Christmas Eve

** Emerson and Makenzie doing the Happy Dance in front of UCSF - 12.23.10 **

We are really home, Christmas Eve!! We had Makenzie's ultrasound today and got the best news that her pseudocyst is getting smaller! The nerves riding on this ultrasound brought my stomach to knots every day, Jack calling every bit to hear results, and Makenzie nervously talking a mile a minute to the ultrasound tech about everything ranging from her scars to Santa. When we hopped out of the car leaving Emerson with my sister, Auntie BB, Emerson started screaming since she was scared we were staying in the hospital again. All of us were waiting for the moment to hear the pseudocyst was smaller...and it came at 3:57 pm. While we knew we would deal accordingly if it had grown or stayed stagnant equating a visit to stay at UCSF for Christmas, we are so very grateful to have been given the gift of time together at home.

Some people think that when you get to go home, you are "HOME" and able to just move on to life as it was. But 3 months have passed, and we have a new life that has shifted in so many ways we can't describe. We are all forever changed....forever knowing that life is more precious and the biggest events can happen instantaneously. I will take all those ways though because I sit here in my favorite red chair, drinking mint tea and looking at our Christmas Tree with twinkle lights in our living room I know my two little beautiful babies are asleep upstairs in their own beds. We are lucky and while for whatever reason Makenzie was picked to endure an ultramarathon of medical challenges, we are all stronger and more deeply alive than ever before.

Little stressers of the holidays are just that, little! The big stressers are the kids unable to go home from UCSF for the holidays if ever. But also to me, the big stressers are people who never understand how precious life truly is and cherish the moments of sleeping cherub sweeties, mint tea and twinkle lights in a small house. They complain about what is not happening instead of relishing the life that is happening. One thing I am more sure than ever before is we can't control life, but can control how we appreciate and enjoy it.

Embrace every moment making silly messes in the kitchen with your family, being up with a sleeping baby who is in his/her own crib, sitting at a dinner table with disagreeing family members who make you laugh inside knowing why disagree when you know you won't see eye to eye ever but love each other...and linger longer in every twinkle light moment than you thought possible.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. Let the love of each other fill you up as my family has filled me up. With peace, love, and eternal gratitude - Erin Kreitz Shirey