My, my my...how time flies. I can't tell you how many little notes I scratched on to slips of paper with ideas for blog posts, but, you know...life gets in the way and things don't always get done. My last post was well over a month ago just after the kids were back in school. September was Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. This year I seem to be more aware of cancer than I ever have been after losing my father-in-law to cancer a few months ago and knowing a few others who have been battling the disease.
Not too long before that I had been to cover a camp for kids with cancer and among the kids I came across was one I recognized. I had no idea she had cancer. She's an adorable little girl I recognized from reading to classrooms over the past couple years. She's the same age as my youngest son - age 8. I thought perhaps it was her first time attending camp and she was recently diagnosed, but when I asked her, I think she said it was her fourth year there. I left and cried much of the way home thinking about this little girl and how fortunate I am that my kids are so healthy.
During September, I also learned that a little boy who had been in class with a couple of my boys who had cancer had been doing poorly. Last spring his former teacher held a fundraiser to send him and his family on a trip to Disney Land. And thanks to her help, his wish was granted to take a trip with his family. He lost his battle with cancer later that month.
Cancer is such an awful disease and to see how it affects adults is hard enough, but to see it affect kids is so heartbreaking. And it makes you hug your kids a little tighter and makes the small stuff seem so trivial.
