Today I was asked to write a few lines about Cutler for this year’s Light The Night, as he will be on stage for the introductions, and while writing something down I started to get pretty emotional. I was pretty surprised as I usually file those emotions away, but then I realized that it is 9/11 which is our anniversary of Cutler’s diagnosis. So this post is now two fold, it’s my chance to share my post from several years ago sharing what 9/11 means to us by sharing my post from a few years ago.

https://teamfricke.org/2014/09/11/our-personal-911/

It’s also my chance to ask for your support during our annual fund raising efforts. Unfortunately being focused on training the past three weeks I have not been able to push forth our efforts as I have in the past. Fortunately we have a big head start provided Cutler’s swim team’s efforts raising close to $5000 via the swimathon. Please consider helping us in your efforts. Any size donation counts. Help us eradicate blood cancers and help prevent others from having their own personal 9/11.

http://pages.lightthenight.org/gat/StLouis17/teamcutler

This past April marked one year since I quit working and decided to spend the summer with the boys.  When they went back to school last fall I started to look at getting back into the work force and then we started thinking it would be good to look into starting something for ourselves and for the future of our family.  As a big fan of Nothing Bundt Cakes from our Dallas days we started meeting with them last October and after several meetings I realized the numbers don’t lie and Melanie and I made the decision to pursue a franchise, which was awarded to us in December.

After very long and complicated lease negotiations we will be signing our lease for a building in Fairview Heights, Il on Monday.  For my non St. Louis friends, the location is about 20 miles from downtown and more importantly a few miles from my hometown of O’Fallon, Il.  For my Illinois friends, our location is 5915 N Illinois (Hwy 159) about a mile south of the mall right next to the St. Louis Bread company.  Our current projected opening date is November 10th, but we are doing everything we can to move that up to be sure we are fully prepared for the holidays.

As our family blog has been dormant I suppose now is a good time to get it back up and running.  I will do my best to post regular updates on our progress in an effort to keep everyone up to date and probably more importantly to provide me a release of the stress that runs non stop through my head.

Below is a video that we put together as part of our application process for the franchise.  It’s cheesy and fun, which is pretty much a great description of our family.

The mom’s in my life are so special that I decided they were too good to post this along with everyone else’s posts about their mother.

So happy Mother’s Day first to the incredible mother of my boys.  The way my boys look up to her and love on her really is well deserved.  She is patient and kind and always supportive of the boys’ dreams even if it means sitting at the ballpark watching them play baseball on her special day.

A very happy Mother’s Day to my special mom who has helped raise me to be what I believe is a pretty decent contribution to society and more importantly she has been an incredibly loving and supportive grandmother.  Sorry we missed your day yesterday, but your understanding and support of the boys’ schedules is also another component of why you are so special.

Sitting in the holding room for jury duty and the lady across from me is pounding away on this relic while entering the results into a spreadsheet on her brand new surface. 

LLS has given over $237 million to help patients afford their treatments.

Help give light to patients in one of the darkest moments of their life.

http://pages.lightthenight.org/gat/StLouis16/teamcutler

Tonight we took the boys to see 42nd Street at the Muny. After the act centered around finding a dime and then busted into “We’re in the money” song and dance Cutler looks at me and asks “All that for a dime?”

It seems like he has something like that almost every day where his one liners just leave me in between rolling my eyes and rolling in laughter. 

As the hockey season has come to an end for Mason,  I finally found time to start looking through some of the old videos and found this little gem from a tournament in Nashville.  As a goalie, Mason did a pretty good job with, at times, little defensive support and several times was hammered after the whistle with little to no push from the defense to interfere.  That was until this tournament.  After getting hammered in the first game by a team from Chicago the coaches must have gotten into their heads about protecting Mason as this was just a few minutes into this game.  Funny how this stood out to me more so than any good saves he may have made.