Professional Photos Are Ready!

We have been absent from our family blog for one month exactly as our son Thomas was diagnosed with cancer. We were publishing over at CaringBridge (https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/thomaslauer/), but are now going to try to bring the two together seamlessly in order to continue the family blog I have written for 14 years. This blog post is copied from CaringBridge and is being published retroactively. Please subscribe to our family blog to receive updates as I publish!

These nine days of waiting for Thomas's pathology results is our Garden of Gethsemene. I continue to pray the Surrender Novena (https://www.sign.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Fr-Dolindo-article-novena.pdf). We stay busy during the days, but the nights are so very hard. I've decided that it's a good tactic for me to try to write my updates at the hopeful dawning of the day rather than as my fears are rising in the evening.

On Tuesday I stayed busy the entire morning by thoroughly organizing the garage. It had gotten so bad these last three weeks that we couldn't walk through it without risk of tripping, two bird nests have been built in it, and now a chipmunk is trying to take up residence in there. The kids and I picked up, straightened, threw away much, swept, and blew it out all morning. Then I lifted the mood of the troops (which were, admittedly, flagging by then) by playing folk music while we worked and serving ice cold lemonade.

We interviewed a nanny/all-around helper and pray that she might be a blessing to our family and that we can be a blessing to her in her situation.

The children had their first music lesson in three weeks, with no promises of a lesson next week until we learn more. But at least we had this one area of normalcy today.

When I laid down Thomas and David for nap, Thomas begged me to stay with him, which is all new behavior. "Sleep next to me, Mama! Don't leave after I fall asleep." I made no promises, but after he fell asleep clutching his new Bible, I decided my heart couldn't take leaving him anyway and my body needed a nap, so I stayed.

I will sign off this update by sharing a joy that lifted all of our spirits: the photos from the professional photography session gifted to us are ready! Feel free to view the gallery here:

https://angelasheaphotography.pixieset.com/lauerfamily/

I always love family photos, but am overwhelmingly glad to have these photos of our beautiful and happy boy Thomas.