Merry Merry Christmas!!!

I realize that I skipped right over Thanksgiving, but we are feeling so blessed with not only the miracles of the season, but with the miracles that we are seeing in our own lives, that I had to write this post first.

After six long weeks of waiting since his last treatment, Greg had a CT scan yesterday.  We are so grateful to report that not only are the tumors still shrinking, but they are doing so at more or less the same rate as before (pretty fast).  There are still some detectable masses, but they are much much smaller and the doctors seem confident that they will just continue to shrink.  Because of this, they have not scheduled any additional treatments for the immediate future, and in fact don't even want to see Greg again for three months, at which time they will do another scan and see how things are going.

The remarkable thing about IL-2 (assuming you are fortunate enough to respond at all) is that it has caused Greg's own immune system to fight the cancer.  The purpose of waiting the six weeks was to see if his body would continue to fight on its own, once the IL-2 was mostly out of his system.  The fact that it is means that the IL-2 has successfully to some extent trained his own immune system to recognize the RCC cells for what they are and kill them.  While this response does in some cases start to lessen over time, the feeling we get from the professionals is that Greg passed an important milestone with this scan.

We are so very grateful for all of you, our dear friends and family, who have prayed and fasted for Greg to be healed.  We know that our Heavenly Father has heard those prayers and that he has blessed our family so much.

Here are a few picture memories of the last month:

Coolest Arrow of Light Ceremony complete with flaming arrow fired into a bonfire.

Thanksgiving on the Big Isalnd (We loved having the Lyons and Kieth and Dagny there.  We also loved having Kasha over from BYU Hawaii to spend a few days):

 

Cutting down a Christmas tree! This is a new (2nd annual) tradition that we do on my birthday.

We finally took Kambria taken in for allergy testing   ("Mom, did you know that I have been congested since January... of last year?) Ends up that she is only allergic to every grass and every tree, except strangely the Cypress tree.  Ouch!

The real story behind our Christmas Card photo session. (Yes, I had to to run through the sticker grass into the self-timer photo.  It is no wonder that I look a bit manic in every single one...)

 






Ice Skating in San Francisco at Union Square: