It’s seriously hard to believe this is our 4th year.  It’s even harder to believe it’s only one month away!  We’re getting pretty excited, and look forward to our yearly CF crushing event!  We’re moving to a bigger venue, Brio is providing the food again, and Kohl’s is coming alongside us and providing employees to help “work” our event.  We’ve been blessed by so many people throughout planning the auction, and we’ve connected with a ton more people who have been personally effected by this terrible disease and who want to join us in this fight for a cure.

We’re praying for the auction.  Praying people see this as a worthy cause to be a part of and come.  Praying people truly understand that every dollar counts and helps.  Praying for some healthy elbow throwing to take place :).  Praying people feel filled up when they leave, like they were just a part of something that mattered…because it does.

Here’s a webpage that Jeremy made about our event with more details, please feel free to pass this along to your friends and family.  I am adding items to our auction list daily.  It’s insane how it keeps growing!  We hope to see you there.  We hope to pack the place out.  We hope for that cure.

http://teamasher.tumblr.com/

I’m of course, again, behind on the blog, but in the meantime here’s a little video of Asher’s newest trick…with no pants on.  He hates pants, ha!  Also, I’m constantly asking him to explain things to me, because I can’t get enough of his mannerisms, ha!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2g0dAYCFRE&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I think we may have found a sport.  It’s only been two weeks, but the excitement and the joy that we’ve seen in Asher while he’s playing soccer definitely outweighs how frustrated he was with baseball, ha!  Baseball requires a lot of patience.  Soccer requires a lot of running.  Running always wins with Asher :).  Plus, he gets to play with his buds, Chase and Carter, and Coach Dave and Coach Daddy are in charge, which is just the coolest.

He’s so cute on the field.  He likes to look at his legs when he runs, and he has this adorable exaggerated arm swing thing going on that cracks us up.  Also…can I just say how much I love that his look involves his shirt, his shorts, and his socks/shin guards…no knees, ha!  I just want to munch him up!

He got a turn at playing goalie, and rocked it.  I guess this is a position where his fearlessness is useful.  Having to stand in the way of a fast ball with lots of flying feet makes me shutter, but he kept going after the ball and wasn’t intimidated.  One goal snuck past him, but he stopped three others and we were so proud…and so was he :).

The.  Boy.  Loves.  To.  Run.  And we love that he loves to run.  It’s like an extra treatment for him!

How could I not mention these two.  Asher is smitten with “baby” Hannah.  He loves to make her laugh, he loves to tickle her, he loves to give her hugs.  Hannah was sick last week, and so Asher had to stay away which was hard for him.  Here they are reunited :).

I’m playing catchup a bit here, and still posting about Christmas, but I had to post about some more memories while Grandpa and Grandma Necas were here.  We made a trip to the Airplane Museum, and had a nice time walking around looking at airplanes, and walking through an old bomber.   All us adults enjoyed looking at the planes and appreciating history, and Asher found a little peddle airplane that he didn’t want to part ways with.  Oh, and he got a turn at the camera and snagged a good one of his daddy and grandparents.  It’s hilarious listening to him now when he gets the camera – lots of directing and pointing going on, ha!

This makes me laugh!!!  Asher got some stick-on mustaches in his Christmas stocking, so we decided we needed another family pic.  My dad putting a mustache over a mustache, and Asher’s poker face crack me up!

We also checked out the Boyce Thompson Arboretum.  Wow, this place is great!  I’m not sure if we were there at the perfect time of the year, or if it’s usually that beautiful, but it was absolutely gorgeous.  I didn’t realize the AZ desert could grow trees that huge!  It’s a beautiful place to walk around and adventure, climb rocks, have a picnic, throw leaves…my parents bought us a yearly membership, so we’ll be back!

Couple random photos.  Christmas with the cousins!  Asher feeding his puppies, Buster and Ranger.  And, Grandpa and Asher taking a trip.

I can’t even bring myself to talk about Christmas without honoring our sweet baby Paxon.  Last year during Christmas Eve services I was in labor, and my water broke a few hours later.  Last year on Christmas day we welcomed our little baby into this world…and said goodbye just 11 days later.  I really cannot believe it’s been a year.  Some days the heartache is all consuming and feels like it happened just yesterday.  Some days I still feel so hurt that this had to happen to him.

Paxon would have had a tracheatomy.  He would have had multiple heart surgeries.  He would have been severely mentally retarded.  He would have had Cystic Fibrosis.  But we would have loved to have taken care of him.  We would have walked any road for our boy, and our fight for him would have been fierce.

