Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The trip, a late Christmas present, and a sweet ride

We are back from our trip. We had a great time. As I've mentioned before, Michael and I are the youth leaders at our church. We took the youth (12 total) to Gatlinburg, TN to an Xtreme Youth Conference. It started Thursday night and ended at noon on Saturday. We got to see some great speakers and bands. The bands included: Rachael Lampa, Jeremy Camp, Newsong, Hawk Nelson, and Third Day. The speakers were Tony Nolan, Josh McDowell, Ergun Caner, and Johnny Hunt. My favorite band/singer was Jeremy Camp, but Third Day put on a great show too. My favorite speaker was Josh McDowell. We heard him speak twice at this conference and we had heard him speak at a youth conference before. He is just a phenomenal speaker. Ergun Caner also held my attention and even received a standing ovation after his talk.

Anyway, we had a safe trip there and back. It was about a 10-hour drive each way. Surprisingly, Riley's sugars were pretty good. The long time in the car didn't seem to affect his sugars much. The only time I used the temp. basal was about 6 hours into our trip home. He started to run a little high. But, the temp basal (an increase of 10%) seemed to take care of the problem.

We brought in the New Year at church. It was nice. We got home around 2 AM and we were able to sleep until about 10:30. I couldn't begin to tell you when I last slept that late. Riley's sugars did just fine sleeping in. Have I ever mentioned how much I love the pump?

Speaking of the pump. Remember when we were having some
pump issues? Well, the Saturday before Christmas at around lunchtime, Michael tried to give Riley a bolus and his pump alarmed yet again. It was the same alarm as before. Of course, Animas was closed, but I left a message and someone called back within about 5 minutes. As soon as she came on the phone she confirmed that it was the same alarm code as before and then made sure she had the right address.

She shipped out a new pump. It arrived the day after Christmas. When Riley first got his pump, we ordered a blue one. But, when we went to the pump start, they had a silver one to play with. Riley really liked the silver one. The lady on the phone asked if Riley still wanted a blue pump. I went and asked Riley and he said he wanted silver.

He now has a silver pump. Just yesterday, he looked at me and said, "Mama, I like my new silver pump."

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I got this idea from
Kerri's blog. You are supposed to take each month and write the first sentence of "a definitive post" for that month.

Here it goes:

January: It's hard to remember when the waves weren't crashing around me.

February: The pump arrived at 9:50 this morning.

March: I knew that adjusting to the pump would be hard, but I had no idea how hard.

April: Six months ago today at this time, Riley was sitting in the floor watching TV and eating a frosted strawberry poptart and drinking a big glass of apple juice.

May: What is is about "firsts" that make me crazy?

June: One of the hard things about having a young child with diabetes is that they often cannot tell when they are low.

July: Holden has had allstar games this week.

August: Michael came home from his first day back at work with some disturbing news.

September: note: I got the word "klempy" from Lyrecha.

October: Walk of Hope is coming up this Saturday.

November: I can't post about what it feels like to live with diabetes.

December: Riley had an endo. appointment today.

Looking back at those posts made me realize how far we have come in the past year. There have been many ups and downs (or highs and lows, if you will), but, man, has it been a great ride.

Here's to a year filled with twist and turns, ups and downs, and a few even spots where you just coast while the wind whips through your hair. A year filled with butterflies in your stomach, moments of pure calm, and moments when you feel like your lunch is going to come back up.

I hope your ride this year is great. And, when you get to the end, with your hair a mess and your stomach queasy , you just smile and say "I want to do that again!"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dang! We were both in Gatlinburg at the same time. We were visiting Becky's cousin who works at Dollywood! I didn't know about the conference but heard about Third Day being there at the same time because I read their blog. We stayed at the Fairfield Inn in Gatlinburg. Wow... so close and we didn't know it.

Lyrehca said...

Hey, glad to see klempy made it as a monthly mention. Wait 'til I start talking about kvelling (oy! I'm so overjoyed my heart could just burst!)

Welcome back.

Penny Ratzlaff said...

Steve,
I wish I had known. I would've loved to meet you guys!!! I'm sure Riley and Grayson would have liked to have met as well. I saw the Fairfield Inn. It looked nice. We stayed in Pigeon Forge at The Smokey Shadows. (accomadations were made by the conference)

Sorry we missed each other. I guess you're a Third Day fan. They played Friday night and put on a very good show.

Anonymous said...

Conference sounded fun. I LOVE Hawk Nelson and Third Day.