At a fundraising breakfast on Saturday morning, Mason and Cutler became mesmerized by the karate demonstration and joined in when invited. I think Mason was more interested because the instructor leading everything promised that anyone 6 and over could break a piece of wood. Naturally Cutler stole the show after Mason went and insisted on breaking wood as well. Here are the videos of our fearsome twosome.
Normally we don’t start raising funds for this until August, but with the lack of Team In Training we figured it is time to start hitting everyone much earlier for what will be our annual fund raiser and to reach beyond the stars when we set our goal. The past couple of years we have been able to raise a couple thousand dollars without really pushing too deeply into our pockets so this year we have decided to buckle down and set our goal at $10,000.
That’s not a typo. LLS does some amazing work that have touched our lives personally as well as many thousands of other lives out there. It seems all too often we hear of yet another friend or acquaintance that is being touched by cancer and so it is time to step up our efforts and do our very best to ensure that those stories have a positive ending like ours.
While I would love each of you to give enough to reach our goal, what I think would be even more impressive would be to grow the size of our team and have even more people join us in the effort to raise a minimum of $100 and more importantly show your support by attending the walk. So, if you are interested in joining us for the walk, mark down October 20th on your calendar.
If you want to show your support you can go to the team page at http://pages.lightthenight.org/ntx/Plano12/teamcutler2012. Here you can donate or even better, you can sign up to join us for the walk. Feel free to share the link with others to help, at the very least, spread the word of the wonderful things that LLS does in the fight against blood cancers.
If you have any fund raising ideas or just questions about what we are doing, please contact me at aaron@teamfricke.com.
Cutler is starting to progress as a skater…well at least as much as a 3 year old can after just two practices. Below is a video of Cutler’s first solo skate (I wish I could edit out the overbearing parent yelling at his kid to get up seconds after he fell).
And naturally, not long after he experienced his first solo fall.
Hard to believe, that just a couple of years ago this fancy skating Mason was going through the same thing (I also wish I could edit out me asking Mason to skate backwards only to have him ignore me, must have been too loud in there).
The boys prefer the "funny" face over the smile
I apologize for this being late, but better late than never…right?
I hope everyone had as blessed of an Easter as we did. We woke up early and hunted for eggs, ate too much candy for breakfast and some donuts, had a great dinner with the local family, and then while lying around getting ready for bed Mason became the spiritual leader in the house. He looked at us and said that he wanted to give a gift to Jesus and we explained that the gift Jesus would like most is to lead his life the way Jesus has shown and so he then decided that we should all pray together as a family out loud. So we joined hands and bowed our heads and listened to Mason say “God thank you for my awesome life and this great house and my family” and before Mason could finish Cutler was moved to throw in “And thank you for God”. It was the best Easter gift I could ever receive to see our boys realize how good we have and who we have to thank.
The boys are fired up for baseball…Rangers baseball.
Cardinals fans, please remain silent.
In order to help pay for college I have decided it is time to start renting out the boys to dance at weddings for those couples that don’t have the cute and innocent youngsters willing to wear out the dance floor…minimal beer required.
These two videos are from Mason’s school dance where if we wanted to find the boys all we had to do was look for the throng of people shaking their groove thing. The boys could be found in the middle of it all.
Currently hanging with Jared in his treatment room while he receives his third round of chemotherapy. I guess I should back up and give you the latest on him. After his trip to Houston last week to visit with the surgeon and oncologists it was determined that he would go through another two rounds of chemo (6 weeks) and then back to Houston for surgery to remove the tumor and repair his left lung. After surgery he will stay in Houston for 7 weeks of proton radiation. The tumor has reduced in size a bit and the surgeon said that if it weren’t for the lung he probably wouldn’t operate but since he has two things to do he will get it done. He also thinks it will be a minimally invasive procedure so hopefully the recovery time will be minimal.
So, back to sitting in the room with Jared while he is hooked to the IV machine…while I wouldn’t wish this upon anyone I am glad it is Jared that I get to help support. His attitude is amazing and his sense of humor has not wavered during the entire process. The nurses here are incredibly friendly and fortunately the one Jared has today has a sense of humor that is capable of dealing with the two of us together at the same time.
Unfortunately, for me, this brings back many memories and for some reason it brings some melancholy to me. It must be a natural subconscious reaction as I started to feel irritable last night and I didn’t realize why. So now it is my theory that it was the trip to see his doctor that I accompanied him on yesterday mixed with the thought of coming up here with him today. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining and I am happy to be able to assist my friend anyway I can, just an observation of how the human mind reacts to certain situations especially when experienced before.
Good thing about hanging out with Jared is sitting around listening to his play list…including Convoy and watching the nurses reaction when she walks into the room with the song blaring and two of us singing away.
Below is a picture of Jared (Middle in blue), our best buddy Adam, and myself from yesterday’s appointment. Jared is now bald from chemo, Adam is bald from nature, and I am bald from choice. 🙂
I recently purchased a new camera and lens and have been having fun trying to figure everything out. So have the boys as they are my general subject of the photos. Below are a few of the funny faces they have been making for me.
Cutler finally turned three and is now eligible to start skate lessons and he was very excited to hit the ice so he can play hockey like his brother. He showed lots of promise with no fussing over falling on the ice. In fact, at times I think he thought he was supposed to fall down.
In another long line of great comments from Mason, comes this unintentional racism. On our drive home from San Antonio Mason is discussing an upcoming visit from our friends, the Doyles. Hard to tell by the last name, but they are half Chinese via Lisa’s ancestry. So while Mason is trying to explain their heritage to us he says “So, they are 50% Chinese, and 50%…normal.” 🙂
Team Fricke 