It's That Time Again!

It's time for the 7th Annual Ride for Wishes! You may remember reading about it here last year. This is one of my favorite rides, for one of my favorite causes, of the entire year! If you're a rider, looking for a benefit ride, this is one of the most well organized rides we to participate in. Angela was a wish recipient four years ago (not sponsored through this ride, but it doesn't matter.) And we just found out not too long ago that Axel will be a wish recipient as well. This year there are two children's wishes sponsored by this ride. You can read about them here.

Angela and I were caught in a few pictures on last year's ride. We're easy to pick out! You're looking for the waaay cool sidecar! See the one right in the foreground of this picture? That's MY ride! Love my "Nooner & Spank"!

Do you see us in the middle of the group?

There is nothing more energizing to me than being right smack dab in the middle of a group of bikes just like this. Riding for a cause.

Here's our group at one of the stops. Right after this it started POURING!!! It isn't super fun to ride in a downpour. No...really it's not.  From left to right: My Sis-in-law Dawn, Me, Dean, Angela in front, my Brother in law Kelley.

Here we are, zipping past the State Capital. Kind of a cool picture.

After the ride and subsequent parade, there is a street dance with several different bands. Angela LOVES this part. This year Axel will get to go hang out and hear the music for awhile too.

Neither of the kids are coming along on the ride this year. Axel for obvious reasons, Angela because she'll be at her dads. But later in the evening they'll go down to the street dance with us, which they'll both enjoy.

So that's our plan for Saturday. What are YOUR plans?

Angela's Wish

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

So Where Is It?

So where is the photo montage everyone is asking me about? It's COMING!!! I finally got my photos yesterday (Friday) and am working on getting everything uploaded.

The most difficult part isn't doing the pictures, it's finding THE perfect music to go with them. Not only does the song have to PERFECTLY fit the mood I'm trying to convey, but it has to be the right length as well! (otherwise you're stuck adjusting how long each photo displays, how it transitions, etc. which becomes even more time consuming than the project started out to be.)

Several people have said, "Can't you just use some Disney music? Anything Disney will work!" But this isn't quite so. I have downloaded every Disney song there is that has to do with wishes, hopes and dreams (and often several versions of each one) and they're not quite right for what my heart wants to say. And so, I keep looking.

I also have this issue about timing certain pictures to what's happening in the song, (watch my "An Amazing 11 Years" video and you'll see what I'm talking about.) I know...I know!!! Throughout most of my life I'm a pretty random and scattered person, but somehow, when it comes to these montages the perfectionist side of me comes out! Believe me, it drives me crazy too.

Home and crying!

We are HOME, and I'm crying. You might think it's because we left the 85* sunshine to come home to snow, but no...it's not that. Instead I'm crying because I have a disk of 400+ pictures I took that the tech guy at the Give Kids the World Village took from my memory card and put onto a disk...AND I CAN'T OPEN THEM! Oh no!!!! I emailed him but don't expect to hear from him until Tuesday or so. I'm just sick and trying not to cry!!

Not breathing easy

12:45 a.m.
In just 3 hours and 15 minutes I have to wake up everyone in the house, so we can climb in limo for a ride to the airport. Seems way too easy, doesn't it? Angela thought so to, so she decided to spice things up a bit.

Tonight we brought the dogs to the boarding kennel, and on the way Angela sounded h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e!!! I could hear the peds voice echoing in my ear "If she gets worse, bring her in for a chest x-ray before getting on that plane!"

So I brought her into the ER around 7:00 tonight( or would that be last night?) because she was wheezing too bad, and she sounded kind of pneumonia like. Three neb treatments and a chest x-ray later, she does NOT have pneumonia, but was having a very bad asthma attack. Her oxygen sats were only so-so, but once we finished the last neb they were back up where they were supposed to be. The Dr. said he had no problems with us getting on the plane, and said the Florida air will be great for her. I sure hope he's right! Oh, and I don't remember who I was talking to today when I said something about how flushed she was. (she actually looked flu-ish which REALLY had me worried!) I found out that was from the Decadron. Nobody told me that might happen. Oh well...live and learn. We also came home with Zithromax as a preventative so she DOESN'T develop pneumonia (which she is so prone to do.)

Ok, I'm off to catch a nap before it's time to load up. Thank you everyone for the well-wishes. It all seems kind of surreal, this whole Make A Wish thing. I've been walking around numb for the past couple of days, just trying to take everything in. I didn't even cry at the salon yesterday, so I KNOW my brain is on disconnect mode.

I'll have lots of pictures to post in a week or so. Man..now THAT montage will take forever to put together!

Angela's day at the Spa

Angela's day at the spa, courtesy of "Make A Wish" of Minnesota

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

4:30 a.m...

Please pray that Angela gets better FAST! Airport security isn't fond of nebulizers as carry-ons. Decadron helps, but I just gave her the last dose of it and I think that's all she's allowed. The poor kid is on EIGHT different drugs right now!

Getting excited!

I know it's supposed to be "wordless Wednesday" but those who know me know that's a whole 24 hours of keeping my mouth shut. Yeah right!

Anyway, I just got a call from the Give Kids The World Village in Orlando...confirming our upcoming stay. It's getting so close we can taste it! I heard that yesterday was 85 and sunny there, a little cooler today, in the 60's. SO??? That's better than SNOW!!!!

The First of a Series

Today was the first of a series of very special days. Watch the video, you'll see why! Check back next week for "Day 2"!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Count Down!

