Help me to Know It. Fight It. End It.

This blog has fallen to the wayside what with moving, the holidays, HAVING A BABY, settling in our house, and returning to work. I hope to get back into it as I think we are finally finding our groove but I'm going to skip all the updates for now because this is WAY more important.
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I owned an iPhone, iPhone is made by Apple, Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple, and Steve Jobs died of pancreatic cancer.

This was my six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon relationship with pancreatic cancer.  Distant. Removed. Little did I or anyone else in my family know in late January 2012 we were about to become really familiar with this scary, deadly, and usually silent form of cancer.

I knew my Dad hadn’t been feeling well over the holidays. He complained of some back pain and of fatigue but chalked it up to being worn down and a probable kidney stone.  My Mom called late one night and said she was taking Dad to the Emergency Room because he was having a lot of back pain related to the kidney stone they thought he had. I woke up in a panic in the middle of the night. I knew something was very wrong. When my Dad called me in the morning he told me that they found cancer in his liver. Lots and lots of cancer. The next few days were a whirlwind of tests, hospitalizations, biopsies, more tests, surgeries, and even more tests. They determined Dad had stage IV pancreatic cancer. It had spread from the pancreas to the lymph nodes and had run rampant in his liver. His blood work for pancreatic cancer markers was so high it was unmeasurable. They offered little hope, less than a  year with chemotherapy, but they offered to help us fight.

So it began. Chemotherapy three days a week, every other week for months on end. With each month the tumors shrank and his blood markers went down. In July of 2012 he reached the maximum number of chemotherapy treatments they recommend and went on a break... but his progress continued. The tumors were gone by fall and his blood markers were in the “normal” range.

It’s been over TWO years since we started this fight. Since then Dad has ran a half marathon, seen his first grandchild’s birth, been awarded with 25 years of service at his job, celebrated his 30^th wedding anniversary, and much more. Help us spread the good news that hope is an option for those with pancreatic cancer. Help us to reach more milestones. Help us Know it. Fight It. End It.  

(Last year at PurpleStrides)

I'm leading a team of friends and family at PurpleStride Washington DC on June 14th at Freedom Plaza. Please consider joining our team by visiting our website at http://purplestride.kintera.org/dc/purpleout (use code EarlyReg2014 for $10 off your registration) or making a donation to my personal page at http://purplestride.kintera.org/dc/brookepowell. 

Countdown Catch-up II

Baby boy is growing fast and his kicks and punches are getting very strong. His favorite things to do is party when I'm trying to sleep. He loves to dance to music especially anything with a little base and gets real crazy when sugar consumption is involved.

And just for fun, a progress summary.

We went back to Peek-a-boo 3D this week and got to see our guy again for the first time in over 2 months! He was sleeping and not a happy camper that we woke him up for pictures but his little big personality definitely had us laughing. Admittedly all baby's look pretty freaky especially in the womb... but I'm his mom and therefore biased so just ignore my gushing...

PS. I swear the next post will house updates.

all is fair in love and house hunting?

The new digs...

A few days after we got the paperwork from DR Horton officially terminating our contract we were able to meet up with our Realtor, John. He got us in to see five of the seven houses we wanted although one already had a contract in on it. The two we originally thought we were going to love, we hated, yet we couldn't stop gushing over one. You guessed it. The one that already had a contract. Turns out the sellers were in the processing of countering an offer thy had received. As the title suggests, we pulled a little Swiper action and snuck our offer on the table in the middle of their negotiations. Later that night we found out that the sellers would be meeting at 11am the next day to make a decision. So we waited. And waited. At 12:30pm we were sure that they went with the other offer.... it had just been too long. But, SURPRISE (insert sarcasm), our real estate agent called around 12:45pm and WE GOT IT!!

There are few more steps like the home inspection and appraisal before closing. Since we know all too well how wrong things can go we are trying not to get too excited before the keys are in our hands... but its hard ya'll! This one just feels right.

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Speaking of our real estate agent(s) if anyone is looking for a house in the Northern Virginia we HIGHLY recommend Century 21 New Millennium specifically John Queeney and Bob Scherbarth. Bob showed us over forty house and wrote 5+ offers in two months. John fought for us throughout the whole DR Horton debacle for over six months and got us this pad. If you want more info about our experiences with Century 21 New Millennium, John, or Bob feel free to message me!

dust yourself off and try again...

