Welcome to my blog!

Thank you for taking the time to stop by and visit! We hope to share with you our journey of raising a child with Achondroplasia, the most common type of dwarfism. If this is your first time here, please start by reading Caitlyn's Story. It will share the beginning of her life with you. Enjoy!

Friday, November 22, 2013

Painted Turtle Camp on the Move

The Painted Turtle Camp is a camp located in Lake Hughes, CA is is designed for children with serious medical conditions.  We don't think of Caitlyn as having a "serious medical condition" but truth is she obviously has a medical condition - we're just lucky that she hasn't had any of the serious medical issues some lp's have.  

The Painted Turtle serves children from California and across the US who are coping with many types of chronic disease conditions including asthma, arthritis, Crohn’s and colitis, hemophilia, kidney and liver disease and transplant, Primary Immune Deficiency Disease, metabolic and genetic conditions, and skeletal dysplasia. The camp takes place during the summer with different weeks set aside for different conditions.  Summer campers need to be between the ages of 7 and 16.  

Back in June a fire came extremely close to Painted Turtle and because of smoke damage this past summers camp sessions were canceled.  That is when they decided to do "Painted Turtle on the Move".  Caty, Hanna and I joined in on the fun when it was in Livermore - almost 2 hours from our house.  




Arts and Crafts galore!!


The Okenfuss family was also there.  Dan is our chapter president and Ericka is our genetics counselor at Kaiser.  These are their two sons, Hai and Jude



Saying hi to one of the many therapy dogs 








Yummy snowcones


Dance Party!








Our rocket - which Hanna named Kelly - that we created for the rocket launch!




Ready to blast off!




Caty tried her hand at archery






More dancing



Bradley showing off his moves







What an amazing experience!  We can't wait until Caty attends the camp!


September...


September came around and to start off the weekend we were supposed to head to the cabin with my friend and college roommate Brandi but because of the RIM fire we stayed home.  This is what Pinecrest looked like...





This is the same lake as we'd seen in July :-(


So we headed out for a morning with Brandi and family at Lake Clementine outside of Auburn





Went in search of hear shaped rocks to let our cousins (Brooklin, Jon, Justin, Logan, Ryan and Landon) know that we were thinking of them)













Game night


Hanna and Cam the twinsies


Scott, our friend Malissa and I headed to SF to hear some bands play

The new Bay Bridge




Found Haight street


Murder By Death




Hanna and her bumblebee


Aloha Hop at school



Backyard fun




And of course a park stop