But, before I share that with you, I have an important little story to share.
A lot of you know about my daughter, Emma. For those of you who don't, our little Emma was born with a really rare genetic disorder, called Fanconi Anemia. It causes bone marrow failure and different types of cancers. Right now she's in severe bone marrow failure. All three of her blood cell lines - white blood cells, red blood cells, and platelets - are critically low. That means we get to live paranoid of germs, careful of bleeding, and dealing with fatigue from lack of blood (transfusions when needed). She doesn't have very much bone marrow in her bones, and the marrow she does have, it doesn't work very well and gets worse over time.
Since her illness is so rare, there are only a few hospitals in the USA that are considered expert in her type of needed bone marrow transplant. (And while a transplant will extend her life, it doesn't cure her of her disease. The cancer portion remains.)
We are leaving for her bone marrow transplant on Thursday - just FIVE MORE DAYS! I'll be taking Emma, my baby, my younger sister, and going to Cincinnati, OH (about 15 hour drive away) for her bone marrow transplant. We'll be there for 4-6 months.
My husband, and three middle children (ages 6, 4, 2) will have to stay behind while we go. I can't hardly stand thinking about leaving them for so long! My husband is planning to come a week after she has her chemo and will stay for about three weeks. I have a couple sisters who will watch our other sweet babies during all this.
Emma had a "last wish" for her hair before we go, since she'll be losing all her hair from transplant (chemo). She told us she wanted rainbow hair. It wasn't hard at all to agree to it, but it was a little harder to figure out how to do it. A couple ladies at church offered their talent and time to color her hair for us, which was so kind of them!
This is the end result...
It turned out pretty amazing!
She's completely in love with it. We are too. We love seeing her smile over it. They did an awesome job.
A few of the rest of us added streaks to our hair. My 4 year old wanted her hair streaked purple. Then I let Emma choose what colors for my hair. She chose pink, purple, and blue for me.
Here I am with my five sweetlings. It's a perfectly imperfect photo...hehe... We can't go in the church, due to germs, but we often go any way - outside - which is where we were here.
Our insurance is covering things pretty good. There will be additional expenses we hope we can afford. The biggest thing is that my husband can't come for more than a few weeks during the 4-6 months. His work will let him off whenever he wants, but he will only be paid for about 3 weeks, and then we'll have no income coming in if he takes more time off than that, which we can't afford.
He's looked into people donating their PTO for him, but it doesn't work that way at his job. We've refinanced our house so that we have a couple house payments that we don't have to pay and can save towards it (and expenses related to transplant in general).
I've gotten back to designing to try to raise more money for unexpected expenses, but especially to help cover my husband being able to take more time off and being able to be there more with us. A bone marrow transplant is not a pleasant process, and we know Emma needs her daddy there sometimes too!
It's what has led me to guest at Scrapbook-Bytes (where I used to sell when I had time to design) and would love for those of you who are still reading this to share with anyone else you think who might like this, if you don't mind!
(If you'd like to follow us on our transplant journey, I keep a FB Page on it, as well as another BLOG.)
So, that's the story and need behind this. Now, to the kit...
It's called Whoooo's There? for only $3 (50% off). There are 14 unique papers (39 papers total) and 28 unique elements (52 elements total). It's a gender neutral kit. It was drawn/created in Photoshop and/or Illustrator.
FULL KIT for $3
Elements: $1.50
A couple layouts...
Anyway, so there's that kit! It'll be available at SBB through July.
On an ending note...if any of you have any desire to send letters to my little ones that have to stay home, so that they don't feel forgotten (the 4 yr old is struggling with feeling like people have forgotten her since Emma has gotten more attention lately), we would love it more than you know for them to be flooded with mail!
Tyler, Violet, Rhys
PO Box 1156
Anna, TX 75409
Thank you!
Teresa
MY STORE AT SBB
