Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Backyard Antics

Things have been busy in the O’Connell household. Last weekend Colin’s sister (Auntie E) and her fiancĂ© Ken came into town to celebrate Barbara’s birthday. On Saturday night we all went to dinner to celebrate and Tom surprised her with a 3 week trip to Europe in September!! What an amazing gift (Colin take note…someday). It was a wonderful weekend and Catie is sure going to miss B and Da when they are gone (but she is pretty sure that they will bring her back a few things).

Now that Spring is officially here, we have been trying to get our backyard ready since we know that we will being spending a lot of time in it. I really wanted to plant vegetables so we had to weed and fertilize the soil first. Colin and his dad worked really hard on getting everything ready and then I went to work on planting veggies and flowers. We have named our vegetable garden “Catie’s Garden” and it consists of watermelon, lettuce, cucumbers, peppers (red, green and yellow), basil, mint, cilantro, garlic and tomatoes and carrots are being planted on Sunday. Keep your fingers crossed that everything grows!

Not only did Colin and I spend time working in the yard but so did Catie.

First she helped mow the lawn with her new lawnmower




Then she found some mud puddles and tried to clear out the water for us



The end result is one dirty toddler

She cleans up well though and is ready for Spring

This weekend we are walking in the Bay Area Brain Tumor 5k walk. In June 2008 one of best friends from college, Jackie Oswold, was diagnosed with Anaplastic Astrocytoma (a grade 3 glioma) in June of 2008. She went through a treatment program of surgery, radiation, and chemo that was completed in May of 2009. Now, in order to avoid developing a chemo resistance, Jackie is not currently being treated. Instead, she waits and hopes every day that her tumor (which she named Turk) isn't growing undetected in her brain. Living with cancer isn't easy. But, she holds out hope that someone finds a cure before it's too late. Jackie needs a cure NOW. To donate to the National Brain Tumor Society please visit my Bay Area Brain Tumor Walk page.