Gratitude

It's been a while since I posted. We have had our ups and downs in the last couple of weeks. This picture was taken with two throws given to the boys by one of our "guardians" as I call them. Susi Norfolk in our neighborhood had a party where she sold these incredible throws. They come from a company called http://www.dontfreakitsfaux.com/. The company and it's owner donate a throw to children with life threatening conditions for every 5 throws purchased. Typically the throws go to children in children's hospitals, but Susi asked if she could give them to Brandon and Jeremy as well as another child at WR Odell with a medical condition. Long story short here are the boys being presented their new throws. They are sooooo warm! Thank you Susi!

We have also had to struggle with behaviors from both boys particularly Brandon. Brandon has shown signs of aggression for very minor things and has gone as far as to tear up the shades on his bedroom window and even hit Wendy one morning. Both incidents started over minor things not going "his" way. Patience and flexibility have truly become important. We have learned to pick our battles and not push things. Jeremy I think sometimes follows his brother's lead, but will have temper tantrums where he will just cry and scream for 20-30 minutes, and then be fine. Oooooh what a wonderful disease!!!!

Last Friday Ms Bunn(VI) and Mr Ian (O&M) brought Brandon and Jeremy to lunch at Wachovia with me and Wendy met us. The boys love to come to my building and Brandon amazes me with what he remembers. He realized when we were looking at a set of vending machines that they had switched out a Coke machine, he hasn't been there in months! However he couldn't remember what he had for breakfast that morning.

We still have way more good days than bad, it's just the bad days are becoming larger in nature. We have to thank the teachers, staff and Brandon's aide Lisa at school. They have become very good at heading off problems before they become bigger problems and have worked with us to make things as stress free as possible for the boys.

Whoooo????

Kinda corny I know, but two reasons for the title.




One to tell you about the neat experience we had at the Carolina Raptor Center last Saturday. Visit them at http://www.carolinaraptorcenter.org/ We got to see many birds, including a beautiful redtailed hawk, bald eagles, and this barred owl named Omar. They get about 700 birds of prey per year and release almost 2/3 back to the wild. The ones that don't get released are unable to support themselves in the wild usually due to injury. One of the most common injuries is blindness due to trauma. See, the birds complete and utter focus on it's prey makes it oblivious to tree branches, power lines and even cars. We saw some magnificent birds, and the boys enjoyed the gift shop!!!!

Now, the second reason for the corny intro is that we need Sponsors for ourboys 5k on June 7th. If you know someone or some company who may be interested in sponsorship for our event please email us at contactus@ourboysjourney.com or at chawk328@ctc.net. We will have online registration available shortly for runners.
Save the date and please pass on this information to anyone that may be interested in running, walking or volunteering. Also if you have a community newsletter that you could run a story in we would love the exposure.