Just a quick note......We got some family pictures taken and wanted to share some of them with all of you. I was really happy with how they turned out. I thought it would be massive chaos to take them all for pictures, but all of them really did well and were cooperative with the photographers. It's still a little strange to look at our family picture and see how much we have grown in the last three and a half years. I really thought three and a half years ago we would never have kids. This is awesome, even with the chaos, I am having sooooo much fun. I love it and I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Once again, we have been remiss in updating the blog. I will therefore endeavor to write what has been happening with a semblance of accuracy. I promise that my imagination will not contribute. I also promise that I will leave at least half of the information out since that is what I do, my calling as a man, my station in life. Poor Amanda married down heh heh. Anyway, we have had a good couple of weeks. Elijah is off of the steroids and his actions and emotions are much less of a roller coaster. He also has thinned down again because the steroids made him gain quite a bit of weight. He was eating for awhile during the steroid regimen, but that was as short lived as the steroids themselves. It did think it was pretty funny that Elijah, while he was puffed up and chubby, had a rather large belly. We were swimming and he looked at his tummy and looked up to me and said "I have a big belly like Dad's." How tender and sweet! We are almost done with the most intense phase of his steroids and will soon be going to the doctor only once a month. We did find out that he would be taking a low dose chemo every day in pill form for the next 3 years. We foolishly hoped that we would not have to keep giving him medicine every day but alas, that is not the case. Michelle is doing very well and getting ready to start school. We went and bought school supplies for her and I felt like an old man. I kept saying "This isn't how things were in my day. Why, in my day all we needed was a pencil box, some pencils and paper." Apparently I also walked to school uphill both ways in the snow carrying all of my siblings. She is pretty excited and I must say that I am so happy that we were able to get her a Hannah Montana folder for her. Oh joy. Hallelujah. Yippee. She was also excited that she was able to buy a backpack. It is kind of a luggage piece because it has wheels on the bottom and you can pull it. It seems to me that they should be able to carry their stuff, otherwise they might get fat (says the fat dad to the skinny hyper youth). I must confess that I was also pretty excited to get my first eye roll from Michelle and I could see the thought flashing across her face "That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard and will not dignify that with a response." At least she is smart enough not to actually say that. All kidding aside, she is excited to go to school and we love having her as a part of our family. Alivia is still doing well. She is the one that we might have to worry about when she is older. I find it mildly amusing (very mildly) that if you try and grab her hand to lead her where she wants to go, then she will jerk her hand out of yours and sort of run away. It is hilarious when she does it to Michelle, not so hilarious when she does it to us. We are still unsure as to what to do with her since our other children are all mellow. I always come home and am prepared to see her walking around the kitchen, right arm swinging wildly, going for Elijah or Michelle to annoy them in some way. It is kind of fun also to watch her grab Elijah's blanket, juice, toy, food, or anything else he might have and look up at him to see how long it will take him to yell at her. She does it with a smirk on her face, and all I can think of when I see that is "My poor parents.". How fun it must have been for them to see me antagonize Isaac until he smacked me full force in the back with a broom handle. Or watching me push Zach around because he was too skinny to hurt me. Or watch me put Angela in my movie for school and call her a serving wench. Or watch me make Melanie cry because I told her that she was faking her vibrato when she sang. Or watching me slap the glasses off of Jenny's face (she got the best of that one, she can punch reeeeeeallly hard). Or watching me convince Jordan that it was ok to slide off of the roof on a saucer because the 6 inches of snow would pad his fall (this was a failure because I went off first with Zach and couldn't hide the pain when I thought I pushed my coccyx into my throat). Or . . . I couldn't do anything to Woody because he as an evil imagination and would win. Period. I digress. The point is, I shall reap what I have sown as a youth and am not looking forward to the harvest. Tysa is doing very well. She is finally sleeping through the night which is great! For Amanda. I must confess that I didn't get up very often, but I think I commiserated well her when she told me about it. She is a cutie and we love her. Also, a big thanks and a large hug to our friends the Hancocks who moved to Idaho this week. Bill (Beeeaal) and Georgia are our long lost (he would say bastard) southern brother and sister. It is hard to describe how much they meant to us and how we will miss them. Bill was so very thoughtful and did Elijah's adoption pro-bono when he first starting out as an attorney. He is a spiritual giant and we will miss his sense of humor, his humility, and his love for god and the gospel. He would tell us about how the lord had to make do with him in the callings that he was in, but everyone who knew him knew that there wasn't another person as diligent, as kind, and as thoughtful as Bill. Georgia was always next to Bill with a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face. I will always admit that my wife is the one who does all the work and makes me who I am, and I know that Bill feels the same way about Georgia. She is a great woman. Bill and Georgia, we love you more than we can ever express and hope to see you soon. Also, thanks to all of you who are too numerous to name that have helped us. All of my family (and I mean all, even those that I am not able to talk to much) thank you for everything you do. All of Amanda's family. All of our friends. Thanks for all the help, the prayers, the thoughts, the calls to see if we are ok. Thank you from the bottom of our heart. I am going to stop before I start crying (all who know me very well know that it is a distinct possibility, especially if there is an opossum who is dying). We love you all.

