It's been a while since any updates.. Everything is going very well. Brendon had his dose of chemotherapy on 11/28 at the clinic. It went well. He was a little nauseous the next morning, but it was not too bad. He is now officially in Maintenance.. What a great place to be! He only has to go to the clinic once a month now and he only has his blood drawn once a month.. It's kind of strange to not have to go to the clinic as often. He has steroids that he has to take for 7 days in a row once a month. It's not as much as it was before so we are hoping that the side effects will be minimal. He has to take a bunch (approx. 15) of pills for his chemo once a week. It's not too bad.. So far so good! He is scheduled for more chemo when we get back from LegoLand.

Brendon made a gingerbread house last week.. It didn't come out exactly the way he wanted it to but it still looked good. It was a brand that we've never used before and it wasn't the greatest. The icing didn't stick very well, so we used some of our own. It was still fun to do. Brendon really gets into decorating them and it's cool to see the ideas that he comes up with...

We've been going to some of Brendon's Uncle Tommy's basketball games at UMF. It's been pretty fun. Here is a picture of Bren with his Uncle's girlfriend Chelsey at Tommy's last game.. She's such a sweetie!Brendon had a special visit with his second cousin Rhonda on Thursday. She is the sweetest person and Brendon just loves her. We don't get to see her as often as we'd like. She visited with us for a couple of hours. It was great to see her. Bren was happy to see her as you can tell in the picture...
This weekend was the first weekend that Brendon spent away from home since his diagnosis. He went to Belfast with his Meme. He left Friday night and came back Sunday afternoon. He had so much fun. She took him birthday shopping and he picked out some new Legos.. Imagine that, huh? :) He saw a play and had cake and ice cream. He was pretty tired when he got home, but he was so full of life! It was hard to let him go for the weekend, but he said it was nice to get away for a little while. He was happy to come back home and he was so excited to see us! It was a nice break from the everyday norm.

Sunday night we had a surprise planned for Brendon. Make-A-Wish arranged for us to go to Bren's favorite restaurant (Applebees) so they could give him a backpack to take on the plane with him. We were able to invite both sets of Grandparents. He was so surprised! He came in after everyone was there and he saw the balloons and all of the family and he just smiled. It was so cute to see.
He laughed and grinned the entire night. Our Make-A-Wish representatives Frank & Connie Ayotte were there and it was just like they were part of our family. They are such amazing people! We spent almost 2 hours enjoying the meal and enjoying each others company. Due to the fires and all that California has been going through, we do not have the itinerary yet. Frank and Connie will be coming to the house Friday night with the schedule and all of the information. We are very excited to see what they have planned for us! Brendon is getting more and more excited as the days go by.. He's so excited to finally be double digits! Here is a slide show from the meal tonight. There were 8 people total and they were Grampa and Grammie Dunn, Meme, Frank & Connie Ayotte, Mom, Dad and Brendon. Brendon's Uncle Tommy was supposed to be there also, but he was not able to make it.

We decorated the Christmas tree last night and we think it came out very nice. I put the lights and angel topper on and Brendon did everything else. It was a lot of fun.. We listened to Christmas music and drank hot chocolate. Here are some pics of our decorating adventure. :)Andy was working so he is not in any of the pictures.

That's it for this post. Sorry it's so long, but it's been a while since we updated. We'll try to post again before we leave. 11 days!!

Happy Holidays!
~Andy, Amber and Brendon~