WOOHOO!!!!

Sorry for the lack of update this past week. We got hit with 2 rounds of the stomach flu in 10 days.


Jack continues to be a rockstar at PT. It's is just fascinating to watch his progression each week. He is improving in the treadmill, which is so encouraging. His heel is getting closer and closer to the ground when he walks (still partial weight-bearing). Yesterday he did 2 minutes on the treadmill and was exhausted. He wanted to quit at a minute and a half, but Nicki wouldn't let him. Rebuilding his stamina is going to take time, as is getting him to complete weight-bearing. We're patiently waiting though and happy with slow progress and doing it at his pace.


Our pool was finished this weekend. It is just fabulous, we are so fortunate to have it! The therapeutic benefits for Jack are incredible, but it is so much fun to see him having fun and not struggling! He can swim the width of the pool (16 feet), which is quite impressive! My dad told him he had to be able to swim the width of the shallow end before he could go in the deep end by himself. At first he could do about half the width, but he worked all day and by the end he did the entire distance. And, yes, he completely crashed in bed that night!!!! Max is quite a trip to see in the pool. My dad nicknamed him the "Submarine" because he is NEVER above water...well except for the 50000 times a day he gets out to go to the bathroom! And Amelia is content to float in her shaded floatie chewing on a Finding Nemo toy.



The charity is going fabulous!! The kids had another lemonade stand and although we had very few customers, we did have one big spender, so the day was worth it! And just a word of advice, NEVER drive by a lemonade stand and not stop! Kids get very offended by drive-bys...Jack has been known to shout "what? you don't want to help sick kids?" at cars that don't stop. So, take a moment out of your day and get a cup of lemonade...everyone has a quarter or two in their car!





We went to an O'Neil family reunion last weekend. Not only was it great to catch up with everyone, it was quite heartwarming to see our family rally behind our charity! People were handing us money everywhere...it was hard to keep track of who gave what. So, if you gave us money, THANK YOU!!!!! We are off to Build A Bear this week to start making some bears. Our first donation is going to be to Rockford Memorial. We thought it would be nice to keep it local, and both Jon and my brother in law Jamie (who's daughters are Jack's co-chairs) both work at RMH....it's the perfect place to start!

Jon and I were talking this weekend about our charity and its potential to become something really big. This project has become something VERY important to us. Throughout all we have been through with Jack, we have really avoided asking ourselves the question "why us?" But occasionally (during the really rough moments) we can't help but think, "why me? why Jack?" The thought that something really amazing...like this charity....could come out of all of this answers that question for us. If we have to go through all of this in order to learn how to "pay it forward" we can have peace with all we have been through. So, yes...something great (5.5 cm) has come out of this...but to think that something even bigger than that can happen....WOW!!!

So again...thank you all for your donations! Keep tuned, we have lots of big ideas planned!!!!

I'll end with a picture of Jack's self portrait done in art lessons. I am pretty certain that if my house was burning down, this would be one thing I would run in to save.