no title...

not the best creative title person and this post will be of random, catch-up stuff that if i even came up with a title it would pretty much be its own post...

since the last time i posted on lucy she has started her round of chemo. sadly she has lost her hair but her courage and super-heroism is still there! thank you to those who have sent her lil care packages and cards! she has been loving them!

mouth update : the end of january ben got his braces on the top and the bottom. they only put a wire on the bottom because they were not yet ready to wire the top so soon after his surgery. he will get that wire then end of this month and then the pulling and tugging to get those pearly whites will begin. poor guy! his chewing is all messed up because his upper jaw is now wider then his lower and he has the appliance on the roof of his mouth still. gotta love lots of metal all in your mouth! just a few more years of this and he will have a whole new mouth!

ben had a birthday way back on the 2nd! i was to do a 5 mile hill run that morning but i gladly gave it up to sleep in and stay home with the birthday boy! we made some oven pancakes and then headed off to a few nephews basketball games. after the games we went to red robin, bens choice, for a birthday dinner with some family! of course he was put on the spot and the birthday song was sung...can you tell he was thrilled?!

{hanging at the basketball games}

bed did some writing on the magnetic board. almost the clearest writing he has done yet all because it was so much more controlled. he of course wrote me a few love notes!

 

 

a few weeks ago i started my half marathon training. it will be the same one i did last year but this year i joined a running group and i have loved it thus far. not only am i doing my runs (although i have had to slack because my treadmill is down and im waiting for the repair guy) but i am doing some strength training with insanity videos and this past week ran some stairs with my friend...almost died! ha! i bought a calorie counter with heart rate monitor do document it and then also have like three apps on my phone that i switch back and forth with to track milage and such too...i promise i dont look at gadgety or have water bottles hanging off my hips!! heres to 13.1 in may...a week before my lil brothers wedding so i will be in shape to fit in a bridesmaid dress! wasn't planned!

 

 {85 going up, 85 going down...13 times up and down, you do the math}

{insanity is insane}

so last week ben started in a new therapy program. i had heard about this place years ago from a mom whose son also suffered from a tbi. the reason i remember it is because they have a locomat...the assistive robotic walking machine. there are not alot of these in the nation but they just happen to have one. we toured the facility a few weeks ago, were excited about it not only for the lokomat but also for the intense therapy that would follow his walking. another perk is that there are three guys there that rotate working with him but at least 2 at one time! ben was super excited about this.

2 weeks ago ben went up for an eval and it was hard for him but good! they didn't let him have any slack for which we both were happy about. at one point they had him crawling on the mats to help with core and coordination and he fell over...what they did, said, "ok ben, fix it!" he did. got back up to crawling with no help!

let me back up a bit...ben has been getting his therapy through the va. we knew that this is where we would be going (about a half hour drive) for his therapies even before he was off of active duty. i had my doubts about it but knew that we needed to give it a try. well, when ben started saying to me after he would finish that they were boring, not hard enough, and weak that is when i knew we needed to look into something different for him. there are not alot of challanging therapy programs out there at all. it is horrid but it is what it is. it is super hard to get anything from the va...there are things that we requested a long time ago and still waiting to see and also things ben needs to have happen but are getting beaten around the bush. its always a fight. we actually have a meeting monday morning with the staff to see what's going on with it all. we will go from there...

so back to this program. ben gets an hour on the locomat and then an hour of therapy. the locomat is good for ben because it gives him the repetadive walking that he needs and how to walk correctly. it also locks him into the correct position. he cannot lean back like he likes to, cannot drag his feet, his hips are aligned and so on.

right now we go up on tuesdays and thursdays and monday/friday are at the va. the only down side to the program is that its about an hour away (traffic dependent...towards seattle so it can get messy) and right now the va denied to pay for it. so were driving and paying. its not cheap so were still trying to see what can be done about that...

i think i have some videos on my computer of when ben did this stuff back in the day but couldn't find them! they might have been on my old phones too of which i don't have anymore!

here are some pics and videos of what ben has done just in the two sessions he has done.

{and he's done...}

 

 

 {planking...this is a first since ben's injury!}

 quite cool to see! even when ben is throwing the ball i cannot help but think back a few years to when he would just hold a foam ball in his hand and when we told him to throw it, it would not move and he would just kind of look at it. at one point he started throwing it...in inches and now he can throw it across the room while balancing on his knees! so proud! bens amazing, gods amazing!

the next post i want to include a specific prayer list. i know alot of you like to have that and how to pray for the both of us so i will work on that!

until then...winston says howdy from his cozy spot, bens lap...