Well....Amanda has been very busy and so it is my turn to create the blog. I know that many of you are ecstatic that I get to wax poetic about how things are going with our family, but try to contain your amazement at my mastery of the english language and sit back to enjoy this verbal feast. Things have been going well with our family. First and foremost, we were able to go to the temple and have Alivia sealed to us. Poor girl is stuck with us as parents for eternity! AAAAAAHHHHHHH! Oh well. She'll have to make do. All joking aside, we are thrilled that it is finally done. Thanks to all who helped us through the heartache of thinking we would lose her. Elijah is doing well, he went through a round of chemo that included steroid treatments. Yikes! We lovingly like to call him Mr. Angry during this process because the steroids made him freak out at the smallest provocation. Amanda has two pictures that were taken about 25-30 seconds apart and in one he is smiling, and in the other he is yelling. Fantastic! We also added another to our family. We welcomed a young lady named Michelle to our household. She just turned 10 and is fitting in very well with us. She is remarkably helpful and is a sweet girl who is happy to laugh and have fun. She especially loves all of her new cousins like Isabelle, Ava, Tia, and Abby. Tysa is doing well but still eating every two hours. She must be related to all of my thin relatives because she doesn't seem overly big. She is starting to get a little chub though. Amanda is not yet bald from pulling her hair out, but I think it might happen in the near future. I try to ease her burden by antagonizing her (only in order to make her laugh. Oddly, she doesn't seem to laugh as much as I do. HHHmmmm). She is a great mom and wife and we all appreciate her. I am sure that she will update you all soon with more information but in the meantime, thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. We would not make it without that. Thank you also for your willingness to drop what you are doing and help out when we are in the hospital with Elijah for a week (especially Woody and Melissa who took all of our kids for 3 days. YIKES that is 7 kids 10 and under!!). We love you all.

Hi there all! First and foremost thanks for all of your prayers, Elijah's bone marrow is CLEAN!!!! This was great news and we are so thankful for our blessings! They also did a spinal the same day as the bone marrow ( which was the most awful day of pokes) , and his CSF (cerebral spinal fluid) had lots of WBC in it. Dr Al-Zein said that it had about eight times the number of white cells that it should so they decided to send it for culture. The culture came back with three different kinds of bacteria in it so it was necessary to do a repeat spinal. Dr. Al-Zeins thoughts were that there is a good chance that Elijah had a viral meningitis when he was in the hospital this last time. He kept spiking fevers and they kept running tests, but nothing came back positive. He finally stopped the fevers and we were able to go home on Thursday with no answers as to why he was having the fevers. Now we may have the answer, and he thinks that the reason he has WBC's in his CSF is left over from that virus. They repeated the spinal today and gave me a call this afternoon with the report that he now has a normal amount of WBC's in his CSF. Dr. Al-Zein expects that the cultures will all come back negative. We should know that tomorrow. Elijah has started on the next phase of chemo as of Friday called Delayed intensification. I think that the last time I said he had started a phase I stated it was this one, but that one was actually inter-maintaince. I'm trying really hard to keep everything straight!! This phase is basically the first two phases (induction and consolidation) put together. So yes, he will be back on the dreadful steroids that make him a different person. We are not excited for this, so we are hoping that the next month goes by fast. On the other hand, the steroids should make him want to eat us out of house and home. This is what they told us the first time and it never rang true so we will be anxious to see if happens this time. Elijah also received the first dose of the medication that is replacing the one that he was allergic to today. He did fine, other than the shot part, but luckily no allergic reactions to this one so far. It was funny to watch the anxiety of the nurses in the clinic after they administered the shot, just waiting for him to puff up. Elijah gets really blotchy skin after he has been crying and one of the nurses said, "now did he look like this before we gave him the shot??" I assured her that this is a normal response to him crying and not an allergic reaction. We should be done with the big pokes for awhile. He will receive a total of 6 shots with this medication that he will get every other day, starting today. Lots of trips to the clinic, bummer!! Elijah is doing a Zoo Camp this week every morning and seems to be loving it!! It was nice to finally get him doing something outside the home and away from me a little. He was great with me dropping him off, which is a little sad, but I'm just glad he didn't have bad separation anxiety.

Alivia, Tysa and I have gotten to spend some extra quality time together with Elijah being gone in the mornings this week and it's been fun to spend some time with just them. Alivia is good and busy as ever. Tysa is as cute as can be with her little dimples and little bit of chub that she is getting. She is starting to smile more and eating more if that's possible. She is probably close to around 9 lbs and is eating 4 oz at a time now. She is still up a couple times a night, but I can hope that that will get less and less the bigger she gets. She is still only as big as what some babies are born at. Elijah and Alivia really love her and want to be close to her all the time. I was totally expecting Alivia to be jealous when I was holding Tysa that she would want to be held. Really she just gets mad because she wants to hold Tysa, not that she wants me to hold her. She likes to squeeze extra tight when she holds her, not really getting the gentle concept. Elijah is a great big brother and helps out when he can. Tysa is now realizing when she is not being held and much prefers to be held. She lets me know it, and how do you not hold such a cutie!! She might be a little spoiled, but then I think all of my kids are a little. I am going to post some new pictures, thanks again for all the continued prayers and support. We love you all!!

