family pic

family pic

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

my olympian part 1

I havent been so great about blogging, our lives have been well ... busy & sort of confusing. This weekend brought special times and clarification. I wanted to share with you what a beautiful experience we had participating in the steve young ski classic at snowbird through wasatch adaptive sports. this is merely part 1 of 2 and 2 was the best part for me but 1 was the best part for saylor!

so the steve young ski classic is sort of like a mini utah special olympics. wastach adaptive sports is the program that helps saylor ski along with many other special needs individuals both young and old. the ski classic is where celebrity athletes come and ski with the program participants in a race. saylor mostly ski's with amelia who works for WAS and you will see her in several pics, darling young lady! she competed against the ever so great chad lewis.



and she won of course!



this is saylor right before her race with chad & kyle whittingham





and some classic moments ... saylor using her crutches like poles (actually worked quiet well) and the smallest participant (saylor) with the tallest participant (mark eaton)


and then there was the GOLD medal! this was such a high for us all but especially for saylor. she kept saying things like "this is what i want to do with my life, i want to ski!" and she wore a smile all day and she has been wearing that gold medal nearly non stop since the moment she got it!

the celebs ... just to name a few ... steve young, chad lewis, kyle whittingham, rob morris, lee johnson, mark eaton, lincoln dewitt, & muffy davis along with several para-olympic female athletes that were specially inspiring and several other professional athletes.

in the evening on steve young ski classic day there is a benefit banquet auction dinner type thing (roughly $320 a plate to start with). that is for the athletes and all the peeps out there with the mooola that support this program. its the programs primary means of support and only happens once a year. our ski day ended with a private invite to attend this event and so there is more to come part deux!

Friday, March 19, 2010

gold

hall or nothing ... you must see THIS inspiring story about an olympian with spina bifida that just took gold!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

saylors inner pirate has died

for the last few years {as many of you know} saylor has adorned only a single earing. Its because we made the mistake of not having them both punched at the same time, so she refused to do the other ear! years have since passed, filled with people telling her she has lost her other earing and other comments, not knowing that she only has one earing, thats it and she is pleased and happy with that. We have attempted to bribe, con, and convince her into the other ear several times with no success. As of late she has been waring a darling tink earing that she acquired from our last trip to disney. She simply would only like to wear this one tink earing, and so its been in since oct. its kind of wide ... and well it concealed the fact that her ear was infected until i discovered this was the case last friday {i know i am not the worlds greatest mom any longer} anyhow we removed the earing, but not without some tugging, the back was almost grown into the infected skin. Its not even been a week, infection is clearing but whole is grown in for the most part. So she has opted to abandon her one earing days for no earing days and thus her inner pirate has deceased.

on another note. i have cleaned out the girls closets and while saylor cant maintain a pair of pants for a day she can with shirts, skirts, sweaters, and jackets and we have some really dawling pieces that are tooooo small. strange considering that she is like barely 38 pounds and about that height to and she is nearly 7. anyhow we initially were thinking kid to kid ... but i have found out thats not such a good idea anyway ... sometimes we give them to family or friends but really as i think about those folks my heart turns away {i am sorry ... its nothing personal} i think i want these to go to a little girl whom really needs them and would really appreciate them and whom wouldnt have such brand name cute clothes otherwise. i need suggestions in finding this little girl so shoot me a comment or email if you know of one.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

emotional intensity

So i dont blog as often as i should or want to or am bugged to but things seem to be daunting me these days. lately i cant even imagine how to say something or what to say. like nothing but chaos sometimes organized sometimes not is going on around here. so here is the basic update.

Nate: still so busy coaching stock's wrestling team and with work for which we are so grateful for. He still has some kitchen projects (after our recent tear apart the kitchen new appliance fiasco) to finish before we hit the outside of the house hard to get that finished up soon so we dont look so ghetto. he is healthy and happy.
nate would tell you that he got seriously validated by saylor this weekend. at clinic they ask the parents a series of questions every time. sort of generic stuff but they always ask who the primary caregiver of the child is. and so i just replied "i am" and saylor suddenly says "AND my dad!" booooya!