I've been holding off on posting for some time about the house because, well, things just haven been a bit of a mess. After we got our permits in mid/late June we thought it would be smooth sailing but we were very wrong. The builder did not begin to pour the foundation for almost another month putting us even further behind on time AND when the foundation was poured it was poured wrong.

See that large window in the middle? Yeah, its not supposed to be there. Not only that but the foundation is missing two smaller windows and the walkout basement. Whoops?!?! The builder assured us it was an easy fix. Several weeks later it still hadn't been corrected and in fact, they and had continued to frame in the wrong window and installed a window well.

Our concerns about the house were growing exponentially. Getting in contact with the sales agent took an act of Congress and when we were able to reach her we heard the same things over and over "I'm not sure. I'll have to get back you", "I will have to discuss that with ______", "I've been really busy so I'm not sure about _____" or "I've been out of the office so I'll have to check with ______". We tried to get contact information for her superiors with no luck and felt totally out of the loop with the plan for moving forward. The straw that broke the camel's back was when we heard about the lumber delays. The lumber wouldn't be arriving until August 15th at the earliest and it would take ninety days from the start of framing for the finished project. Then we would have to wait for the appraisal and closing before being able to move.

All this was quickly adding up to my worst nightmare... having to move with a newborn baby.... while still recovering from the delivery.... in the middle of winter. Thanks, no thanks. I may or may not have cried for the better part of a day while we tortured ourselves over whether to walk away. I'm just going to blame pregnancy hormones.  In the end we felt the best thing for our growing family was to start looking for a new house as soon as possible.

When we tell most people that we walked they want to know if we lost our earnest money, or deposit, and the answer is.... unfortunately, yes. Parts of the contract supported DR Horton's position that they should keep the earnest money and we felt parts supported us. In the result of dispute like this our contract stated we would have to go to arbitration to settle it. But if we went to arbitration we wouldn't be released from the contract to start looking at other houses until the issue was settled. And well, ain't nobody got time for that.

We officially forfeited our money and withdrew the offer on the house this week. Instead of viewing it as six months and thousands of dollars wasted we've decided to view it as divine intervention and an opportunity to find the home we are supposed to be in. Not going to lie, I'm kind of excited to start looking again. 

Countdown Catch-up

When I was looking for a cute way to keep track of the bump progress I stumbled upon this Maternity Calendar inspiration by Miranda at One Little Minute and ran with it. I loved the idea but had NO energy to make a stencil and paint so I made my own slacker version. I found a similar T-shirt on Amazon, bought some flocked iron on numbers, and a roll of red duct tape from Michael's. I just eye-balled the layout and then broke out the iron. Each week I just add a little strip of duct tape to mark our progress.

Feeling like major poop

No real changes yet

Obviously trying to suck it in a little lot

First time seeing the little guy where he actually looked like a baby

Starting to feel a little better

Bump in its wee stages. Found out we're having a BOY!

I "popped"

Other people really started to notice the bump

Feeling like belly is doubling each night

Half-way there.

It's crazy to see how much my belly has grown in just a few short weeks. Here's hoping the next 20 weeks go by just as fast because I'm very impatiently waiting to have this little guy in our arms instead of stomach.

Playing house...

*Note: I am behind on house updates and just about everything else in life. Growing a human is TIRING! But, I'm trying to get caught up so keep checking back for updates!

**Sorry for the iPhone quality pics!

Our lot as of Memorial Day weekend....

They were grading our lot! Even without permits... it was nice to see some progress.

Smiling (even though we still didn't have permits)

After finding out that our permits were approved in late-June we were very anxious to get the party started. We met with the site manager to go over our site plan, review all of our finish choices again, and talk about time lines. It was a pretty uneventful affair but afterwards we stopped by a newly set up model home for our particular model. It was fun playing house for a few minutes, really feeling how big the space felt with furniture, and envisioning what we could/would do with the same space. Our house will look pretty different due to the finish choices we picked but the model house is still a good representation:

Living Room

Main entry/Foyer

Dining Room

Kitchen

Kitchen Eat-In Area

Lower Level

Family Room

Family Room

Office

Rec Room

Basement Bathroom

Bedroom 1

Bedroom 2

Bedroom 3

Upstairs Bathroom

Laundry

Master Bedroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Our lot as of late June.