour later Mike told me they were looking for a cow and it’s already been through our yard about 4 times.

WHAT!?! This I gotta see…. so I went outside and did my own steak-out. I think he’s still on the lam, because a truck just drove by flashing the lights they use to find under-age kids drinking — not that I would know anything about that, it’s just what I have read and what people have told me…

Johnny also had chemo today. No counts — they forgot to draw labs, which means back to the clinic tomorrow.

After the clinic today, we barely made it to Johnny’s Thanksgiving Day Program — he did really well.

He’s the letter “K”…

I will keep you posted about the bull — who knows, it could be an old fashioned Texas Style BBQ!