When we met with Beck’s doctor, and we shared our history with him and Paxon’s story, I remember him being a bit surprised that Paxon survived 11 days, after we told him his diagnosis.  It struck me.  It made me so thankful for God’s mercy, and the many people who prayed for his arrival and his 11 days…without either, his little life could have been even shorter.  We are thankful for 11 days with our boy.  We wish we could have been bouncing a little one year old on our leg for Christmas this year, but we are still so thankful for his life and how he changed ours.  Christmas will forever be accompanied by tears and memories of our Paxon.

Jeremy made a beautiful piece of art for our wall in Paxon’s honor, and it’s officially my favorite thing in our home.  It says, “we will carry him in our heroic tales and great love” with a metal and copper “11” over the words.  It’s beautiful.  His life was beautiful.

We’re thankful you are in the presence of the Lord for Christmas, sweet baby.  We love you so much and miss you.

Grandpa and Grandma Necas flew in to spend Christmas with us this year.  We’ve been traveling the city enjoying time together and the beautiful weather.  We went to Christmas Eve services together, and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of Asher because he looked so stinkin’ handsome and cute :).

We set out cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer on Christmas Eve.  I was planning on putting the carrots on the tray, but Asher thought they needed to be a little more available :).  It’s been fun talking with Asher about Santa Claus, and he actually for the first time brought himself to sit on Santa’s lap because he wanted a Kinect so bad, ha!  It worked out perfectly for us, because we actually got a Kinect for free!  Zenpep (Asher’s enzyme) has done a Z-points rewards system for quite awhile.  We could save up our points to buy Amazon.com gift cards, which came in quite handy this year.  They just stopped offering Amazon.com gift cards (major bummer!), but we were able to get our purchase in just in time for Christmas.  For the last couple of years we’ve explained to Asher after Christmas that Santa is just pretend and something we do for fun.  He seems to enjoy the anticipation, and this year had lots of questions about who ate his cookies and carrots, ha!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbOG5VnGyQE[/youtube]

Asher’s cousins were out of town, and apparently so was the rest of the community, so we had the privilege of using their super nice community pool all by ourselves.  Jeremy and I sat and ate chips and cookies while Grandma and Grandpa played with Asher.  Everyone had a great time :).

It’s been a bit of a crazy month so far.  On top of all the normal life livin’ stuff, we are neck deep in planning the silent auction (more details to come!), and trying to embrace the Christmas season…but breaking as we approach the one year mark of Paxon’s birth…it’s hard to believe it’s almost been a year, because we miss him like it was yesterday…

Fast and Furious low down on some memories…

Auntie Dana flew in the day after we got back from North Dakota, and so we were blessed to have some more family time with her here.  We did lots of fun things together, but the one I remembered to bring a camera to (sorry, Asher!) was our trip to the zoo.  The zoo.  The zoo is where I play the, “I do this because I love you” card.

I didn’t even get a picture of Asher with his Auntie (sorry, Dana!), but it looks like Asher got one of Daddy and Mommy.  I do have to say, he’s getting better!  He still has the “I’m going to fall over from the weight of this thing” angle going on, but we’re actually in focus this time :).

We went to Hallmark to have Asher pick out his favorite ornament for the year.  We stood way back, because I didn’t want him to be influenced by anything, I really wanted him to pick it out all by himself.  He first selected the “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” ornament, and was convinced that was his one.  Thankfully after investigating it, he decided against it and went with his usual fav, Darth Vader.  I was surprised, I thought we were going to be leaving with a Batman or Spidey, but I think good ol’ Darth is a perfect summary of our year.

Asher is really into making things now.  Brand new, AWO creations!  Here he ripped a bunch of pieces of newspaper apart and taped them together to make a spiderweb.  I asked him if I could take a picture of him next to his spiderweb and this is what I got, ha!

Last week, we had a memory that will be one of my most treasured memories with Asher.  We had a couple of days of nothing but rain here, which created some really nice sized puddles around town.  Asher and I drove around for 40 minutes doing nothing but listening to music at high volumes, hunting down the biggest and best puddles, hitting them at high speeds multiple times, and screaming wahooooooo-type cheers as we flew through them.  Asher was completely giddy and happy with excitement…he wasn’t alone.  We got home, and he had to drive his car through the little street puddles :).

I love Jeremy.  He went out and bought Christmas lights, and hung them in Asher’s room as a surprise to him for when we came back home.  He wanted Asher to have a few of his own decorations in his room, and to make this holiday extra special for him.  I love him for doing this.  I’m pretty sure he just started a new tradition, and this warms my heart.

