Merry Christmas from the Gehrings!! We hope that everyone had a wonderful and blessed holiday.
We feel very lucky to have made it through one holiday this year without being in the hospital. We had a really great Christmas. My family came to Papillion on Monday and we celebrated Christmas on Christmas Eve with them. This was the first year we actually got to wake up at our house on Christmas morning, and Aiden loved it. He was so excited to see that Santa had come to our house. The kids had a great time opening presents. Emma had definitely mastered the art of tearing off the paper. Aiden was excited to get a new combine and tractor, and Emma seems to like the musical instrument set and Little People that she got. Then we headed to Columbus and spent Christmas a day, Thursday, and part of Friday with Brent’s family. We had a wonderful week filled with time with family.
We are now back home and hope to enjoy a few quiet days here before we head back to work. Emma is still working on recovering from her hospital stay a few weeks ago and Brent is on the mend as well. Emma is still a bit whiney and lost some of her strength while she was in the hospital. She has been working hard at therapy to regain that strength. Emma had been doing great in therapy, and since the hospital stay hasn’t been a big fan of therapy. We are hoping once she gets some of her strength back she will do better again. Emma got a new arm brace yesterday at therapy to help give her more support when crawling and keep her thumb out. We are hoping her walker will be here in the next week or so. Emma heads back to chemo on Tuesday, and we are hoping that her urine counts look better this week.
Like many days now, Christmas was filled with many different emotions. It was great to spend to time with family and see the joy on our kid’s faces as we celebrated Christmas; however, the shadow of Emma having a brain tumor, the chemo, and the difficulty of the last year never fully goes away. That being said, I feel like we were even more aware of the reason for the season this year. We are so very thankful for our children and that Emma is such a fighter. We are thankful for the time we had with our families this year, and we feel so incredibly blessed to have been given the support we have been given this year by all of you. During this Christmas season we give thanks for all of this and know that without the birth our Lord who gives us strength we would not be where we are today. Thank you to all of you who continue to lift us up in prayer and give us support.
We hope each and every one of you had a blessed holiday! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!