August 10

What a great day. We woke up to rain but it cleared up by noon. We had a great time at my parents for lunch with my brother-in-law, Mike Andrews, who was en route to London. Then, we met up with Debbie's best friend from high school, Brenda Mabbott, and her family. We had a nice dinner and a beautiful evening at the beach.

On Friday we had the Gairns' family for dinner and spent the evening at the ocean. Keaton left his Ipod in Sam's scooter while we played on the beach. About half way home he remembered he'd left it in there and felt sick that it was gone. It was a good lesson to learn about how safe things aren't in Vancouver.

Fortunately, Mr. Goertzen pulled it out of his pocket after Keaton had sweat a little. He had put it in his pocket after going back to get the frisbee. Everybody was laughing except Keaton, who gave Mr. G a great big hug and thanked him over and over again...

We'll probably have to get Sam a blood transfusion this week if his counts continue to drop. His energy levels have remained high though and he is in great spirits.

Here is another little miracle of encouragement. We've been watching the olympics and have seen many of our Canadian athletes on TV. Today we found out that Kate's friend from NLBC, Joel Kessler, has been working with the Olympic athletes in Toronto for his work. He got an olympic flag for Sam and had each of the athletes sign it for him. What a guy! Sam was so excited to hear that the guys that he was watching on TV had signed a flag for him last week to encourage him to recover from his cancer. Isn't that a great thing for those guys to do? We were psyched. So many people have come along side us - even our olympic athletes. We are blessed.

Thanks,

Ger