Storie: doing great as always, brilliant and happy. growing up way to fast. she has one or two more boarding lessons and i think ill try and take her at least once more this season. she is doing well with violin and orchestra and has a performance this week. so mature and responsible. had a situation with her teacher this week ... i dont mean to be the kind of parent who thinks their kid can do no wrong or that their kid is always right over the teacher who is the adult, but she is pretty responsible and the circumstance resulted in her honesty and her rendition. super frustrating for me as a parent, not sure i like her teacher and i will be so glad when this year is over! he doesnt seem to respect the children enough to speak kindly to them. or to believe what they are saying for that matter.

stock: we are in freestyle/greco season with a few tourni's still offering folk. he is doing well placing in the top 3 almost always. and this last weekend he took first in a greco tourni, freestyle tourni, and folk. i guess the kids were no match for him. good for his confidence and mat time is always great. we recently found out he is at 9th in the nation for his age on www.themat.com such a busy kid and really focused on what it is he wants to do. i cant keep a ball out of his hands when he is not wrestling. and at school he is the most liked, kindest and most popular kid. true leader with the best qualities. reminds me so much of his dad. reflux is under control, crossing our fingers.

saylor ... well for the first time in well .... ever. things feel so good in regards to saylor. nothing major on the horizon. she is more healthy now then she perhaps has ever been. things are going just the way that we have worked so hard to get them to go. she is doing well in school in our opinion and has lots of friends. the whole school adores her and even the big kids seem to gravitate towards her. poo and pee working so fantastic and smoothly with no infections and complications and neuro stuff has disappeared. she seems happier to and so do we. spina bifida has for the first time ever taken a back seat in our lives and other things have moved forward on the list. its very surreal and emotional. a new stage, a new chapter in our lives. i keep holding my breath for the end of such bliss ... and yet i have comfort and peace and a knowledge that this is here to stay for a time.

me: working on education in floral design and business. and you just running studio stems and UBB. being a mom and all that such stuff. personal goals flooding my mind and wonderance as to what is next for our little fam. had a highly intense weekend, or friday i should say that i wanted to share and document. it was emotionally overwhelming, a blessing and a curse.

we got up really early to major snow storm and headed off to pcmc for sb clinic. it felt odd because for once i didnt feel like we needed to go, kind of silly. lots of kids go to clinic every 6 months or once a year just to stay on top of things but we have never been that family, we are at pcmc way to much, second home, but now i feel like we have rented it out to someone else for a while. we got there safely and a little wet. finished clinic with all sorts of happy emotions rushing through my blood when i found out that a good friend of mine was upstairs in the PICU with her baby who had been life lighted to PCMC because of a respiratory bacteria. So we went upstairs to visit and it just nearly broke my heart. Good thing carrie was handling it so well and was her usual smiling optimistic self, otherwise i would have been a mess. her baby brought so many memories back to me but also i just felt so heartbroken for the situation and how we are all required to suffer. i wanted so badly to hold them both and make it all better, to do something of value to help them get through. then on the way home i received a call from another really great friend of mine in the thick of cancer and chemo who needed me at that moment. so i literally switched cars and left saylor with nate to rush to yet another hospital to be with her. another heartbreak of a different kind similar feelings. overwhelming feelings. and yet this is not me that tragedy was striking. while i was with my dear friend nate took saylor to work. just so happens he was working on this kind womans home ..

this is the general primary president of the church of jesus christ of latter day saints. and yes that is my daughter sitting on her lap in her home. while i am off sitting through chemo with my friend. this woman is loving my sweet little girl and telling her all the things that pres monson would have her tell saylor. again heart wrenching stuff! i spent the weekend in service for the most part as i endeavored to help my friends and family around me emerged in tragedy. there are several of them beyond what i have mentioned. i am so grateful for the gospel in my life, so grateful for nate and who he is, and so grateful for my kids, my family, my friends and the very blessed and rich life i have been given even with all the suffering that i experience and is around me its so beautiful. so beautiful.