We're BAAAACK!

So it's been a little bit of a whirlwind...after Emmett's MRI, we were recommended to get his port (essentially a long-term IV that is surgically placed in his chest that goes straight to his heart.  This allowed the doctors to give chemo that would immediately be pumped through his body instead of being so caustic and sitting in his veins waiting to get to his heart) out before we left Boston.  And we were told by surgery that since this is routine, it takes a month or so to schedule and they only do them at their satellite location.  So yet again, we had no clue when we would be leaving, as they don't really schedule that far in advance, I guess.  They just kind of let you know a week before that your surgeon is planning a day at the satellite location, etc...   With Emmett doing well, Micah has been working pretty regularly and it was hard to have an indefinite moving date, yet again.  This would mean having to buy another flight or 2 for him to go back again to NM if we were going to be in Boston a lot longer.  Just more traveling, more expense, more delay, more up in the air.  I mean, believe me, we're good at just living day to day and not worrying what's going to happen 3 days from now.  But Micah's kind of back in the real world and it's hard to straddle both lifestyles.  We really loved the surgeon that put in his port, and since port placement means bad news, usually as a professional courtesy, they also let the same surgeon take out the port, so they are able to celebrate and do some 'happy' surgeries, too!  Even after we requested just any surgeon, they still couldn't schedule us yet.  Micah called a few times.  This was during the government shutdown.  Micah works for a government contractor that was still running off of savings (novel ideal?!) but would be running out by the end of the month.  They held meetings to explain to employees about what would happen.  This made me a little worried that maybe we wouldn't have any insurance for a while and Emmett still had a major procedure!  Micah mentioned this to the scheduler on Thursday the 10th and by Friday morning we had a place in the books for Monday morning!  And although we've hoped we would be going home, at any of these appointments we could have polar opposite outcomes, so you can't really plan ahead.  Luckily, we have had good news lately.  Monday he had surgery, Tuesday we laid low and let him recover and by Friday we had trailer packed (how on earth did we accumulate so much stuff?!?!) and Saturday we drove off.  It has all happened really fast and we were so busy tying up loose ends that we didn't get a chance to even tell people we were leaving for good.  We will be back in the spring, though, for another MRI!

This is for the City View Ward-this sign was brought to us at UNMH and hung there, flew all the way to Boston with us and has hung over our bed ever since.  I wanted a picture before we took it down.  It made me happy to be reminded of all our friends back home and some of the notes would make us laugh.  Thanks so much!   

Before leaving Saturday morning, we waited for Emmett's mailman friend, Tony, so Emmett could 'do mail' one last time.  He really goes around on the route with him (Tony even changed this part of his route so it's not too long!) and Tony lets him put the mail in the boxes.  Emmett LOVES it.  Especially because after he 'works,' Tony lets him honk the horn on the mail truck a few times.

Bye to Uncle Cris, our roommate

Another of Emmett's favorite visitors were in town for a game, so despite it being a last minute leave, we got to see them one last time, too!!  This is my Uncle Bruce and Aunt BeeJay.  They've taken awesome care of us while we've been in Boston. 

We had a beautiful fall drive through the Berkshires

Spent the night in NY so we could visit with some of Micah's extended family

Made it to Michigan, to visit Micah's family for a week.  Emmett LOVED feeding the animals

...and baby cousin, Emma.  What a doll she is!

Visited some favorite family spots

...and had an open house party for family friends!  It snowed...yes it SNOWED!! a few times that week, but it ended up being good weather for a nice bonfire party (apparently we don't have pictures of the actual fire).  This is a longtime family friend, who Emmett started calling Grandpa Gilbert, after I called him an experienced grandpa (of 13) and he started giving Emmett car rides.  Apparently Emmett heard me call him a grandpa ;)

More dear friends, the Remunds

Mrs. Buckham has been involved in the 4H and her family own most the sheep in town.

We enjoyed her coming and visiting

Emmett made a new friend, Rachel.  In fact, no surprise, really, he just wanted to 

chase around with the teenagers most the night

Saturday we got in the car again...did a lot of driving....

Drove by a lot of rest stops, but this one of course caught my attention...

For real?

Oh Texas, you're so vain, you probably think this post is about you.  

and NEVER in my life did I think I would be SOOOOOOO excited to see this sign!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Emmett was an amazing trooper. AMAZING.. A-MA-ZING!!!!  Didn't even pull out any electronics on the 2 days from Boston to Kalamazoo.  From KZ to ABQ, it ended up being a much more rushed trip than we had planned, and Micah needed to get back to work on Monday, so I did pull out the iPads then more, so we could sleep and switch off driving.  He complained ONE time out of all this driving that he hurt.  Another blessing.  If he had hated it, I wouldn't be able to bare to put him back in the carseat.

and it feels AWESOME to be back home!  I forgot how soft and fluffy my bed is and how cute our backyard is and how warm it is here in the fall ;)  And best of all, Emmett came back with us....

This should be its own post, but seeing as we're incredibly slow at posting these days, I'm just going to add these in here.  This is Emmett's last stay at the hospital.  It was the end of July, I believe.  

He discovered this song right as we were discharged and 

literally seconds before it was time to say bye to our nurses.

His nurse, Jen, loved doing animal sounds with him, mostly the monkey;  

the taught him an awesome monkey impression

Final goodbye....

  I'm not sure the videos do justice to this visit.  He put on quite the show for them,
which they deserved!  They've been through it all with this guy. We have loved & adored our nurses and doctors!