Yesterday was the Great Strides Walk for a cure for Cystic Fibrosis!  We had so many family and friends sacrifice their sleep and their Saturday morning to support Asher and our family.  You all made us feel so loved!  We really appreciate you and thank you for your kindness to our family!

We should have a grand total of how much teamASHER collected within the next few weeks, I think all the CF people will be tired for the next few days.  I’ll keep you posted :).

So, we’ve had this little mailbox for about a month now and have all three come to love it!  We put it up right outside of Asher’s room and frequently throughout the day we’ll put little treasures in there for him to discover.  Right now we’re just filling it with things like flashcards, stickers, his little toys, any random business card, or junk mail we get.  As he gets older we’ll leave little notes to him, rewards, or any real mail he gets in there.  For now though it really doesn’t matter, we could put a bunch of lint in there and it would make his day!  He loves getting mail, and we love sending it to him :).

Asher handed over a load of cash this morning to our friend, Lori, from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  We received some late donations, so our new grand total for Asher’s Open House/Silent Auction/Poker Tournament was $4,611.00!  Totally incredible!

The Great Strides Walk is this Saturday!  We’re looking forward to it.  If you can join us, we would love to have you!  All you need to do is click the “Great Strides” box on the right side.

EVENT:  Great Strides Walk for Cystic Fibrosis
DATE:  Next Saturday, April 25th
LOCATION:  Kiwanis Park (6111 S All American Way, Tempe, AZ 85283)
TIME:  Registration starts at 8:00a, and the official walk begins at 9:00a.  It takes about an hour to walk a 5K (3.1 miles)
ATTENDEES:  Everyone!  Bring your kids, there are always lots of strollers and scooters
FEE:  It’s free!

GO TEAM ASHER!

We’ve had some really awesome weather here lately.  Last week it rained, and playing in the rain in your jammies is just so fun…at least for awhile.  Then you’re just wet and cold.

We had a great day together as a family!  We weren’t able to attend church services, so we had our own little time of celebrating Jesus’ Resurrection by listening to worship music and reading Bible stories.  One of our favorite Easter songs is, “Arise, My Love.”  We couldn’t find a version we were excited about online, but could have been looking in the wrong place.  Does anyone know of an artist who sings a great version of this song?

Of course we had to introduce Asher to an Easter Egg Hunt!  We took a trip to Target to get him an Easter basket, plastic eggs, and prizes for his eggs.  We left there with $2.00 plastic eggs, and a plan to use his sand bucket and coins for his prizes.  I couldn’t convince Jeremy to spend anymore money than that.  He thought it was a waste, but I still think he was being an FK (fun-killer), ha!  I guess Asher didn’t really know the difference, he liked his sand bucket and coins for his piggy bank.

It took about 3 months to plan Asher’s big fundraiser, and in that time we received so many blessings from the Lord!  I wanted to record a few of them here, because I know life will get away from us quick, and I want Asher to always be able to look back and see specific ways that God moves and how much he is loved.  Side bar – thanks to everyone who grabbed my camera to take pictures for us, it’s so great to have these memories captured!

– Because of our dear friends and family, we were able to have a beautiful clubhouse and food and drinks for everyone at no cost to us.  This was a HUGE blessing, because it meant that we could give more money that was donated to the Foundation.

– We had over 60 items donated from local businesses, friends, friends of friends, and family for our silent auction.  We had an incredible array of items – something for everyone to choose from.

– Our two biggest ticket items were a Cardinals football signed by Kurt Warner, and an all-inclusive vacation for two people to the White Stallion Ranch in Tucson.  Both brought in an incredible amount of money for the Foundation.  AND, Asher has the football sitting on his shelf in his room right now.  One of the sweetest families from our church, who have three boys and are all Cardinals fans, graciously donated the football they had won to Asher!  The youngest boy came up to me after the silent auction had ended, handed me the football, and said, “we want Asher to have this.”  We will never forget this!

– We could have had a million items in the silent auction, but it wouldn’t have done any good if people had not come to our event.  But they came, all in support of Asher.  We had our family and friends there which was a complete blessing, and we also had complete strangers there that had just heard about our event.  A special thank you to everyone who came out to support our family!  Your time and money will always be appreciated!

– A couple of other things that were donated that made the event a success was a gigantic Finding Nemo bouncer for the kiddos, and all the poker chips for the Poker Tournament.  It was so great having something fun for the kids to do, and we could not have had a Poker Tournament without chips.  Such a blessing!

– We HAVE to do a little name-dropping here because a few of our friends and family were absolute rock stars when it came to pulling off this event and making it run so smoothly:  Jeff & Lori, Dave & Krista, Jim & Lorraine, Aaron & Ashley, Lance & Sarah, Dana, and Beth.  We literally could not have done it without you!  Thank you so much for all your sweat and hard work!

There were so many details that needed to come together for this event, and we saw God answer prayers and provide.  He’s so good to us!

We were blessed throughout the planning of this event and the actual event by so much love and support!  Thank you to everyone for joining us as we fight to find a cure!  We love you!

We’re still digesting all that happened this last week with our family being in town, and Asher’s big event on Saturday.  Lots of wonderful things going on!  One of the best things about this last week was that Asher got to hang out with his cousins.  The last time he saw them they didn’t move much because they were little, and Asher didn’t know what the word “gentle” was, so that basically meant they got to look at each other from across the room :).  Now they’re all getting older and starting to play together more.  Pretty soon they’ll be digging up dirt, coloring on walls, and chasing each other around.  Can’t wait!

We tried to get the typical, cute, bathing cousins picture…but that was a debacle, ha!

Special thanks to Grandma Olimb, Auntie Dana, Uncle Lance, Auntie Sarah, and Micah and Mason for making the long trip from North Dakota to be here for Asher’s big day!  We’ll never forget it!

Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our fundraising event for teamASHER and The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. It was a huge success and we couldn’t have done it without those of you that came out to support and love us.

We raised $4206!

More stories and pictures to come so stay tuned!

He’s big time now.  In newspapers and everything!  Someone from our church put up a post in an area online newspaper promoting Asher’s event on Saturday.  I’m so proud of our boy :).  Check it out…

You can enter in our zipcode: 85297 and click on Activities and Events

http://yournews.com/copyroom/mynews.asp

We were at Superstition Springs Mall yesterday and you really can’t go there when you have kiddos without riding the big carousel.  Asher was on a carousel when he was a little younger and did just great, but I guess he’s older and wiser now, and therefore more timid :).  Jeremy tried to put him on the eagle first, and that wasn’t a match.  So we figured the eagle might not have been up to Asher’s awesomeness standard, so we upped the ante to the big, bad tiger.  There were niceties shared, warm welcomes, happy times…and then the carousel started moving and Asher lost his mind!  I’m not kidding, he was echoing through the halls.  I don’t really blame him for being a little scared though.  That was by far the fastest carousel I’ve ever seen!  I barely could get any pictures they were whipping around so fast, ha!

We made it up to him by letting him wander and investigate outside the mall a bit.  The picture of him on his belly on the grass was cracking us up!  We live in a single story home, so he doesn’t have to deal with stairs a lot.  Apparently he feels more comfortable going feet first…and in case you can’t tell, he’s really good at anticipating and planning ahead!  He was scooting on his belly for about a 1/2 mile before he reached the next step, ha ha ha!