Hopes 2nd Gymnastics Competition

This past weekend Hope had her 2nd Gymnastics Competition in Daytona Beach.   We originally were going to make a family weekend trip out of it but since daddy was sick and couldn't go, it ended up being just Hope and I.  We left early on Saturday morning and drove back the same day.  It was a long day but a fun time together.

The competitions are usually two day events that are broken up by level and than age.  So Hope is always competing with her same level girls as well as her age.  There were 8 teams that were participating at this particular time. 

Hopes team "LaFleurs"!

She competing beam first, than floor, vault and lastly bars.  I was only able to get pictures of floor.  The others were too far away for my cheap camera to get a good shot of.   Here are a few pictures of her during her floor routine.  

She was so proud of herself and so was mommy! 

After she competes which usually last about 2 hours they have awards.  The judges at this event were extremely picky and scored very hard at this competition.  So even though her overall score wasn't as good as her first competition she still managed to pull 5th place on vault and 6th place on bars. I was so proud of her!  Here she is getting her vault award.

And here she is getting her bars award.

Hope Maria Newton did great!  Mommy and Daddy are so proud of her!  She has worked so hard and loves doing gymnastics.  One last salute before we hopped in the car for our 3 hour drive home.

Justin has had a couple really good days.  Last Tuesday we had an appointment with the Oncologist at Moffitt.  Justin went in with the hopes of talking the doctor out of doing this treatment so that he could quit it all together.  Its been really rough on him and the side effects haven't given him any type of relief.  After 3 weeks of feeling miserable, hardly being able to breathe, not being able to leave the house, feeling nauseous, fatigue, short temper, sore all over, loosing over 20lbs,  itchy and swollen in the injection site, bleeding gums, and overall feeling like hell he was done!  And this is even WITH getting the vitamin injections twice a week.  So he was planning to go and tell the Oncologist that he was done with the Interferon and was quitting.  Well that's not quite how it went.  She didn't let him off the hook that easy.  After listening to how he was feeling and than reviewing his lab results she told him that first he needed to take a week of.  His labs came back low which means his white and red blood cells were way under so they had him take a week off from the Interferon in hopes that his counts will go back up.  So since he didn't get an Interferon shot last week; by Sunday he was feeling good.  And by Monday (yesterday) he was able to go back to work and work a full 10 hour day.  Its been so nice to have my husband back to normal and feeling good.  It makes us all happy inside. :) 
He had his labs done again yesterday and assuming his counts are back up than he'll start his Interferon shot again tomorrow but they are going to cut the dose in half and hope that his side effects are not quite as bad.  We both are dreading tomorrow.  Its been rough on the treatment and having him feel good the last few days has been so nice.  But we are praying that half the dose will be more tolerable.  And if not than we will re-evaluate it again. 
Also some of you heard that when we saw the Oncologist last week that they noticed a dark spot on his skin graft that they were concerned about being Melanoma.  They decided to biopsy it on the spot.  Justin was NOT the least bit happy about them re cutting on his skin graft.  But the good news is everything came back clear and it wasn't anything to be concerned about.
Thank you for the prayers.  Its been a struggle.  A struggle that we both feel like giving up on and calling it quits.  Life is so much better without Interferon.  But we don't feel God telling us yet to quit but to keep going.  So until he tells us otherwise we will continue.   I told Justin last week.  As much as I want to quit this all together.  I don't feel that God has taught us yet what he wants us to learn.  I'm not sure what that is but I feel that God has a purpose in all of this.  He is stretching us to new levels in our faith and walk with him.  And as hard as this road is I trust that he is going to bring us out stronger at the end of it.   God has continued to provide for us and I thank each one of you that he has used to help us.  Justin made a comment to me last week after another amazing God story.  He said "Well at least I know I'm not going to die through this"  And my reply was "Why do you say that?"  And he said "Because he has shown us too many God stories that I know he'll want me to be able to share with others".  So we are looking forward to the day that he is healed and we can be a witness to someone else because of how amazing our God is! 
Rom 5:3-5 "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."