Here I go!

Welcome to my blog! I have been thinking and planning to do this for some time now, but it has taken me a while to actually get started. I want to write a little bit of background for anyone who doesn't know me (or doesn't know me well).


I will start with explaining why I called this blog "rain-dancers." A couple of years ago I heard the quote that is at the top of this blog about learning to dance in the rain. It really resonated with me at the time because we had just taken on 2 small foster children, I was pregnant with our third child, and my husband had just found out his brain tumor, which had been "quiet" for 5 years, decided to "act up" again and he was back on chemotherapy. Sometimes I wondered if we were crazy (ok, so I wonder that a lot) to take on so much in our lives. But if we had spent the last years of our marriage and life just "waiting for the storm to pass," we would not have enjoyed and experienced all that life had to offer "in the rain." (Ok, I'll stop with the analogies now).


Several years ago I took a "Stress Test" in which I marked any major life event that happened in the recent past (good and bad) and applied a score to it. In school I liked to score high on tests, and this one was no exception. Let me just highlight a few events from the past two decades:


1992--Got married
1993--I Graduated from college, moved to another state
1994-1995 (Pretty quiet)
1996--My husband graduated from college, we moved to another state again
1997--My husband's father died from prostate cancer
1998--My mother died after a long battle with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and the aftereffects of treatment
1999--Our first child was born
2000--My husband was diagnosed with a brain tumor
2001-2002 (Pretty quiet)
2003--Our second child was born, moved to a new house that we had built
2004-2005 (Pretty quiet)
2006--After 5 years of being asleep, my husband's tumor "woke up" and he began treatment again, also we took in 2 foster children for six months
2007--Our third child was born and at age 3 months, was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma (a rare form of childhood liver cancer).
2008--what's next???

When we found out our baby had cancer, we started a caringbridge site. We found this website was a great way to communicate with many people at the same time about the significant events in his treatment. However, I often found myself wanting to say more about us, not just as it relates to our child and his medical condition. Then, two of my good friends started blogging. Well, as I read their blogs daily, I became jealous of how much fun they were having and decided that I should join the fun!

I am hoping that with the words and pictures on this blog I can be more connected with people far away (as well as those close to home!). I may only update this blog occasionally, or I may decide it is so much fun that I update several times a day--check in when you can! As I keep you more updated on our lives, please feel free to comment or email me (or call, or write, or visit) to let me know what is going on in your life!