Day 1|5
Tuesday July 31 || Travel Day
We were ‘flying high’ today in Owen’s Story!
Today we have been in route and made it to CALIFORNIA to attend The Symposium for MPS! It’s a HUGE convention they hold every year at a different location (this year its international!) where we get to meet new families, learn even more about our future + be surrounded by ‘our people’ + we are SO excited!! Owen will attend Camp Courage while we are here for 5 days, playing with other peers and people that understand him and his needs during the days while we attend the meetings, spend time together as a couple and with friends. There are so many fun activities are planned!!
One of the evenings we are here, there is a welcoming ceremony and Owen gets to go up on stage to represent MPS III. It is celebrated as a “Superhero day” for anyone who wants to wear a superhero shirt of any kind to represent our amazing babies. You can wear anything, Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, whoever your favorite is… but of course, I couldn’t resist my creative juices that flowed straight into wanting to create shirts for Owen as a superhero!
I wanted to share our shirts with you!! And you can also watch on Owen’s Facebook page for the video of us on stage for that night.
I already can’t wait to post more for you throughout our trip – I’ll try and post a blog post at the end of every day we are here so you can look for that if I have the time. Right now we’re enjoying just being together, being silly + laughing (which I feel we haven’t done in while) with “no worries” until we get back! Please say a quick prayer for all of the families who can’t make it this year for whatever reason and to those more recent ones who have just lost their superhero’s to this disease. Thanks for being here with us!
Here is a recap of our first day getting to and enjoying our place in California!
Owen did so good on the flight! He has only flown one other time and that was about 4 years ago, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect out of this trip as the flight was 4 hours. He was very content, watched all his favorite shows multiple times on the screen they had on the back of the seats and played his games.
When the kids are on their tablets, you always take headphones with, of course. However, as much as it is convenient, sometimes making it so they are not able to hear themselves sing along isn’t as convenient (haha!) The airplane heard an even mixture of being serenaded by his karaoke session and then me saying ‘Shh, got to be a little quieter buddy.’ He did really good though, and everyone around us was very nice.
He ate ‘airplane graham crackers’ and drank apple juice.
During take off, Owen was so cute counting down in his seat “BIVE, BOUR, FREE, TWO, ONE… BLAST OFF!!” And when it was time to land he said, “C’mon! C’mon! You can do it!” These are two of his phrases that he uses for other things frequently, so I just wanted to share with those who know Owen and maybe can picture his voice saying these things.
After we landed and were heading off the plane, the stewardess asked O if he wanted to go in the cockpit where the pilot sits! Owen didn’t know what to think and was a little scared at first, but when they said ‘Mom can sit with you!’ then he was okay. We hopped in and got to pretend like we were flying! We shared Owen’s story with the captain and gave him a bracelet and as Owen walked out, he yelled back to the captain, “Bank you for riding da plane wif me!”
We headed off to baggage claim and waited patiently for our shuttle.
We arrived around 3:30-4pm and once we got taken to our hotel, we checked in and relaxed in the room for a while. There is a two hour difference so our bodies were adjusting slowly and was a little confused ha. At 3:30 we were ready for dinner and at 5:30 we were ready for bed.
We hung out on the balcony for a couple minutes and watched the sun as it went down before we planned to meet with a couple families later in the evening.
These next sweet handful of pictures of Randy and I are taken by Owen. And I am just in awe over them!
I love them so much. I loved this day. I love him. This week is just going to be perfection.
And oh, goodness, I had to share this moment with you. Before we went in for dinner, Owen came out on the balcony with us with his tablet and started singing and this seagull flew up and stood right in front of us for the next 15 minutes and just listened to him. (Yeah, yeah I know he was probably just looking for food…) But honestly, it was just the cutest thing to watch. Owen would sing a song to him and then talk to him and the bird would squawk a little and tilt it’s head from side to side. It’s like each of them had met a new friend, ha.
After we ate dinner, we were invited to meet with a handful of families in the lobby and some others we already knew. We stayed up late talking about diagnosis, everyone’s individual journeys and everyone got to meet Owen. It was a comforting circle in the corner of a hotel lobby that my heart needed. We are forever grateful for anyone who is able to help us along in our journey. It was so nice to meet you all and the others that will be hugging us or shaking our hands while we are here. It feels like home.
This is a photo of Owen from the night with one of his favorite people here, Kris.
And I know I’m a day behind, but ‘I’ll see you tomorrow’ for Day 2!
xx