Thank You!!

A great big thank you to all of you who showed your support and donated to our team this year for Great Strides!!! We did make our goal :) Yesterday we got to go to Oaks Park and hang out with the hundreds of others who put together teams to raise money for the CF Foundation. I believe they announced our walk raised $150,000!! Wow! I wasn't very good about trying to create a team so our little team consisted of our family, my good friend Lori, and my brother. We decided to let Elizabeth stay the night with a friend the night before and stay with her while we were at the walk. I know she was so bored last year as she's not allowed to really play with the other kids. You just don't know who has CF and there is a very strict 3 foot rule at these things, those with CF have to keep 3 ft away from others with CF or those they just don't know. I'm glad we let her go to her friend's as those two I hear had a wonderful time together :) Anyway, it was gorgeous out, we all got a nice sunburn :) The walk was great, even found a path that shoots off and goes through another nature park so we turned into there just for the shade!

Lori, Seth and the Blazers mascott. So here is where my ignorance of sports comes into play, I still have no idea what that thing is. A wolf? A cougar? Huh? Whatever, Seth thought he was cool.

Lori works for Farmer's so we stopped to get a picture by the Farmer's sign :)

Someone took various comments off of people's team pages and printed them up and put them all over the stage. We found the one Beth and Dean Peden had posted. It says "We love you Elizabeth and want you around a long time". Thanks guys!

This is Lindsay. She runs the show every year! What is interesting about her is her daughter also has CF. Her daughter's name is Elizabeth Rose (though she goes by Ella). She is one year younger then our Elizabeth Rose AND she has red hair!! We found this out when one day the doctors got confused by the two Elizabeth's on the chart. They happened to have an appointment the same day we did. The girls have met but as I've mentioned before they won't ever be able to hang out together.

Recent Events

I'm not keeping up with my blog very well right now. I don't have a great place to sit and do it, have to sit on my bed and it's not the most comfortable spot to blog :P

First big event was Jonathan's 9th Birthday on July 18. He got to spend the day at Day Camp and after we went to my Dad's for ice cream cake and presents. The following day we were supposed to do the Spaghetti Factory and watch WALL-E but the stomach flu hit and he was sick :( We made up for it last night. Good movie, we recommend it. Anyway, here are some pics from his little family party.

A week later Rob's company, Cognex, paid for a day at Oaks Park, an amusement park down in Sellwood. They had Buster's BBQ come cater our lunch. That is some really good food! We had to sit around for about an hour after before going back on the rides. I was sure I'd have sick kids all over but they did great. Nathaniel and Jonathan are big enough now to ride all the big scary rides and they went on them all! I can't do it anymore, the mini roller coaster is my limit now :) Seth even got to go on a few rides, mostly the carousel. We had a great day and stayed there for about 8 hours since we had no where else to go. We were homeless again for a few days.

Seth really likes snow cones now :)

Thursday of last week was the belt testing at the dojo. I had attended enough classes that I could test if I wanted. The kids were testing again too but Nathaniel didn't have enough lessons. It takes more and more the higher you go. He was asked to help lead warm ups so I have a few pics of him doing that. Three of his classmates tested for their orange belts and I'm sure they earned them, they did a great job!

Nathaniel helping with warm-ups.

This is his class. Senpai Devon is on the left, Senpai Lance is on the right.

The kids thought it would be fun to tackle Senpai Lance. Senpai Devon got in on the action also.

Following the kids were the adults. I was only going for my low blue belt but I was so stinkin nervous. I've never tried to earn anything in sports before so this was important to me. They had some former students come in to help with the testing so the dojo was packed, it was so fun to see. Warm ups wore me out, because we were testing we had to show off :) Next we had to demonstrate our kata. First thing I did was screw up three of the moves. I was so mad. Fortunately they have us do the kata twice and I did much better the second time around. If I had done really bad they would have let me do it again so I wasn't too worried. Following that we had to use the Sabaki pads to show that we could do some pad work and follow directions. I like doing that so I wasn't too worried about that.

This is me working with Senpai Trish.

