Written by TJ and Jaime | 30 August 2010

Grandpa Gooden visited us for the weekend.  He was just passing through on his way back home to Naples, FL.  In honor of his visit, we decided to take Nora to the Knoxville Zoo.  We have been there twice in the past and were generally disappointed.  It's a beautiful and clean Zoo but sometimes the animals don't cooperate and we spend most of the time trying to see where the phunk the animals actually are!  Apparently our timing was off in the previous attempts since we kept visiting during nap time.  This trip was sooo different and actually exciting (which was good since we bought a season pass).  Not only were the animals active, but there were actually coming over to the people watching areas.  When we got to the lion area, he just walked all the way from the rear of his cage - right up to us!  Maybe SMA kids smell delicious to Lions?  Nora got a great long look at most of the animals and even got her feet smelled by a camel....but who hasn't?

Grandpa leaves on Monday and Jaime is in Atlanta for the week doing some training.  It's me and Nora for the whole week (and Nurse Kim during the day).   I expect this week to be really really long.

The pool might be finished this week too.  We are waiting on those fantastic donated lights to arrive so everything is currently on hold.

So, do you want to get really upset?  Read this article Tennessee in middle of embryonic stem cell fight

Written by TJ and Jaime | 26 August 2010

Lots of pictures and videos today!  The pool is not in it's proper place and has about 20 inches of water in it.  I stayed home from work today partly because I am about 1 day into a headcold/sinus headache and partly because Nurse Kim had a personal errand to attend to.  I got to witness everything today including the crane putting in the pool....then taking it back out.... then putting it back in and so forth.  The weather was great so Nora and I got some vitamin D and watched the activities.

Time-Lapse video of the day

Detail Video of Nora and I watching it all go down

Another great thing was Jaime's Mom and brother got to spend the day together.  They went on a Bush's Bean canning tour and did some shopping.  I got to hang wit Cold [Jaime's bro] a bit and shoot his air-soft gun.

We got some unexpected success on the pool light search.  I talked with the southeast rep from Pentair Pool.  He heard our story and saw the website, and then said Pentair would like to donate a lighting system.  I say 'system' because they are shipping us two color LED lights and this nifty controller that enables them to do light shows.  I'm thrilled and so thankful.  Once we get the lights I take pictures and show all the neat light shows it can do.

Written by TJ and Jaime | 24 August 2010

Jaime gave Nora a strawberry on Sunday and she almost didn't get it back.  I guess Nora really likes them!  Nora is so good now with her secretions.  We have less and less choking incidents now which hopefully means less aspiration pneumonia in general.  When Nora's mouth fills up, she usually tells us by either gargling (which she thinks is really funny) or she just pushes it out of the corner of her mouth.  She's getting to be such a big girl now.

The pool arrived today.  It's unceremoniously parked next to the house on a trailer which is why there are no pictures.  The crane will come pick it up on Wednesday and I will have the time-lapse running for that.  The somewhat bad news that we are scrambling to correct, is the pool lighting.  It was supposed to come with a multi-colored LED light.  Well someone or somehow that got screwed up and it doesn't have any light at all!  I've been leaving messages for Hayward, Pentair and Jandy lighting to try and see if they will discount or donate a light for us.  These lights are not cheap ($500-800) so adding this onto our already over budget project would really hurt.  The good news for these companies is, they can get free advertising since WVLT will be doing a news story on the pool once it's complete.  It's a win-win....  I just have to convince them of that.

Jaime is all done with all the preparation for the Picky Chick consignment sale.  We printed up these two banners (banner Gwendolyn,  Banner Nora) to be put up at the special donation proceeds sale on Wednesday.  Hopefully Jaime's stress level will go down a few ticks.

Written by TJ and Jaime | 22 August 2010

I uploaded a new video of Nora's driving this weekend.  Sorry that she's not exactly dressed to kill in the vids, but it's humid here so we keep her stripped.  We are using a few different options to assist Nora's ability to control her chair.  She seems to be making little progress but we don't expect too much.  It's really just a fun play activity for Nora right now and that's what it should be at this stage....so they tell us.

More Nora Powerchair

Jaime's Mom and little brother are slowly making their way to Knoxville for a week long visit.  Hopefully we can keep Cole [Jaime's 11 year old brother] out of the heavy machinery in our backyard hole area.

We got our super cool pool umbrella delivered today.  It's as nice as a $2000 dual-umbrella can be I guess.  The bad news is our Microwave took a crizzap on us so Jaime has been sterilizing Nora's stuff using the old-school pot-o-boiling water method.  We took an educated guess as to what part broke in the microwave and ordered a replacement.  I kind of thought microwaves ran on wishes and magic so we must just be getting $154 worth of pixie dust.

And THANK YOU to everyone to "liked" the picky chick consignment sale.  Gwendolyn Strong Foundation 200K for SMA has WON!  We are thrilled and so thankful for not getting our butts kicked.  More details soon.

daddy out