Vacation Recap and Other Updates **UPDATED**

I'm back!!! It was a very busy trip to Pennsylvania and now I'm nursing a cold and sore throat that my sister passed on to me but things are going well.  First I'll start with the vacation recap.

We arrived in PA on Sunday the 4th in the evening and just relaxed in hotel for the night.  My sister and I split the cost of a hotel room and I must say that sharing one room with a teething infant and 4 year old boy is not ideal.  The next day we headed over to my grandmother's house to meet my half-sister and niece (whom I've only met once before) and my dad.  While my dad seemed to be in good spirits, albeit a little tired all the time, he looked ragged.  My 6'2" father was only 155 pounds and bone thin.  Literally, I could feel the back of his ribcage when I hugged him.  It was pretty hard to see.  But we didn't talk much about the cancer and instead chose to focus on spending time together.  He received one round of chemo and is now getting radiation every weekday.  **UPDATE** I spoke with my sister and she said that our dad was told by doctors that he has stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer, which has metastasized to the adrenal glands. He will start chemo back today, along with the radiation treatment he has been receiving over the past 2 weeks.  Unfortunately she has also researched this and found that the average life span of someone with this type of lung cancer is only 8 months.  A 5-year survival rate is less that 10%.

During the week that we were in Pennsylvania we met our great aunt and uncle for breakfast at IHOP where C suddenly decided she was interested in what everyone was eating so we had to placate her with a banana in her mesh feeder.  We also went to the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp and got a few autographs.  Being the Fearlessly Frugal woman I am I had received a free Terrible Towel months ago so I brought that with me and my sisters got 3 autographs on it for me.  I stayed a far distance behind, taking pictures and trying to get C to nap (failed) so eventually I just left and took my dad back home because he was feeling tired.  My sister had purchased Blake a Steelers helmet to get his autographs on which turned out to be a bad idea because he started asking when he could get the autographs off so he could play with it.  Shoulda bought him two, sis!

#7 is quarterback Ben Roethlisberger

The day we were supposed to go to Idlewild Park turned out to be rainy so instead we met our cousin in a nearby town to play Monster Mini Golf.  It's an indoor putt-putt place under black lights with a scary monster theme.  My sister was concerned that Blake would be scared but he was just fine.  C, on the other hand, decided she was hungry mid-game so I had to rush through so I could feed her.

The next day was bright and sunny so we went to Idlewild Park.  It was just as I remembered, as though everything had been frozen in time since I last left!  We started out in Storybook Forest where we met characters from all the traditional stories and nursery rhymes.  C had her portrait drawn at the end and we had a second copy made for our birthmom.

After that we headed over to Mister Roger's Neighborhood trolley ride.  I'm not kidding when I say that nothing changed about this ride!  It was great being able to go through the ride exactly as I remembered it but I do wish they had replaced some of the puppets with better looking ones.  Some of them are downright scary.

King Friday says "Come along, come along, to the Castle Hug-and-Song!"

Shy Daniel Tiger

Then we headed over to the rides.  C was dead asleep when we got to the carousel but because her Pappy was feeling tired and ready to go home we woke her up so she could ride her first ride with him.  She loved it!  Then our group split up, with one half going to the waterpark and the other half going to the kiddie rides.  I went with the kiddie-ride group, though C was too young to ride any of them.  We ended up staying till the park closed that night.  10 hours at an amusement park and C did very well!  Now I'm not so worried about how she will do at Disney World in December.

On the last day of our trip we headed to JCPenney to have a group family photo taken.  Miss Fearlessly Frugal used her military discount to get 7 sitting fees for free and 17 portrait sheets for only $73!  Woo hoo!

Now for the random updates, mostly about C:

• I've been a bit more relaxed about what she eats now.  After the trip to PA and having to feed her things I would never have fed her before (like ice cream and a yeast roll) I've learned that she won't choke on every little thing.  She's begun to reject plain cereal so I mix it with the pouch baby food in the morning and in the evenings she gets homemade baby food.  This week we're trying butternut squash and butternut squash with pears.  I'm also starting to add spices to her food (this week it's ginger).  Next week, because I bought white potatoes on sale, we're going to try mashed potatoes and then mashed potatoes with garlic powder.
• C can now pull herself up to a standing position, but only using items that are short like stairs and boxes.  She did it for the first time yesterday, though she falls over within seconds so someone always has to be there to catch her.  Unfortunately that's ALL she wants to do now!  No more playing with toys, now those toys are just a tool to help her stand.  Needless to say she has been taking quite a few tumbles in the past week.  Also, every time she cries in her crib now it's because she pulled herself into a kneeling position and is too afraid to let go of the edge of the crib so she just sits there and cries...and gnaws on the crib.  She's so quiet about it that we don't even know she's awake so this is how we usually find out.
• Brandon's new job has been working him to the bone and it's really taking a toll on our family.  He works 12 hour days and has to work on the weekends twice a month.  It makes me sad that he only gets to see C for about an hour in the evenings before she goes to bed.  I'd like to go back to work in a couple months but with his schedule it might be too difficult.  We are literally counting down the days until he gets out of the military (482!). 
• I was warned by the agency about not posting public pictures of C online so I took them all down until we complete finalization.  Still waiting on a date for that but we're hoping that it will be sometime in September, maybe even at the end of the month when my grandparents will be visiting.