Last was the sparring. Since I was the lowest belt testing I got to go first. I had asked Sensei Heather who would be my partner but she just gave me this mischievous look and said she'd let me know when I got up there. I didn't think anything of it. As a white belt I'm only required to spar one 1-minute round. That's all I was expecting, and maybe a few rounds later with the higher belts testing but that would be their test not mine. I got on the mat and saw that Senpai Trish was my partner. I love Trish, she's helped me with most of my training. Of course, she also knows all my weaknesses!! I did get her down at one point but I went down with her having lost my balance. In a real Sabaki challenge I would have lost the point. So we got through the round and I was glad it was over. It's amazing how just one minute of that completely wipes you out. So I was headed over to sit when Heather threw her little secret at me. Alex, a black belt, had come to help with the testing. I was told right then that I would sparring her as part of my test. Rob said the look on my face was pretty funny, total shock. I was worried for about 5 seconds then realized Alex wasn't there to kill me. She was there to test me. So I relaxed and had fun with it. You'll see in the video the first thing she does is a smooth roundhouse kick to my head.

I cannot see those coming. That is my goal is to learn to recognize those and block them and use it to my advantage. That is my biggest weakness right now is not being able to see the kicks coming. At least it wasn't a hard kick. She was fun, I was glad for the opportunity. Sensai Heather told me later that she did it cause she knew I could do more then a white belt. That makes me feel good. I'm too hard on myself, feel like I should be able to do so much more and I get frustrated when I miss the blocks or forget how to throw someone. There were three others testing that night. They all did really well. Lance, Heather's husband, was testing for his brown belt. He sparred eight 1-minute rounds. I can't imagine, I was wiped out after two. He was a lot of fun to watch. We both showed up yesterday morning for kickboxing and he was limping. Those guys get pretty intense when they spar each other :) I came home from kickboxing and went straight back to bed. I was feeling pretty good yesterday morning and was surprised I wasn't more sore but by evening I was feeling it. Every muscle in my back and around my ribs was just aching. Feeling much better today. I'm pretty sure I earned my belt. Have to wait for them to grade everything, had a written test also. Will be nice to see some blue around my waist instead of all white :) I have really enjoyed karate. Lots of bumps and bruises and some nights I come home just exhausted with knees and feet hurting. But there is great satisfaction in knowing I did what was required of me, that I could push my body and make it perform the moves.

Weekend Happenings

Saturday we volunteered at the CF fundraiser at Oaks Park. Every year across the country local chapters put on a walk to help raise money for the CF Foundation. I didn't know about it in time to put together a team for the walk but I was able to go help at one of the stations. I was put in the kids corner where I just needed to help kids make crafts or play games while their parents mingled. It's always so hard at these events because they've found that people with CF can very easily transmit their bacteria to others with CF. And like I've said before once a person gets a bacteria stuck in the mucus in his/her lungs it's there to stay. So now you pretty much have to keep your child 3 ft from other people at all times. That's the worst part about this disease, these kids and adults can't get together and support each other, they could make each other more sick then they already are. I found out a lot of families don't even bring thier child(ren) with CF to these things. They can't even come enjoy the activity set up to help them. How sad is that? I just had Rob keep a close eye on Elizabeth while we were there.
It was amazing to see how many people showed up for it. Some of the teams were huge! It was very encouraging to see so much support. I so wished I had had time to get a team together. I've really been feeling a need to get more connected to my community and I'm thinking this is one way I can. I will be looking into what more I can do with our local CF chapter. I know they have many fundraisers throughout the year so I'd like to get in on more of them.

Later that night the kids were running through the sprinkler as it was another nice, hot day. Nathaniel came running across the deck and slid his foot over a nail sticking up in in the deck. He tore a nice little gash across the ball of his foot and totally freaked out! I guess I shouldn't blame him, there was blood everywhere. But dang, it took a lot of coaxing from Rob and I to calm him down enough to get a good look at it. I have to admit I really thought about getting my camera but it really wasn't a good time. Not sure everyone would want to see the blood pouring out of his foot like that either. Ug! So, off to urgent care, again. We've been to urgent care more times in the last two weeks then we have in the last 5 or 6 years. Crazy! They didn't give him stitches, guess they don't like to stitch the bottom of feet, so they just glued it together. Nathaniel is doing fine. Rob told him to keep a sock on his foot and we chuckled when we saw him put a sock on that foot and not the other. Why would the other foot need a sock, really? So he's been running around the house the last couple of days with only one sock on :) Gotta love him!!