SMA Awareness Day #3

Today's shirt is from New England Cure SMA Walk N Roll in Hingham, Massachussetts.  This was from the 12th annual walk which took place on May 19, 2012.   I'm sure I have shirts from previous walks there but I must have retired them to the attic.  My dresser can only hold so many t-shirts!  As it is, I have to rotate them halfway through the season so that I wear them all.  

This walk was the first ever Cure SMA event that our family attended. I don't remember which was our first year, but it was before this.  I'll ask Karen as she may remember!  I have some good pics of this day so maybe I'll add them later.  

One of the reasons this fundraiser is near and dear to my heart is because one of the chairs of the event had two children with SMA type 1.  They were around Casey's age and Colin's age. Both kids passed away at early age from complications of SMA.  This family was determined to raise money for research in honor/memory of their kids.  For 20 years they have been holding their Walk N Roll and they have grown each year.  This walk is one of the biggest and most successful for Cure SMA.  We attended this walk many years. It inspired us to start our own walk in Vermont which we did for the first time in 2015.  Our totals are a drop in the bucket to this walk but I am proud to have started a Vermont walk and have united some of the families in the area. Of course, Vermont has a much smaller population than Massachusetts and only a fraction of affected families, but we are proud of our fundraising and the awareness we have spread.   

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Today.  Let's see.  Highlight of the day was dissecting owl pellets with our reading group. Yes, you read that right!  In the reading group, we tend to read a lot of non-fiction and at least one of our readings included talking about owls.  We learned that owls eat things like rodents but they cannot digest their bones so it forms inside them in balls of hair and bones such.  Then, a couple of times a day, the owl regurgitates the 'pellet'. We all bought kits that included sterilized owl pellets, a magnifying glass, tweezers/forceps and a booklet with diagrams.  It took us a while to find a date that everyone could participate and today was that day!

Nurse Staci was excited to do the dissecting and I was very grateful for that.  It was very cool but I was glad to be a viewer.  I think the kids enjoyed it.  I KNOW the adults did!!