Thank you Funky Heart

Steve Catoe, a 44-year old tricuspid atresia survivor, avid advocate for congenital heart disease, and giver of hope to so many families, passed away today. Here is an email he wrote to Luke back in February of 2009:

Hi, Luke!

Just a quick note to see how you are doing and to say hi! I live wayyyyyy over here in South Carolina ... get your dad to show you SC on a map!

I'm 42 and have a single ventricle just like you do! We're pretty special, not everybody gets to be a Cardiac Kid! And what's even better, I know a *lot* of grown ups with heart defects - we aren't rare anymore!

But you gotta take care of yourself first - keep your heart strong so it can keep on going! So get outside and play! And drop by my blog any time you want to!

Steve

Thank you, Steve, for all the encouragement shared, knowledge passed and good done for the CHD community. Thank you for showing your scars and showing other families that life with a funky heart is a good life indeed.

Snowin'

You know you live in western Washington when one post is about raking vibrant leaves and then next, two weeks later, is about catching snowflakes with your tongue.

This was yesterday, when we only had an inch or so, but today is much more impressive, about 3 inches so far and my van stuck at the bottom of our hill.

So what do you do if you're stuck at home all day? We're going sledding!

Rakin'

The leaves in our town are so beautiful right now. We don't have a ton in our yard, but on our walk this morning, we saw two boys raking leaves in their leaf-carpeted yard. Of course Luke thought that was a great idea so when we got home the boys headed out to do some serious rakin'.

At one point, Rog stopped to get a drink of water from his water bottle and Luke says to him, "C'mon Dad, we need to keep workin'."

Taskmaster!

Here's hoping his love for raking follows him into his teen years.

Dragon Tales!

Halloween 2010 (not to be confused with Election Day 2010) was so different from Halloween 2009. Luke loved the entire process (runny nose and all!) We weren't sure how many houses we would hit since Luke's been under the weather, but after the first several, he declared he would like to go to a hundred houses! I think we got close. 12 or 13 at least. Whatever the number, he was the cutest little dragon out on those neighborhood streets.

And without further ado, we move onto ...

TURKEY DAY!