Miss Lorraine had Asher, and a few other kiddos over for a gingerbread house making party.  The award he won cracks me up!  Asher Olimb was given the award for “Best Use of All Candy”.  LOL!!!  When you have a very wide variety of decorations, and at least 57 pieces of each candy, you have clearly put your heart into your work!  Asher said I had to get a picture of his backyard, and the 1,000 dogs that lived back there, ha!

His first DC’s.  How could I not buy these!!!  I think we may have found a good shoe fit for Asher and his wide-load feet, ha!  For the longest time I just thought it was all baby fat, but I guess we’re embracing the wide-width, and DC is a perfect fit.  Plus, they’re just adorable :).

We were blessed to be able to go back to North Dakota for Thanksgiving, and spend time with all of our family at the same time.  It was so wonderful being together with everyone!  And, it’s totally note-worthy that Asher finally did well on the plane!  We were thankful, because as history has proven, he’s not much for confined areas for hours at a time…and then God allowed the invention of the iPad…thank you.

Asher loved adventuring around outside, and especially loved having the responsibility to feed the cats every day.  I think he was on an every other day rotation, so good to know we’re not ready for some animal responsibility yet, ha!

For Thanksgiving we had about 25 people, which meant a lot of noise and a lot of food – it was festive and perfect!  Asher also got to have some new faces to sit next to while he did his treatment :).

It was pretty amazing that we were in North Dakota at the end of November and they still hadn’t had any snow on the ground.  We woke up one morning and had a little dusting of white snow, which was really fun to see (mostly because we don’t have to live in it, ha!), and it was just the right amount for the cousins to build a snowman together.

It was a blast hanging out and watching Asher, Mason and Micah play together.  I think one of the cutest memories was listening to them role play.  Micah played the role of the baby, and Asher and Mason were trying to make him happy, ha!

We got to go to church together with the Olimb’s which was special.  I was nervous about putting Asher into the childcare so he sat next to us…and fell asleep…thank you again, Lord!  Then we had to check out Grandma Olimb’s office, where the boys had a lot of work to catch up on!

Asher also got to spend a lot of one on one time with his Grandma and Grandpa Necas.  They went to a farm, went bowling, went to a pizza planet and arcade, went swimming…they packed a lot of fun and memories in!  He was one blessed little boy to get to spend time with all his grandparents this week!  Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Necas for driving to us and spending time with us!

And, we ended the trip with a visit to the local indoor water park.  There were only a couple of other families in there, which made for a nice time.  Asher and Jeremy had a blast…until Asher rammed his head into a big, metal pole coming down a slide…don’t get me started on the location of this metal pole in the middle of a kiddie play area…moving on…

We were so thankful to celebrate such a special holiday with our whole family!  It was a great trip filled with lots of lasting memories!

….into our days.  Lots of stories.  Lots of superheros.  Lots of imagination.  All.  Day.  Long.  We love it.  We’re loving this age and season of life right now.  Asher is learning so many new things, and applying what he’s learning to real life, and that’s exciting to watch.  One of our most favorite things that Asher says is “last morning”.  It doesn’t matter if something happened five minutes ago, or a year ago, it’s all labeled as “last morning”.  Recently he’s been saying “last morning, yesterday” which is making me kind of sad, because he’s getting so big and soon we’re not going to have any more last mornings.  I asked Daddy and Asher to tell a story so we could capture this moment in time.  I wish I could bottle up this age…we love you so much, Asher.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue-YwXZuJPA&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBumGAYgt7Y&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

We made it.  October seriously kicks our booty every year with straight up busyness.  Lots of fun stuff mixed with lots of medical stuff, and we’re all a little happy when the calendar month takes a turn.

Asher endured another round of all his yearly testing (5 vials of blood, chest xrays, flu shot, regular 4 year old shots, pediatrician appointments, Tuberculosis test, and his massive yearly clinic appointment).  All in all, Asher is doing really great!  We increased his zantac dosage 5 times the dose he was getting, in hopes it will help him put on some weight, and decrease the acid he’s been dealing with – he labels it as a “frog in his throat”.  Chest xrays are clear, and since we’re on eight months of no Pseudomonas, his doctor said we could take a break from Tobi…J and I literally fist pumped.  Tobi is so extremely tiring for all of us, and we’re thankful to have a break, especially going into the holidays.  Now we pray this stupid bacteria will not flare up again for a very long time.

My friend, Tiffany, posted this on her blog, and I thought it was a great illustration of why this bacteria freaks the crap out of us…Pseudomonas aeruginosa settles into the thick mucus trapped in the airways. Once it sets up house in the respiratory tract, Pseudomonas aeruginosa is hard to get rid of. Respiratory failure caused by the infection is often the ultimate cause of death in many people with CF.  Here is a illustration that gives a clearer picture of how it transforms and really and truly turns into a monster!