Yet another long stretch and it's time to update a little. Never a dull moment at the Hancock residence. Things have been good (and busy) since we got home with Tysa. Elijah just loves her so much and even Alivia is doing better than I thought she would. She like to hug her and squeeze her. There has been a few times when she has needed me and I'm feeding Tysa, so she is a little jealous but for the most part doing quite well. This last Saturday Alivia ran a fever all day and had been feeling crummy for the couple of days before that. I thought she was trying to cut teeth, but on Saturday night her fever got to 104 and she didn't want to walk on her right leg. I wanted to cry, we have played this game before!! We ended up taking her to the ER because we didn't really know what to think. Her white count was high and she has a virus called hand, foot and mouth. This is the third time she has had this in the last few months and it is highly contagious. I was trying to be so careful with my immuno-suppressed child and newborn baby, but Elijah ended up getting a fever last night (Monday) and we had to come to the hospital with him. Alivia is doing better and is staying with Woody and Melissa ( Thanks soooooo much to them!!!). We are so lucky to have such a strong support system around us and people so willing to watch our kiddos on a moments notice, even when they are sick. We are currently at the hospital with Elijah and Tysa. Elijah is doing okay, but as of about an hour ago has gotten another fever. We were supposed to be leaving in the morning, but I don't know now?? Elijah is showing no signs of the virus that Alivia has, so we don't really know why he is getting fevers. Dr Al-Zein was in today and I talked with him about a few different things. First, Elijah has been complaining lately that his legs are asleep. It's hard to know what he is feeling, but I can tell it's something. Dr. Al-Zein said that he might be developing some nerve issues from the chemo meds that he has been on the last couple of months. He started him on a new medication for it and also is starting him on physical therapy. The second thing that Dr.Al-Zein talked about was his numbers. He has been watching some of them the last few weeks and they just aren't where he would like to see them. He wants to do another bone morrow next Friday to make sure his bone morrow is clear of leukemia cells. I guess because Elijah is in a high risk category, he wants to pay close attention to this. He ultimately said that he isn't happy with the way his numbers are right now. This makes us very nervous and we are praying that everything is still okay and that he is just trying to break more records (not really). Lets all keep our fingers crossed and prayers are always appreciated!! I'll try to keep everyone updated in the next couple of weeks when we find out anything more. As for our third and newest child, she is awesome. Absolutely adorable and really an easy going baby. I weighed her tonight at the hospital and she is a whopping 8lbs!! She eats great and now that she is a bit bigger, she is starting to sleep a little longer at night. She is still very alert a lot of the time and even smiles a little. I know it seems pretty early for smiles, but she has done it enough to be more than just gas. We are so happy to have her in our family and truly appreciate the opportunity. We love all of our kids so much and feel blessed to have such a great, busy group. Love and thanks to all of those who continue to give us support, you mean the world to us. Love you all!!

Here is a link to some of the cutest pictures you have ever seen!!! This was the photo shoot that Holly surprised us with. It was so fun!! Huge thanks to Holly!! These pictures are only going to be there for viewing until May 16th, so don't miss out...
www.joannataylorphotography.com/Tysa

Hi there all!! Wow what an emotional few days. We are all doing well and we are so blessed to have Tysa. She is sooooo precious and so far is a great baby. Tysa is very content and is alert a lot of the time. She has beautiful brown eyes and beautiful skin. She is such a petite little thing. I'm use to handling babies, but I haven't held or taken care of a baby this small for a long time. She has soft black hair, long fingers and long feet. So far, I have had to wake Tysa up at night to eat and just today we have heard how she can cry out loud. As I'm sitting here writing this Levi is holding her and we are having a big laugh because she just filled her pants in a way that I would have never thought someone so little could do!!! The newborn diapers are huge on her.
On Saturday we went to Bridgette's (Tysa's birth mother) caseworkers office to sign all the paperwork. This is a much different situation than we have ever taken part in. We have gotten very close to Bridgette and I can't begin to explain how hard it is to watch her grieve so much. She has been absolutely incredible and her strength is truly amazing. We have never gotten this emotionally involved and it's a very different feeling than we have ever felt. I have always known that a birth mother is a special person and the most selfless person. These statements have become more evident to me in the last four days. I have a hard time feeling like we are the ones causing Bridgette all of the pain that she is feeling. I know that everything that she is feeling and doing is very normal, but like I have said before we have never watched from this angle. I'm so glad that she feels comfortable with us and she has said numerous times that we are the best parents and she is so glad that Tysa s going to have us as her parents. She is being a great mother by giving her child what she feels is in her best interest. Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers to be comforted and stay strong.
We are missing our kiddos like crazy!!! We have checked in every free minute that we have had and it sounds like they are doing great!! We can't wait to bring this sweet baby home to meet them and start our new routine. We can't wait to introduce Tysa to all of you and hope that you can stop to see her, she's worth it!! That's all for now, hope to keep updating and get home soon. We Love you all.... A huge thanks to all of you who have taken care of Elijah and Alivia. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts!