St. Jude Trike-A-Thon!

It's that time of year again, Logan is participating in the St. Jude Trike-A-Thon at preschool! He is hoping to make his fundraising goal for the second year in a row and needs your help! If you are able to make a donation, any amount, no matter how small will help this worthy cause. All proceeds go to St. Jude Research Hospital.

St. Jude is internationally recognized for its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases. St. Jude is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatments that are not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are never asked to pay.

Click on the link below to donate to Logan's fundraising page!

Thank you for your time!
Matt, Brandi & Logan

Connect Four, The Most Dangerous Game

Monday night I was playing Connect Four with the kids. With a five-year-old you can play by rules and have an actual game. With a five-year-old and a two-year-old, it quickly devolves into a contest to see who can shove as many red and black checkers into the slots as possible to fill up the board. When the checkers are spilled, it also becomes a bare-knuckled, scratching, screaming fight to see who can drag the most checkers into their laps. (I could have gotten the most if I really wanted to.) There was also a little bit of sticking one of the black checkers in my eye and pretending to be a pirate, which the kids then tried to imitate.

That’s not the most dangerous part, though. The most dangerous part comes in the disassembly. Our version of Connect Four is a little different from the version in the above video. As a kid I had the version in that old commercial and that think would fall apart if you breathed on it too hard. The newer version snaps together so it’s sturdier, and has a ring around the base that not only makes it more stable, but makes sure that checkers don’t go rolling all over the place when you slide open the bottom of the board.

I had it all taken apart except for the last side. It didn’t want to come free, but I had to get it off to store it back in the box. I applied a little more pressure (I didn’t want to break anything so I was trying to be careful) and the support leg came away from the board in a sudden jerk. My thumb was in the way and the dull bit of plastic that was sticking out dug in.

I tell you people, watch out for Connect Four, otherwise, this could happen to you!

Proud

Last year, Brandi decided she wanted to make a huge change in her life and go back to school to ultimately go back to work. She had wanted to stay home with the kids during the early years, and we were able to make it work, so that’s what she did.

Ever since she’d had Logan, the exceptional care she’d received from the nurses and nursing assistants made her want to enter into that field. She waited until the right time, and then after some discussion, she went back to school to become a certified nursing assistant.

It meant some changes in our house, but we adjusted. She threw herself into the coursework and passed with one of the highest grades in her class. I had no doubt that she would do well, despite her own worries, and I was proud of her for going after what she wanted and being so dedicated to her goals.

After a relatively short job hunt, she successfully landed a job at a hospital nearby that is, from everything we’ve heard, hard to get a job at unless you know someone. She’s been working there evenings and overnights and although it’s been a big transition (and we’ve both lost a lot of sleep) she’s helping people get better and building a career for herself.

She might not always be happy to be leaving the house at night to start a shift where she’ll be on her feet all night and then have to deal with the kids the next day, but she goes out there and provides the best service she can helps people in the healing process. (She gets some pretty good stories out of it too.) I’m proud of all the work that she’s done and the way she sticks with it, and I’m proud of the fact that she’s followed her dreams and made a big change in her life.