Gross story
So…, the girls (and two boys), Lauren, Marissa, Hilary, Granny, Auntie Say, Auntie Kat, Aunt Ellen (Kiera's granny), Auntie Erin, Auntie Vicky, Lauren's cousin Kiera, Owen, and Liam, took Hilary's and the Fitzsimmons' cousin Angela, who lives in Toronto where there is still snow on the ground, to Palm Springs on Friday, which was over 105 degrees. Kiera stayed in Lauren and Marissa's (along with Hilary and granny) room (at the La Quinta Resort) where she shared a bed with Lauren. When Hilary turned from Agua Caliente Casino around 2:30 am, everybody was asleep. A she turned on the lights in the bathroom she squealed when she saw a big cockroach. This woke Lauren and Kiera. Lauren then says to Hilary, "mom there's a bug between me and Kiera's pillow." Hilary comes over and lifts the pillow and there all kinds of bed bugs scampering away. She then lifted the sheets and there are more bed bugs crawling around and there are splats of blood. She calls the front desk to complain. Their reply? They ask her, if she wants new sheets. Hil says, "no, we want a new room". It was nearly 4:30 by the time they got a new room (for what ever reason, it took the hotel over two hours to get them a new room). While Lauren and Kiera thought it was funny they had bugs in their bed and fell back to sleep in no time, Hilary and granny couldn't sleep for the rest of the night. Marissa slept though the whole thing. Luckily, it seems like neither of the girls had any bites. I won't go get in how unapologetic and rude the hotel management was about the whole incident. Or the $27 resort fee and the $20 room near a pool fee (especially since every rooms is near a pool!!). Or how they were being rushed to clear out the luggage from the room with the bugs (they left they bags in the room when they moved. Not the smartest thing to do. I hope they don't bring the bugs to our house!), because they needed the room for then next guest that were checking-in. I get the heebie-jeebies thinking about it. Oh well, other than the bugs, the kids had a great time (mostly swimming) in Palms Springs.





Lauren's First basketball clinic.
We enrolled Lauren in a basketball clinic at OCBC. It's two hours every Sunday for 8 weeks. They do drills for the first hour and then play 3 on 3 and 5 on 5, scrimmages. It was bitter sweet experience. It was tough to see her next to other kids her age. With Lauren short hair and puffy appearances, I know both grown-up and the other kids have a hard time determining if she is a boy or girl (you can tell by their side way glances at her). And it's tough to see how well the other kids move compared to her. They all can run, jump, pivot, pass and shoot, while Lauren kinda shuffles around, barely lifting her feet off the ground, and can't reach the basket when she shoots and comes in last place in all the running drills. During the games, it was tough to watch when a kid stole her ball from her. He ripped it out of her hands. Even Marissa was mad, she said, "that boy stole the ball from Lala". But, you know what? Lauren had a good time. Though out the whole sessions, she'd turn around with a huge grin and wave to us. As long as she was having fun.

Updates:
Lauren has been on .4 mg (down from .5 mg) of Decadron for almost a week now. She did complain of her first headache yesterday. Hopefully it's not steroid related. I thought her speech seemed a little slurred, but maybe it's because she is so tired. It would be nice if we can get her off of it, since that is what's causing her puffiness.

Lauren's hair continues to grow back. It seems a little lighter in color and it's curly. We were told during her chemo, that it's not uncommon for chemo patients' hair to grow back different. It looks like that is going to be the case.