Spina Bifida Friends and Family gathering

When Katie was born I searched endlessly for other families with children with Spina Bifida. I wanted to read happy, successful stories and always seemed to come up empty handed. After Katie was born we thankfully became good friends with another local family that also had a daughter with SB. Yet, if we were not in the same ward at church, we would have never met.

Now, thanks to blogs, facebook and mom's groups we have met SO many new SB friends. In the past year and a half I have connected with moms from around the USA and we have shared our stories with one another. Through our computers we laugh and cry with one another. We cheer each other and our little ones on. And we pray. We do a lot of praying for one another. Especially when we know one of our friends is going in for a big surgery or test. We cry when we hear that a shunt needs to be revised. We cheer when we hear that one of our friends started crawling... or even walking!

Yes in deed we have developed meaningful friendships with one another and on Saturday we were blessed to have four of these special families over for a BBQ!

Here I am with four special moms (p.s. just do me a favor and pretend my hair doesn't look like that)

1. Karen, mom to Carson-they drove three hours to come

2. Leigh-mom to Grey-she flew from Michigan to be with us.

3. Joanna-mom to Jet-flew from Georgia

4. Nicole-mom to Annabelle-thankfully we live in the same city and share the same doctor, hospital and therapy stories!

Our sweet kids that are happy and healthy and have amazing abilities but also happen to have a life with extras! This is the picture I wish I could have seen seven years ago when I was searching for pictures of kids with Spina Bifida. Just look at these cute friends Jet and Grey! They are only a few months apart and I became friends with their moms when they were pregnant. It has been so fun to be on this journey with them. I have loved watching these sweet babies grow into darling toddlers!

My new friend Karen! I am so thankful we live in the same state! She is a gem!

After we BBQed (thanks to dad and bryant for the awesome grilling skills! And thanks mom for helping me get everything ready and for sharing your home) we sat and talked for hours.

Four of the kids have shunts, four of the kids have paralyzed feet, five of them have back scars, two of them have/or had dislocated hips and five of them have a sparkle and glow about them.

Katie made these signs for her new little friends.

Annabelle and Nicole gave Katie a beautiful necklace and we cried when we opened and read the word "inspire" that is engraved on it. What a special gift!

new friends!

Leigh and her best friend Courtney who so conveniently lives locally. We were glad to meet Courtney too! She looks JUST like Kristin Chenoweth and was as nice as they come!

Karen was so sweet to bring necklaces that held so much symbolism relating to Spina Bifida. It is a special gift we will all treasure. I still can't believe we actually pulled it off and I am still on cloud nine from the evening!

Don't even get us started on how excited we are for the Spina Bifida Conference next summer located in..... drum roll please..... ANAHEIM CALIFORNIA!!!!!