Growing Experiences

Wow, the past 2 weeks have been an incredible growing experience.

1) Edgar and I have been getting involved with the PTC at Weldon Elementary. We have had nothing but amazing support from Weldon all through the past year and a half. When Natalia started 1st grade, I thought this would be a great way for a 9-5 Mom to help out the school. Unfortunately, I was only able to go to 1 meeting before Natalia was unable to go to school. We went as a family to the last few meetings of the year. We thought this would be a good way to get our feet wet and meet some of the other parents but we did not want a leadership role. After all, we had never done a full school year. I went to the June 10th board meeting to offer our helping hands and guess who was nominated to be president…can you say desparate!!! The sad fact is they were. Not many parents get involved in the fund raising aspect of schools, but, it is extremely important to help keep a school running smoothly. No, I declined president…but I am the treasurer. I am now actually looking forward to it. It will be a great way to meet new people. And important for us…a great way to meet and get to know the kids of Weldon.
2) Sophia is officially a Weldon Warrior. All of her transfer stuff came through this week and she will be in Mrs. McMillian’s class. She is currently thriving at Jan Thomas Swim School. Oh yeah!!!! It is amazing to see how quickly she is picking up all her strokes. To see her racing diving and crawl stroke across the pool just blows me away. Needless to say her original 10 lessons have now become the entire summer. Her education is thriving at preschool. She is writing all her letters and numbers, adding and learning to tell time. She is rocking along.
3) RUMBLE TO THE SUMMIT…can you say amazing! Make-A-Wish is just an incredible thing to be involved with. If we can help them earn just $1 more to help other kids…count us in. The Pre-Party Friday night…tons of people, tons of fun. Sophia danced and boogied all night to the band. The fire dancers were a huge hit. We met another BT family. We have been reading each others blog for a while. The Hatfields live up in Coarsegold and their son Isaac has a BT. That was both wonderful and hard. To look into their eyes and know that their hard journey continues. To know all you can do is offer support. I think Edgar and I babbled a bit because it was either that or cry. Saturday morning…Well, we were hoping for crowds lining the street…what we got were eager, awesome volunteers and tons of fun. I laughed ‘til I hurt. We decorated the entrance of the school so it looked cool. Some of us directed the riders into the driveway while others had a system for giving out raffle tickets and getting donations for “Natalia’s Nest”. We started at 7:30am and completely finished up by 12pm. Thank you to everyone who helped and those who donated to the Nest. Edgar was interviewed for the Speed Channel’s New American Thunder. He talked about our journey, Make-A-Wish and Natalia’s Nest. The Rumble was something that we were truly proud to be a part of. Thank you, again, Fresno HEAT hockey team for sponsoring the stop in Natalia’s honor.
4) Next week we are heading back to UCSF. Compass Point is having a dinner/service for those in their care that have passed away. It is time to close the circle. The dinner is Tuesday, so, we are going to head up in the morning and spend the night. We hope to see everyone in Dr Banerjee’s office that helped us and to see the staff at Family House. We definitely NEED to get a chocolate twist donut from Donut World and chicken fries in Patterson.
5) It is also time for us to start looking for a house. We know it is going to take time and we still need to get prequalified but the market is too good right now for us to not to begin looking. We know generally what we want in a house but still are unsure if we will live in the house or just buy it and rent it out for a while. My job depends on my living on site so we need to consider the last option carefully.
That’s all for now. Much Love, Roni