Well, I'm not posting the exact date, but I can tell you we're counting down the days until we leave for Angela's Make A Wish trip! This has really gotten to be an "over the top" kind of thing. And here I thought they "just" sent you on a trip!

Next weekend there will be a pre-wish party for 12 at Angela's favorite restaurant, Applebees. She doesn't know it yet, but we'll be picked up at the house by a fire truck, and I've been told the local fire department has a special gift for her. They will then drive us IN THE FIRE TRUCK to Applebees, where other family and friends will be waiting.

The following week Angela and I are having a girls morning at Spalon Montage
where our fingers, toes, and Angela's hair will be beautified. ( found out about this just a few hours after I'd just had my hair done! LOL) Our wish coordinator remembered reading about Angela wanting a green mohawk, but sadly, her mother won't allow it. LOL So Angela will be getting some foiled colors and a cut. I'm sure she'll be in 7th heaven!

Back to crossing off the days on the calendar!

sicky ickies and travel

When kids get sick, it's really quite gross. Especially when the illness involves the sinuses. Angela has a horrible sinus infection and has spent the week smearing snot everywhere. Today she was sick enough for me to say she definitely had to stay home, which meant she had to go along to my doctor appointment before we could get to hers. She's breathing like a freight train and you can hear her coming a mile away. And if she sneezes? Well lets not even go there, shall we? Hopefully the new antibiotics will quick in quickly and she'll be feeling up for school soon!

Oh last week we were given our tentative travel dates and today they were confirmed. We now know exactly when we're leaving for Angela's Make A Wish trip. We'll be having some type of party the middle of January. I can't wait to find out how many people we can invite!

A HUGE Thank you!!!

As we prepare for Angela's upcoming Make A Wish trip, one of my concerns was the dogs. I really wasn't sure about asking MAW to cover boarding for our dogs for an entire week. That's a HUGE expense. A friend of mine who just returned from their MAW trip encouraged me to ask anyway.

In the meantime, I contacted several boarding facilities in the area, and visited a couple as well. UGH! My dogs have been away from us plenty of times, but it's usually with a family friend or something and they have a good visit, but they've never been "kenneled" at a facility before. The ones I visited seemed just like that, very "kennelish".

A friend of mine recently recommended Paws And Claws located in Hudson WI. They are NOT a typical boarding kennel, and in asking around to my other trainer friends I've heard good things about them. Yesterday I emailed them pleading our cause, and they've agreed to take our dogs to make Angela's wish come true! I'm so excited! I have been very nervous about the dog situation. Our dogs are our babies and I'm as picky about where they go as I was about daycare for any of my human kids!

So, Thanks PAWS AND CLAWS for helping us make Angela's wish come true!

Making a Wish

Some of you may have read about Angela's original Make A Wish. I think it was back in May or June that the people from Make A Wish came to the house. Our representative's name is Hannah, and this was the very first wish she'd done, so she was accompanied by Make A Wish of Minnesota's president.

They really enjoyed interviewing Angela, finding out all her likes and dislikes. For an interview with child, it was quite thorough! Angela made it pretty clear that her entire life revolved around Zack and Cody

Wish kids make 3 wishes. A travel wish, (assuming they're healthy enough to travel.) a "closer to home" wish if travel is difficult, and an "at home" wish if travel is just out of the question. Angela's first wish was to meet Zack and Cody at the Disney Studios in California. Her second wish was a playhouse in the back yard. She wants something along the lines of this
and her 3rd wish was a new bedroom. (I think, oh my gosh, now I don't remember!) We were told that the wait for Zack and Cody would be up to a year long, as they're very popular right now, but we could go with her second wish instead of waiting. We weighed the options and decided to wait it out. A play house is something we could potentially do on our own, but Zack and Cody? We could never make that happen without divine intervention! So, the waiting began.

Today a friend of mine on downsyn posted about their recent trip to Give The Kids The World village in Kissimee, Florida. The had a wonderful time! I went to the website and was looking around when Angela came into the office and stood behind me, "I wanna go there!" she yelled into my ear. "That looks really neat, doesn't it? But we're going to meet Zack and Cody, remember? This place is for kids who don't want to meet Zack and Cody." She seemed satisfied with that answer and walked away.

Reading about their trip reminded me that I hadn't talked to Hannah, our MAW coordinator, since August, so I decided to give her a call and see how Angela's wish is coming, and what the time frame looks like.

HELLO! There is a WRITERS STRIKE!! She said she couldn't believe I called at that very moment. In her lap sat a list of families to call, all of whom had "Meet a star" wishes that, because of the writer's strike, would now be postponed a year or more! Shew as going to be asking them to choose another wish, something that is really tough to do if you have a really seriously ill child who may not have much time left and had been holding onto that wish to keep them going. I asked her about the GKTW village and she said "ABSOLUTELY!!!"

When I got off the phone I called Angela into the office. I explained to her that Zack and Cody are kind of on a vacation right now, and since there are a lot of kids in line, it would be a very long time before we could meet them. Would she be interested in going to GKTW village instead?

The smile and twinkle of excitement was my answer. "On a PLANE? Do we fly up high on a plane? You, me and Dean ON A PLANE? See the Ocean? And Dolphins? And Disney?"

Tonight after she went to bed, she hollered from her room, "Mom? Hey Mom? Don't forget to pack my swimming suit!"