First Entry! :)

WOO HOO!!  I have a blog!

And I have....

No clue what I'm doing! :)

I suppose this is just like when I joined Facebook, or Twitter.  You just type, push some buttons and see what happens? :) 

It'll all work out!

Right?

I am a married mom of two sons, Zach who is 9 and says the funniest stuff.  We call them "Zachisms".  I'll be sharing some of those with you, okay a lot of those with you. ;)

Braden is 8 and has been fighting a form of childhood cancer called neuroblastoma (I refuse to capitalize that or the word cAncer because I don't think they get to be "important"). Braden was diagnosed in 2007 at the age of 3 and was given a 30% chance of being alive on December 28, 2012.

He made it!

But..he relapsed with his cancer in 2009 and we were told there was "no known cure" for his cancer and his chances of being alive in 2016 were less than 10%.

He continues to go through an amazing, unique cancer journey and has been in treatment every day for 5 years but he is still here!

"TAKE THAT cANCER!"

4 months after Braden was diagnosed with his relapse, I was diagnosed with Stage II breast cancer.

Because there was so much more information known about my cancer than his and there were so many more treaments available to me, we started a foundation to raise awareness and fund research to find the activators of childhood cancer and targeted treatments to shut those activators down.

We had chemo on the same days, we were bald together and today we are both kicking cAncer!

Again..TAKE THAT cANCER! :)

I am the President of our foundation, I don't make any money but it's the best job I've ever had!

I used to be a teacher, then an Elementary Principal, then a Director of Human Resources...

Also...really awesome jobs!

Now I'm a momcologist and advocate.

I want to be a ninja next.

Maybe next week! :)

We have one angel daughter, Miranda Grace, who died 15 hours after she was born in 2001. 

I have MS, Braden has autism, and there's a lot more... www.BradensArmy.com has it all but the important things are not all the depressing, sad things...

The important things are what we have learned along this roller coaster ride we call life.

We've learned a LOT!! 

And as a result,

We love, laugh, and live every day to its fullest.

We appreciate things more.

We detour (there's a long story there that I will tell you sometime but essentially we stop the craziness of life and do things like go to the park, have a picnic, read a book together, something every single day).

My life will probably make you laugh, be grateful for the good, the bad, and the just plain ridiculous...

...shake you head, SCRATCH your head, question everything, and if things go well...

Our lives will bring you HOPE!

Thanks for reading...

Plus...

Writing this blog is a LOT cheaper than REAL therapy for me!!

:)