Cliff and Elfin Morgan will spend today at Children's Medical Center Dallas, grateful each time their 8-month-old baby, Trey, takes a breath.

It won't be a particularly happy Thanksgiving, but the Morgans are thankful, nonetheless.

Born with a hernia, weak lungs and a malformed heart valve, the curly-headed boy with a gummy grin can't seem to shake a case of pneumonia. Doctors are out of answers.

"We have in no way given up on him," said Cliff Morgan, 29, of Lindale, a small East Texas town about 90 miles from Dallas.

"But we know he could go any minute. So when you talk about being thankful, Trey's still here – that's what we're thankful for."

For most of the last two months, the Morgans and their three older children – Micah, 8, Joli, 6, and Braeden, 2 – have been living at the Ronald McDonald House of Dallas, a low-slung home with motel-sized rooms and a cafeteria-style kitchen in the shadow of UT Southwestern Medical Center.

"I don't know what we'd have done without this place," said Elfin Morgan, 28. "We feel strongly that we need to be together as a family right now, and the Ronald McDonald House has made that possible."

There is often a waiting list of families who need a place to stay while their children are treated at area hospitals, said Barbara McDermott, executive director of the Ronald McDonald House.

"We turn families away all the time because we just don't have the capacity," she said. "Dallas is a premier treatment center for pediatric illness, which is wonderful, but it really creates a need for many families."

Next week, a new Ronald McDonald House with twice the capacity of the current home – 60 bedrooms instead of 30 – will open in the Southwestern Medical District.

There will be apartment-style rooms for families of children undergoing transplant operations, transportation to and from medical appointments and three hot meals served daily.

Other amenities will include a library, chapel, outdoor play area, meditation garden and a beacon of light shining into the sky to let children in nearby hospitals know their family is nearby.

McDermott, who started as a volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House in 1991, said she's seen the strain on families grow over the years.

"None of us have children thinking we will outlive them," she said. "It is incredibly stressful for many families who have to face life with a very sick child.

"You combine that with being very far from home and the holidays, and you realize one of the real services we can offer is to take some of that burden from them."

Right now, families must live at least 75 miles from Dallas to qualify for help from the Ronald McDonald House. With the additional space in the new $20 million facility, there will be room for people who live 40 miles away or less.

The house has served families from Ukraine, South America, Mexico and China. In the future, even Collin County families may be offered free beds and meals.

"If you're trying to get from McKinney to Dallas at the wrong time of day, it can take you an hour and a half or two hours," said McDermott. "That's too long to commute with a sick child, so we'll have the ability to make some exceptions and offer accommodations to those families."

More than 1,800 families have stayed at the Ronald McDonald House this year. The average stay is eight days.

The Morgans and others said the clean beds, hot meals and sense of community at the Ronald McDonald House has helped them cope with their son's illness.

"We've been praying for a miraculous healing, and at this point, that may be what it takes," said Elfin Morgan. "This place has allowed us to be vulnerable with other families, and it has really showed us God is here and he's totally taking care of us."

Shana Brunner, a nurse who lives near Tulsa, said she had a similar revelation after her 14-year-old son, Jerry, hit a header during a recent soccer game. His vision was blurry afterward, so as a precaution, she took him in for a CT scan.

Doctors told her he did not have a concussion, but the test revealed a calcification deep in his brain.

After brain surgery at Baylor University Medical Center and a course of radiation treatments, Brunner said they are almost ready to leave the Ronald McDonald House and return home.

"This house has been amazing for us," she said, tears leaking down her cheeks. "We can rest here and almost feel normal. Doctors say he will be a full and functioning adult. They expect him to be cured – I just love that word."

McDermott said uplifting stories at the Ronald McDonald House help balance the despair.

Today, doctors are saving low-birth-weight babies more than ever, curing insidious cancers and restoring health after debilitating injuries.

"One of the most exciting things we see is that kids diagnosed with certain leukemias or very complicated heart defects 20 years ago would not survive," McDermott said.

"Those kids today are growing up and going to college and having their own families."

Size: More than doubles, from 26,000 to 60,000 square feet

Rooms: Number doubles, from 30 to 60

Address: 4707 Bengal St.

Dedication: 10:30 a.m. Dec. 3

Families served in 2008: 1,412

Total families served: 25,000

Move-in date: Families will slowly move in next month

SOURCE: Ronald McDonald House