Eggscellent!!!

     Guess what!!! Chase had his egg food challenge today and he passed!!! As of Monday we can give him anything containing egg and the hope is that there won't be any problem at all.
     Howard and I can't even get our minds around this yet. He can eat donuts, and at restaurants, and picnics, and pasta, and we keep thinking of new things we don't have to avoid anymore!!! Yes, I've teared up, we both have. Chase has wanted to be able to eat like us for so long and all our vigilance has finally paid off. That and a whole lot of prayer! Thank you Lord for healing him! We are flying high in this household tonight!

Get Your Mower Runnin'

     This is the view from our house lately. The cold and wind didn't stop our little man from getting out and helping his daddy. We have about a 1/4 acre of land and Chase will plug along with Howard the entire time he (Howard) mows. We're talking up and down the yard with him, around the bushes, emptying out the grass clippings; Chase takes it all very seriously. The boy just loves yard work!

New Look!

     Welcome to our newly improved blog! I've been wanting to update the blog for a while. I just recently hit 105 posts, so I figured it was about time. You will have to excuse the changes that keep popping up as I play around with things. I have no computer experience with design so I'm playing and learning as I go. I've got some ideas to "spice" our blog up a bit and maybe even add some regular features so stay tuned and bear with us as we are under construction!

Update on the Diabetes Walk

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures from Saturdays walk but there was a great turn out of people for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundations "Walk to Cure Diabetes". I told Howard that it was somewhat surreal to be surrounded by people who either had diabetes or had a family member who had diabetes. I wouldn't wish the disease on anyone but it was nice to realize that I'm not so alone in dealing with it.

Since no one can tell you have diabetes (and you don't go around asking people if they do!) it can feel very lonely dealing with it. I was greatly encouraged just being out with a bunch of other people who face the same issues I do daily!

There were tables set out with food and drinks. Howard said that he got to feel how I must feel everytime we go somewhere to eat. All the foods were marked as to how many carbs they had (which is crucial to know when giving insulin to cover what you eat), the drinks were water or diet, the whole event pretty much catered to diabetics. I can't explain how it felt to be part of the "normal majority" group there.

Last year our walk alone raised $70,000 so there's a lot of hope to match or beat that number this year. Howard and I met our personal goal of $350 and actually passed it by raising $392! Thank you if you helped contribute towards our goal.

The most exciting news to me at the event was the new insulin pump features and the hope that five years from now the first artificial pancreas will be distributed!!! It will still be worn like an insulin pump on the exterior of the body and the beginning uses for it will be limited but the hope is that eventually it will sense insulin changes within the body and give the insulin needed or stop insulin from being delivered just like a normal pancreas does. They hope to eliminate the need for blood sugar testing as well as alleviate the symptoms of "highs" and "lows" that diabetics experience. This is such fantastic news to me! While it isn't a "cure" there is a lot of hope that this will be the next step towards a cure. For current diabetics it means so much more freedom, the hope of no hospital visits due to complications, etc. I was so encouraged about the research being done after talking with the reps present at the walk. Despite the rain and cold it was a really positive day for me!

Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation

Our family is participating in this year's Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Walk to Cure Diabetes. As you know, I have type 1 (also known as juvenile diabetes) so as soon as I got the information on this walk I knew I wanted to support the foundation. Research about treating and preventing type 1 diabetes has come so far but there is a lot more research to be done to find a cure. This cause is something I connect with. If you are interested in joining our team for the walk on April 25, 2010 or would like to donate towards our team, please visit our team page
http://walk.jdrf.org/walker.cfm?id=87664902 . Thank you!

Easter Girls and their Daddy's

I just had to share this picture that my sister-in-law took of my brother Peter and their daughter Nonah with Howard and Alexa. They are just too cute!

Easter Pictures

We didn't have the greatest luck with Easter pictures this year. By the looks of things a few of my friends had a few problems too so I don't feel so bad anymore. These are the "best" of our kiddos. :-)

He did what!

Chase must be going through a new developmental stage because he is just blossoming before our eyes. His language is improving, his imagination has just taken off and he's memorizing things left and right.

We took out Truckery Rhymes by Jon Scieszka from the library. He is the author of the Trucktown books and Chase just loves them. The Truckery Rhymes book is a take on a ton of old nursery rhymes with the wording changed to all things truck. Chase memorized 57 pages worth of rhymes and could go through the book reciting the poems or singing the songs, in some cases verbatim! Now he will tell us he wants to read to us and will proceed to tell us the stories he has memorized. Wow! If you ask him to make up a story it is amazing to hear what he creates and describes and so much fun!

Let's go hatch some...fish?

It's a beautiful Saturday here! We needed to get out this morning so we took the kids to our local fish hatchery. We bought some fish food and let Chase do the rest. He had such a blast!
The fish leap and thrash all over each other when you throw in food. They totally mesmerized Alexa who just kept pointing at the fish.

There are walkways all over and Chase was quite concerned that he get to all the fish and give them all food "to make them happy". He would say "Mommy this fish doesn't look happy I need to give him some food" and proceed to toss some food in. We made quite a few fish happy let me tell you!

The fish are so used to being fed that if you walk past them and they see your shadow they will all begin swimming along next to you in hopes of some food. It was a little eerie to walk with Chase while he tossed in the food. I would look behind us and we had these huge lines of fish just following us along and joining with more fish as we walked. So cool too!

The trees are blooming and looking gorgeous everywhere!

Chase already can't wait to go back. While we were riding home in the car he was telling us stories about what the fish were saying and how they were asking for him to feed them. So much fun for him!