Seven years ago today, May 31, 2016, my phone rang unexpectedly in the morning whilst getting ready for the day. That phone call changed my life for ever. It really didn’t tell me anything besides the fact I was missing an appointment, however the moment I hung up the phone, I knew. I knew the test results I was waiting on had some back and it wasn’t good. I knew the life I lived up to this day was over. I knew I was going to be given a cancer diagnosis! Up until today this day felt like a celebration. It felt like an ‘in your face cancer’ kind of day. A ‘I’m still here and you didn’t win ..read more

In June 2021, I made the decision to make my love of photography not just something I shared while taking pictures of my family. I decided to step into the scary world of putting myself and my photography skills out there for everyone to see. When I was 13, I received my very first camera for my birthday. Many rolls of film, awkward teenaged photoshoots, lots of self timer pictures and a couple different film and digital cameras later, Jeff (my husband) and I bought our first DSRL camera in 2015. We wanted to take better pictures of our upcoming trip to Europe than our phones or our camera at ..read more

A year ago today was one of the worst days of my life!! Looking at these pictures that might be hard to understand until I tell you why. We were in beautiful Mexico, our last vacation before everything shut down. The weather was fantastic, the food was great, we were having a good time. Until that moment when everything changed. I was 6 weeks pregnant and noticed bleeding. I quickly mentioned something to Jeff and basically ran back to our room. By the time I got there the bleeding was so heavy that I was convinced, I was losing this baby. When Jeff got to the room, he found me on floor of the ..read more

10th wedding anniversary dinner as a family at Japanese Village Life has been busy over the last few months. Oh, who am I kidding, the last couple years. Hello, parenting. However, it has been the best couple of years I would say. Luke has brought so much joy and spunk to our life. It is really fun and incredible to watch him grown and explore the world. We have been doing many things around the city as well as taking another trip east. All of which is always slightly overshadowed by the looming cancer investigations. Currently, my team and I have decided on a 10 – 12 months wait between these ..read more

Well, I am LONG overdue for an update on this blog. It has been over a year since my last post. Many things have happened and some things have changed, but to just sum everything up, we are all thriving. Of course, there are moments which don’t feel so happy – go – lucky, but in the grand scheme of things, we are doing very well. Luke has been growing and changing every day. He is learning something new almost hourly and enjoys his new skills. Jeff is busy between work and home. He was able to take off quite a bit of time in the summer so we could all spend quality time together. We were able ..read more

The last two weeks have been a Rollercoaster of emotions and planning, re-planning and throwing all the plans out the window again. As I’ve talked about before, I had extensive imaging of my whole body done at the beginning of 2021. All of those results came back very reassuring. No new growths, the ones we knew about hadn’t changed much. All in all we could only jump up and down and thank God for such good news. My mom watches Luke when I have to go for tests or appointments! I am so grateful for her and all the love and help from family and friends. Fast forward to 2 weeks ago. I have had th ..read more

A year ago today was one of the worst days of my life!! Looking at these pictures that might be hard to understand until I tell you why. We were in beautiful Mexico, our last vacation before everything shut down. The weather was fantastic, the food was great, we were having a good time. Until that moment when everything changed. I was 6 weeks pregnant and noticed bleeding. I quickly mentioned something to Jeff and basically ran back to our room. By the time I got there the bleeding was so heavy that I was convinced, I was losing this baby. When Jeff got to the room, he found me on floor of the ..read more

Now… On to a long, long, long overdue update on my cancer journey. The last time I wrote a post solely about my cancer, was this one. It’s from September 2019 . I just returned from Toronto after doing more genetic testing. Jeff and I travelled to Germany for scans shortly before that. Now that we did a quick recap, let’s get to the new updates. September 2019 to September 2020 Another scan was scheduled for me here in Edmonton in October. I cancelled that one, since I was pregnant with our first angel baby. In my meeting with my oncologist in December, we talked about doing another one. By th ..read more

That is how it feels. We didn’t just bring a new life into this world and into our home, our own lives are also new. I know that is something I have said a lot before. It seems like our life consistently changes so much, that it truly is a brand new normal. I wouldn’t change it for the world though. Jeff and I have said, Luke has been the best thing to happen to us in a very, very long time. Maybe even since the day we got married. Life with a baby is simply amazing. Sure, there are days that are harder than others. However, anytime I look at Luke and he gives me one of those adorable smiles ..read more

In the past when I heard or said these words, it was usually in conjunction to one persons life. The life they live here on earth, between the moment they are placed in a cradle to the last moment when they are placed into their grave. The inspiration Lately, this name for a blog post has been heavy on my heart. The first time it was placed there, was about 3 months ago. Right around the time when Jeff’s grandmother, after weeks and weeks of not feeling well finally got a diagnosis, stage IV pancreatic cancer. She was given anywhere between 1-4 months to live. Even though that news was devast ..read more