Amber’s Awesome Angels

We helped out at a car wash organized by some friends of ours today, with the proceeds going to Camp Hertko Hollow.  The money is used to help pay for kids who otherwise couldn’t afford it to get to camp.  That’s pretty cool, helping out kids that way.  We all think it’s so important for kids to participate in this camp that spending half a Saturday washing cars.  When I was in the National Guard, there was a common bond between my fellow soldiers, that “brotherhood”.  Diabetics have the same bond.   They all share the same experiences, have the same problems, and talk the same talk.  That’s why things like Camp Hertko Hollow and support groups from JDRF are so important, because it gets kids together. They’d raised about a thousand dollars by the time we had to leave, and still had a few hours left. The money they raised was going to be matched by some local businesses. Two thousand dollars is enough to send 3 kids to camp. Just from a car wash. That’s cool.

I helped out at an event at the Amana Colonies Golf Course on Wednesday, 16 August.  It was organized by a couple guys from Grinnell, with the proceeds going to JDRF.  There were about 140 golfers there, including the event’s first female golfer, Abbi Summer of Ankeny.  She won the state 4A medallist honors as the best golfer the last two years, and has a scholarship to attend Kansas State University in the fall.  She was also diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in May.  We met her at the Ankeny Country Club, where her family are members.  It’s interesting when Amber meets someone like Abbi.  Amber’s met so many successful people who have diabetes that it doesn’t even phase her anymore.  She’s met world class athletes and a former Miss America, so it’s nothing to her to meet someone else.  That kind of bothers me, that she doesn’t appreciate their efforts in spite of the disease they share, but it’s also kind of cool.  She’s learned that there is nothing that can hold her back from anything she wants to do, and she’s also learned that it pays off to give back to those who share our desire to rid the world of this disease.  That is an attitude that I’ve done my best to pick up from her.  She’s an amazing little girl, and she’s taught me so much about life.  It’s too bad that she had to be afflicted with diabetes in order for us to learn it.

By the way, the golf event grossed about $25,000.

We’re beginning to ramp up for the 2007 Walk, which will be held on March 3rd, 2007.  Last year our team, Amber’s Awesome Angels, did truly awesome.  We raised over $13,000 (third most overall) and had 70 team members (4th largest team). 

So far we’ve got $1850 already “banked”, and we’ve got about $300 at home that we’ve raised from various sources.  We’ll be a success this coming year as long as we can earn enough to get Austin a trophy.  When we were raising money last year, we tried to make sure that Kim, Amber, and myself got over $1000 each so we could be recognized at the wrap up banquet.  We didn’t think Austin would care about that.  He did.  He was VERY upset that he didn’t get a trophy and everyone else did.  We’ll try not to make that same mistake this again. 

UPDATE:  We did, Austin is now at $1000.  He’ll be very happy.

If you’d like to sign up for our team, or even make a donation, here is a place to do it!  The links for making a donation and joining our team are on that page.  Thanks!!

The conference was in Orlando at the Renaissance Resort, right across from Sea World.  It ran from Wednesday to Saturday, with the last day at Sea World.  We found out that our Sea World tickets are good for 7 days after you first use them, so we went down a day early and spent Tuesday at the park as well.  We had a blast there.  We met some new friends, we hung out while waiting for the Shamu show to start, and hit every show we could.  And do you know how we know the kids had a good time?  You could  see it in their faces!

The actual conference was great, too.  The first day was focus groups, which pretty much meant that the pharmaceutical and therapeutics companies were trying to get feedback from their customers.  That night at the pool We were all swimming and I had my blue JDRF bracelet on, and a little girl said, “Hey, I have one of those, too!”  So we introduced ourselves to her and her family.  Rebecca and her sister Eliana and their parents are from Virginia, and Rebecca is the same age as Amber.  The girls hit it off right away and we would up spending a lot of time with their family.  They are very nice and we’ve exchanged info with them, hoping to keep in touch until we see them at next year’s conference. 

The next two days consisted of sessions of various topics, the most interesting of which were a research update from a doctor at the NIH, information on carbs and preventing lows during sports and exercise, and sessions by a counselor from Animas who talked about how to talk to your child about diabetes.  Amber was in a group of kids around her own age, so she got to play with Rebecca, Eliana, and they met another girl, Maya, who is from Vancouver. Here is a picture of the 4 of them! We got a lot of great information, met a lot of people, and had a lot of fun.  Next year’s conference is at Disney!

Here’s a few of the special pictures from the Children With Diabetes conference we attended in Orlando.  There will be more.

Chris Dudley (15 year NBA veteran):
Gary Hall Jr (10 time Olympic medal winner in swimming):
Jay Leeuwenburg (13 year NFL veteran):
Kris Freeman (Olympic cross country skier):
Nicole Baker Johnson #1 (Miss America 1999):
Nicole Baker Johnson #2 (Miss America 1999):
Phil Southerland (Champion bicycle racer):
Will Cross (Mountain Climber):
What do all these people have in common? They all have Type 1 diabetes.

JDRF has a program called Promise To Remember Me where you meet with your elected representatives and have them “promise” to remember you when they make their votes. We were asked to meet with Senator Tom Harkin on 25 March 2006. We had a very nice meeting. He asked about Amber, how old she was, where she went to school. We gave him our Promise To Remember Me card with our family photo and our story, we gave him a card from Amber, thanking him for his support for research, and we gave him one of our Insulin Is Not a Cure car magnets. We talked about the news from the past week about the research done with making cells from mice act like stem cells. He talked about opening more doors for research, that we only have 2 of 10 doors open, and the $7 billion for the NIH opened a couple more of those doors. We talked a little about how life has changed for us, and how Amber’s been a positive influence on my Kim (my wife) and myself. We watched Amber and Austin as they drew pictures on the whiteboard in the office, and then we took pictures.