Finally, the blog has come back to the internets!!! Sorry,
that was dramatic. It was the best I could come up with after not doing a post
for two months.
As you all may know, the March for Babies is coming up next
month, and we have been going all out with our fundraising efforts. Monday, we
held one of this year’s larger events at the Pizza Ranch in Ames. What a
wonderful opportunity Pizza Ranch provided us!
We would like to say thank you to everyone who came out to have some
good pizza and support Team Kamps3. Angie and I tried very hard to
visit with all who attended but inevitably missed some of you. The event went well, and we raised over $1000
for the March of Dimes! A big thanks to Aaron and Blakely Mortvedt for doing
the legwork to get the event set up. Also many thanks to Susie, Craig,
Elizabeth, and Grandma Janet for bussing tables all night and earning those
tips!
There was a lot of activity at the Pizza Ranch, but there
were some very touching moments that really impacted us. We got to catch up
with another triplet family we have met since the girls were born. It was good
to see their girls, and meet their
little brother. And get this, their mom brought all four of them *by herself!*.
Yeah, 4 kids, under three, all the way to Ames
from Lohrville. Alone. Shannon Hobbs, I salute you. Your children are
delightful and we hope to see you again soon!
We also had a very nice conversation with the manager of Pizza Ranch,
who after hearing our story, generously donated out of his own pocket in
addition to the business donation of 10% of the evenings sales. I tell you what, Pizza Ranch truly is a wonderful
business that supports its community and charitable organizations. This is a fundraiser we hope to continue with
for years to come.
We were completely blown away by the generosity of one
particular customer. As we were approaching the end of our fundraiser, Angie’s
aunt walked over and handed me $300 cash. I asked where it came from, and she
told me it came from a dad of 9-year-old twins, who were 25 weekers. Angie and
I went over to talk to him and learned he was from Minnesota , just passing through town. He’ll
probably never see this, but thank you random customer, we can’t express our
gratitude. It is amazing to me how God
orchestrated a random encounter that meant so much. What are the odds that this gentleman would
pass throw town of that very night and stop at that very restaurant and have so
much in common…wow. Very, very cool.
There is just under a month left until the walk, and there
are still plenty of opportunities to donate to the March of Dimes. There is a
bake sale at a vendor show in Nevada on Saturday, April 28th, as
well as team t-shirts to purchase if you haven’t already (deadline is Monday,
April 23. Information can be found on our facebook page, or by contacting
Angie. There is also the matter of Angie’s facebook fundraising challenge. Her
goal is to raise $3000 on her personal page. If she hits that, I will in fact
be wearing a tutu the day of the walk. So if you want to see the manliest of
men sporting the prettiest of pretties (there will be shorts underneath, nobody
wants to see that), please visit her personal page to donate.
Thank you to all our team members that are working hard to
raise donations for the March of Dimes!
We greatly appreciate you efforts.
If you have donated, please know we are incredibly grateful for your
gift. If you have yet to do so, there is
still time to make a difference in the lives of sweet babies, I urge you to
consider a gift. Having gone through
what our family has, every family I can help to avoid premature birth, is worth
all the work we put into March of Dimes fundraising.
Things have been busy at our house even without all of the
March of Dimes activities. We hit the Easter Egg hunt in Slater at the
beginning of the month. I don’t know if the girls quite understood, but they
each got a couple of pretty eggs, and were happy. Dad got some candy out of it,
so he was happy too. We made it to church for the first time this year on
Easter (we have had to miss during cold/flu season), then spent the day with
family, hunting Easter eggs and chasing bubbles. Man, do we love bubbles at our
house. I think we spent the entire day outside, I’ve never seen them so tired,
but they sure did have a good time playing.
We do have some less exciting news. Brenna is going in for
surgery on Monday, April 23rd. We visited our neurosurgeon in
February to discuss Brenna and her MRI results. The scan showed two large cysts
in the third and fourth ventricles of her brain which are making it difficult for
her shunt to drain the extra fluid. After
consulting with several other top children’s hospitals, the surgeon has determined
the best course of action is to revise her shunt to allow two catheters, joined
by a Y-connector, to drain through her current device. The area of the brain
that is being affected by the pressure this extra fluid is causing has a direct
link to balance and coordination. The surgeon expects to see improvement in
both areas for Brenna once the surgery is done and the shunt settings are
tweaked to where they need to be. Hopefully, this will fix the issues Brenny
has been having with her balance and gross motor skills. So please keep Brenna
in your thoughts and prayers next week for an uneventful procedure and speedy
recovery. To say that we are burnt out
on surgeries and complications from the girls’ premature delivery is a massive
understatement. This just goes to show
that even once you’ve survived the rollercoaster in the NICU, the effects of
premature birth do not go away, it will continue to be a battle we must face
throughout their lives…this is what we hope to prevent for other families.
We look forward to getting out more now that RSV/flu season
is officially over. Hopefully you can join us on May 12th for the
March for Babies in Des Moines . We are going to
try to update the blog a little more regularly this summer, but I emphasize try, and I make no guarantees, unless
you want to watch toddlers while I type ;)…
Brad, Angie, Anna, Brenna, and
Lucy Kamps
