2 Feet. 1 Goal. Outrun CF.

Filed Under: Cystic Fibrosis2 Comments

The Outrun CF virtual race was this weekend. Did you participate? We did… well kind of.

Jesse in new shirt

When we signed up and bought the shirt we had every intention of working our way up to being able to run that day. But then Jesse had to have a minor procedure done on his foot, making him unable to train for the run. Oh well. Neither of us are really runners anyways. We’ve tried to be, knowing that it would be good exercise for both of us, but I’ve never been able to stick to running and running doesn’t agree too well with Jesse’s lungs anymore. We choose other ways to get in our exercise these days.

We did, however, make an effort to cover a good distance walking this weekend. On Saturday we went to a huge community garage sale. We got in a good amount of walking throughout the different neighborhoods. On Sunday we had planned to walk either around our neighborhood or around the outdoor mall near our house. Then we got a last minute invite to Busch Gardens with some freinds, so we definitely got a good amount of walking in going from one end of the park to the other for the rides we wanted to get on. We got in at least two miles between the two days, according to Jesse’s Nike Plus sensor.

So our Outrun CF weekend didn’t go quite as we planned. In the end, Jesse thought it was just as well… seeing as how we didn’t let CF stand in the way of what we wanted to do with our weekend. He outran CF by keeping up with friends and activities on a busy weekend. Take that, CF!!

CF Wives Dinner

Filed Under: Cystic Fibrosis5 Comments

It is so great to have the chance to meet new friends. It’s especially great when you know that these new friends have SO much in common with you. Last night I had the opportunity to meet up with four fabulous CF wives and we had a great time… a really great time!

A couple of months ago, a CF wife out of state started a facebook group called CF wives. I saw the group right away and was one of the first to join the group. Each wife knew one or two other wives and our group quickly grew to now 65 members!

CF-Wives

Before last night I was friends with only one of these girls, Ami. She had the idea to set up a get together for the CF wives that lived in the area. I had no idea there were so many of us so close by, and we’re all about the same age too. I had been looking forward to meeting them since the moment I got the invite. We covered a lot of ground for just one night. We leaned some background info about everyone, and exciting stories about how we all met our CF hubbies. We asked questions and learned about some different meds and how we handle our homes being overrun with medical equipment. Plus there was plenty of regular girl talk.

I normally would have felt nervous and a little awkward to have dinner with people I had never even met before, but that wasn’t the case at all. I felt like we were all instant friends, having so much to talk about. I think we probably annoyed our waiter just a little, being much more interested in talking than eating. He had to check back several times before we were ready to order. Then he had to kick us out at the end of the night when the restaurant closed.

Thanks for such a great night, ladies! I’m already looking forward to the next time we are able to get together.

Meet the Burkhalters

Filed Under: Cystic Fibrosis, Travel1 Comment

We left the farm and were on the road early this morning. We are spending the night in Knoxville, Tennessee because we weren’t brave enough to try to drive straight through after our experiences on the way up to Ohio. Plus the weather got pretty terrible. It was fine all the way to Kentucky and then it turned nasty making driving no fun. We’re used to the rain, but not used to it being so cold when it’s raining. The first thing we did when we checked into our room was turn on the heater.

Ohio barn

However, we did have a fun lunch date to look forward to today with John and Rhonda. Rhonda had jokingly said on our way up to honk as we passed their house since they live right off the interstate. We thought about meeting them then, but we were really in too much of a rush to get to our destination after all the car problems we had. So we decided to plan on doing something together on our return trip.

We “met” John and Rhonda online quite a while ago. John has CF and is around the same age as Jesse and we were really looking forward to getting to meet them in person. It’s still funny to me to meet someone for the first time, but already know what they look like and know so much about them from Facebook and blogs. We hit it off with them pretty good and really enjoyed hanging and chatting with them. We mostly talked about normal people stuff, but transitioned easily to talking about IVs and clinic visits. It was a good time.

Me with Rhonda

Our guys were careful to follow the three foot, no contact rule and sat on opposite sides of the table at lunch. Besides, standing with crossed arms makes a more manly looking pose for a picture anyway.

Jesse with John

We had originally thought that we would just meet at any convenient place we could find off the interstate and I was going to bring my own food with me. But then Rhonda did some research to find a place that she thought would be better for me to eat with my food allergies… which I thought was so sweet and thoughtful of her. She suggested PF Changs which I had heard is really good at dealing with allergies, but had not been there before today. So it was an extra special treat to eat out and be with new friends. (More about how awesome my experience was with eating there soon.)

PF Changs

Then they were even more sweet to buy us some baby items for our future foster children. We were so surprised that they would have thought to do that for us. This was one of our very first gifts too! They got us two sets of onesies… one for either a boy or a girl, a bottle, a pack of baby plates, and a package of diapers. How thoughtful of them!

Gifts

Thanks for spending part of your day with us Burkhalters, we really had a good time with you guys! Hope we can do it again sometime.