The first picture is where the dr.’s try to catch PA.  Once it reaches phase 3/4 it goes crazy!  And, by phase 5 it is sending new feeders out voraciously trying to acquire new territory in the lungs and destroying every part it can.  There are currently only a couple of antibiotics that work against it.  The CF person’s PA is very likely to become resistant at some point to these antibiotics because of high use (every other month).  The problem for a CF person is not only becoming resistant to the drugs, but the antibiotics are so harsh that it also ends up destroying the liver, kidneys, and/or the heart.

~ . ~

Grandpa and Grandma Olimb came for a quick weekend visit, and we packed a lot in while they were here.  Continued birthday celebrations, bowling, two baseball games, and a hot air balloon festival.  As usual, we had a great time and made lots of new memories together!

His little cheer, and crusty food on his mouth make me smile…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6fa0uWnga4&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

 

Why does he look about 26 years old here?!

Krista and I threw our 2nd Annual Halloween Festivus for the Rest of Us party!  It was a rockin’ time, and I wish I would have taken more pictures, but I did get this one of Asher taking care of a baby doll.  Big brother in training :).  And, all the kiddos saying Happy Halloween!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nibKhZnb_3Y&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

 

Another total blog worthy moment…Shannon and I took the boys to the park, and sat back and watched them play for 3 hours.  It was bliss.  So thankful for family, and beautiful weather :).

 

I really can’t believe it.  The days are long, but the years are short.  It definitely doesn’t feel like it’s been four years.  Asher, you literally have changed our lives, and we’re so thankful for you for many reasons.  Thank you for teaching us what it means to fight for a loved one.  Thank you for showing us what unconditional love looks like.  Thank you for being patient with Mommy and Daddy as we’re still learning this parenting gig.  Thank you for again making us stand in awe of God and the sacrifice He made of His one and only Son.  Thank you for filling our lives with joy and laughter.  We love you so much, and love watching you grow each and every day!

Asher had a rockin’ party at Pump It Up!  Those people sure know how to throw a party!   The kids got to bounce around in one room for 30 minutes, then they rotated to another bouncer room for 30 minutes, and then we all had pizza and cake in the party room – where a certain someone got to recline in a big king chair with a crown to open his gifts :).  It was a great time, and I’m pretty sure all the kids slept well after all that cardio!

For Asher’s real birthday day, he got to play with all his new toys (lucky for him we didn’t follow through on the idea to re-gift some for Christmas – don’t judge, ha!) and open a few from us (new Star Wars Lego game, score!), and we went to The Lion King 3D (sheesh, forgot how dark that Disney film is!).  When we were walking out of the movie Asher said, “Mommy, let’s stop in here and have a lunch and a date,” as if it was my birthday…how could I say no.  Then we spent the rest of the day talking about Grandma and Grandpa coming to visit the next day.  It was a rock ’em sock ’em birthday celebration week!

This makes me laugh and wince all at the same time!  He said, “that was really fun.”  Are you sure, buddy, ha!!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjdGV_gQgQA&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I love how Asher is about the loudest kid I know, but he’s pretty sensitive with loud noises, ha!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ed3Rsi7eQ&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

Little hurricane fun after some sweaty bounce time!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exD2dzuI3gc&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I just had to make mention of this too.  I’m really not sure when puzzle puttin’ together skills start in kids, but I was so proud when I went in to get Asher from his room time and found that he put a 60 piece puzzle together all by himself.  We had put the puzzle completely together one other time, but I was shocked he did it all by himself.  He’s getting so big.  He’s 4 now.

Asher had his first baseball game on Saturday.  Besides the fact that we all melted, it was one of the cutest things I’ve ever witnessed.  Kids running all around in total confusion, the dad to kid ratio on the field was one to one, complete disregard for rules, every kid abandoning their station if the ball came anywhere near them, boys on the field doing the pee pee dance, kids so proud when they hit the ball…it was all hilarious, and made for the best morning.  I just had to post this video of Asher on his first time up to bat.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTW4ETLtbrQ[/youtube]

Captain high pitch could have toned things down a bit, but that didn’t stop Asher, ha!  I love all the bat tapping.  I love how the bat weighed more than him, but he hulked through it anyways.  I love how his hit knocked him to the ground.  I love his round CF belly sticking out which gives him the cutest physique.  Running over first base was epic.  I love the bob and weave.  And, his winners strut is just too much.  Here’s to a fun season, Champ!