A few photos

On Friday after school we had the fun of watching the baton go past for the Commonwealth Games. It's over so quickly, but it still seems worth the effort to go and see it.

Saturday afternoon we watched dolphins at the beach, which was probably more interesting but not as historic. It was easier to photograph the people watching the dolphins than the dolphins.

Update

Sorry we haven't posted for a while, but no news is good news! Joshua is still going well. He had a trip to Brisbane last month for a check up. They were happy enough with him that they've said we don't have to go back to Brisbane at all and can get all future checks done in Cairns. We were at the hospital on Monday for his March check ups. To be honest it feels a little bit like running a gauntlet every month - will he be OK, will he not? Overall though we feel pretty peaceful that God's got this. You can see the hair is back!

In other news, Caleb had his 13th birthday last month. He had a fast-paced birthday party on the Esplanade which meant we have no photos. Sometimes you are too busy living life to document it! I think that's a good thing, although it can also be nice to have some photos.

On Sunday Caleb was baptised at church in the pouring rain by Geoff, the pastor and Daniel. He'd been planning it for a while but in the event it was a spontaneous response to the message preached on Sunday. Geoff had the pool ready and piles of towels for those who wanted to be baptised. Remember it's summer here, so it's no problem to go home in your wet clothes!

School

School started again finally, after a long summer break. Ruben started full time school and Joshua returned to school like nothing had happened! He is cycling to school and has rejoined the basketball team. It's a total miracle the way he has just recovered from cancer. The hats are a Queensland thing, I know it looks a bit Amish! I have no answers for the socks. If you had gone to school where I did, you would have got beaten up for socks like that! Caleb says school is awesome, so that has to be good and everyone else seems to be happy. Ruben has slight issues with having to wear socks and shoes, which are hot. He spent most of last year in bare feet! If you wondering why they are all wearing different uniforms, it's because Joshua and Bethany are wearing the boy/girl versions of the high school uniform, Caleb is wearing middle school uniform and Ruben goes to a different school.

Last Friday was Australia day and was pouring with rain. However, that didn't stop us going down to the esplanade for a free breakfast (I love Cairns council) and it didn't stop some people swimming, (Ruben and Caleb), in their clothes!! There was also a baby croc down there!

There was a  lull in the otherwise very wet weather on Sunday, (it is the rainy season) so we headed for the beach for some chips and to get rid of some energy!! That is the ones with energy to spare in the first place!

Been a while...

Hello all, just a very quick post to say we are all still alive and well! No particularly good excuse for not having blogged, but life happens...

Joshua has had two lots of scans and appointments in Cairns so far, and all is clear. We are due to go back down to Brisbane for his February round, so we are starting to look at arrangements for that. Otherwise, there is not much to report.

So here are a bunch of random photos from the last month or so...

Four of us took a ride in a driverless vehicle that they were trialling on the Esplanade

 Christmas Carol concert, sponsored by the Council but led by one of the local churches

How we get a lie in on summer mornings...

An attempt at a family photo

Ruben opening his stocking on Christmas morning

Ruben thinking he might need a haircut...

A Google-created animation of New Year's Eve on the Esplanade 

(Google seems to have a habit of nosing about in my stuff and trying to be helpful...

quite scary if you think about it too hard...)

Finding God in the Waves

There seem to be a lot of spiritual analogies we can learn from water. This week I have been thinking about a few verses in Job. Job 38:8-11 says, "Who kept the sea inside its boundaries...For I locked it behind barred gates, limiting its shores. I said, 'This far and no farther will you come. Here you proud waves must stop'." 

Waves can be gentle, but they can also be violent, powerful and thundering. When you look at them they appear unstable and out of control. Yet every time a wave crashes it returns to where it came from. (OK, so I'm not talking about tsunamis). No matter how big a wave, there are limits on where it can go. Somehow when it seems out of control, there is total control.

So often when difficult things happen in our lives, it feels like things are out of control and that God has lost control. However, even in the craziest of times in our lives, like the waves,  God has total control. I have been amazed that although Joshua has had cancer, at the same time he has been his usual healthy self. The cancer aside, he hasn't really been sick. It feels like God has said over his body, 'this far and no farther will you come'. The cancer was something totally out of our control, but at the same time the way Joshua coped with treatment showed me that God was totally in control. Like the waves, God puts parameters in our lives. He allows certain things and we may feel buffeted and frightened at times, but it all happens within God's complete control.

Schools out!

It's that strange time of year again in Australia (at least for those of us who went to school in the northern hemisphere) where we are heading into the summer holidays and the Christmas holidays simultaneously. If you've been conditioned into feeling that these are two separate holidays it feels very odd when they merge. Clearly it's not wrong, it's just different, but there's a lot to get through when you have to celebrate the end of the school year and Christmas things at the same time.

Joshua returned to school on Friday for the last day of term. He is quite bemused as to why, when he is fine, everybody keeps asking how he is feeling. There is now a two month summer/Christmas holiday before school starts again at the end of January - happy days!!!!

An uneventful week medically. We got the dates of Joshua's next five scans at the hospital and a letter summarising everything he has been through.The words I liked the most were, 'complete remission', 'excellent prognosis' and 'complications nil.' Much nicer than bilateral bone marrow biopsy and intrathecal chemotherapy.

Two exciting things happened this week, or at least they were for the individuals concerned. Ruben visited the prep class where he will start next year full time. Most excitingly for him, he was given a little joey (not a real one, that would have actually been exciting and possibly illegal) wearing it's own school uniform and a book telling the story of joey's first day in prep.

Very excitingly for Joshua he took and passed his driving theory test, which enabled him to get his provisional driving license. He now has to drive for 100 hours (not all at once) before he is allowed to take his practical test. The good thing about Australia is that it is so big, if you have the time it is easy to clock up the hours. Road trip here we come! It's a 32 hour drive to Melbourne, so there and back would help the hours in the log book. I am also going to have to learn to drive properly again - sigh! I started driving an automatic in Nairobi and haven't looked back. Most of the larger cars here are automatic, so that's what we have. I'm definitely a little rusty when it comes to using the old gear stick. 

Fishing

Joshua's hospital appointment was fairly uneventful. They checked him over and told him to come back in December. It was strange to see the doctors from Lady Cilento braving the far north of the country. For one of them it was his first visit to Cairns. As far as updating on Joshua's condition, this blog will hopefully become fairly uneventful. Compared to the intensity of the last few months we are back to the humdrum of normal life, most of which is not that blog worthy. I don't think you really want to hear about my visits to the supermarket, exciting as those can be! Stone fruit and mangoes are now in season and Bunderberg soft drinks are now selling their Christmas spiced ginger beer (see, not that exciting).

People keep saying to us how pleased we must be to all be back together and again and in Cairns. Of course we are and we politely smile and agree, but to be honest it's quite odd. The last few months have been very intense and now we are back to 'normal', I'm not sure what to feel. We probably need time to process our emotions, most of which we put on hold in order to 'hold it together' during the treatment. Cancer has been our focus, now we have to remember what we did and how we spent our time before. It was only a few months, but it feels like a lifetime. Maybe we are still in shock. There is definitely a gap between the way people expect us to feel now that it's 'all over' and the way that we actually feel.

When you receive the diagnosis you are numb and in shock and then you go into survival mode. You get through one day at a time. Finishing treatment possibly is the start of the release of all those unresolved emotions and feelings there was no time for during treatment. We are now part of a club that we never expected to join - the cancer club. I guess it is just something we will have to work through!

Normal life involved fishing on Saturday afternoon/evening. Here are a few photos.