A Very Brady Life: a white thanksgiving...

I can't believe it, but it's snowing right now. It's been flurrying for the past few days, but this morning when I woke up the ground was covered with a soft white blanket. It's amazing that it's not even Thanksgiving and it's snowing already. Yesterday when it first started to flurry, Brady was so excited and couldn't stop saying "it's Christmas Eve!" I thought that was the cutest thing, but I had to explain to him that there's over 30 days before Christmas. I think he got the concept because when I dropped him off at school this morning, one of his best friends kept on exclaiming..."It's Christmas"...and my son (the brilliant kid he is:-) had to tell him the truth! It was a cute moment...

So...where to pick up from the last blog (by the way...I'm loving this!!!). A little more about Brady...he's five and he just started Kindergarten this year. He actually missed the cut-off date for the public school, which was a total bummer because I was SO looking forward to decreasing the exorbitant tuition cost, but I keep telling myself only one more year! So he loves it and 2 days ago I just had my FIRST parent-teacher conference! I was so excited and really interested to see how he was progressing in class. So far so good!!!

A little more about our lives...Brady just turned 5 this past September and I really do love this age. We can have great conversations together, play games, read books and have a lot of fun. In 2004, when Brady was 13 months old, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. It's not a terminal illness, but it's not curable either. For the first year he took multiple insulin injections on a daily basis, and about 3 years ago this month, he started on the insulin pump!!! Whooo-hoo!!! Can you tell we love the pump?!?! It's been one of the greatest gifts and such a lifesaver for both of us. So every summer, for the past 3 years,

we've taken our vacation to Orlando to participate in the Children With Diabetes (CWD), Friends for Life (FFL) Conference. The first year we received a full scholarship for the trip, all inclusive with food, hotel, conference, park tickets...basically everything except for airfare. It was such a blessing, and so now in the middle of winter, I thought that it would be nice to post some of our fondest memories of our past 3 years at FFL!

FFL 2006: Above is us with Gary Hall Jr., an Olympic swimmer who was diagnosed with diabetes in 1999, and he went on to win the 2 gold, 1 silver and 1 bronze metal in Sydney (2000) and 1 gold and 1 bronze medal in Athens (2004). We've met other great athletes along the way, and I hope to be able to post their pictures and stories to show what an inspiration they are to diabetic kids (and parents too) all over the world.

The pic on the right is Brady's first visit to Sea World. I think that he was more interested in drinking and playing in the water fountain compared to anything else in the park.