God Bless Caroline!!!

Yesterday was Caroline's Baptism! She was so sweet in her white dress with pink flowers! She did great! She sat so still while baptized! HerCo-Godmothers are my niece's (her cousins!) Chelsea and Kyleigh! We are so proud of them all! Here are some pictures!!!

(I don't know what is going on with the blog, but none of the pictures are placed right. I have cut/pasted them and have uploaded through here. Sorry they are out of order!)

Philly

We left for Philadelphia a day later than anticipated. We loaded up the van and were on the road Wednesday morning. We drove there and got to our hotel just before dinner. We checked into our room and headed to Chili's for dinner. After dinner, we took a walk through downtown Philly! By then, it was 7:30 and everything was closed! We took a walk through Chinatown and down the streets with the stores. In the meantime, we were patiently waiting to hear if CHOP could squeeze Brayden in for at least one of his MRI's, which they did Thursday morning!

Thursday morning Todd and Brayden headed to CHOP for his MRI. While they were gone we walked down to the mall to see if we could find any Eagles stuff! We shopped in the "coolest mall ever" (according to the boys). It had a Toys R Us Express, FYE, Game Stop (AND a subway)...the boys favorite stores! lol! We found some clothes for Caroline, some new sneakers for the boys (who left theirs at home) and some Eagles gear!

We met up with Todd and Brayden for lunch and then took the kids on their (and ours too!) first subway ride! It cost us $15 to go 2 stops and back, but the kids loved it! We actually went down to see the Liberty Bell. Nathan was very interested in why it has a crack in it! We didn't have time to do much else and it was raining so we rode the subway back 2 stops again and ran to the hotel to get ready for the game!

We stopped for a Philly Cheesesteak at Geno's (RIP Geno!) and then headed to the Eagles game! It was a blast! The boys loved hearing the Chant every time they scored. It poured, but we were so high up we were covered! The kids did great and we stayed until the end of the game!

Friday we walked around Franklin Square. The kids played on the playground and we walked around. We ended up leaving around 2 because we wanted to stop for souvenirs. We didn't end up finding much and it ended up taking forever to get home! It was a short little trip, but it was fun!

Clinical Trial in Philadelphia

We were supposed to go to Philly for Brayden to participate in a clinical trial. There is a doctor that is using MRI's to monitor the progression of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. We contacted them months ago and set up this time for our family to travel to Philly. In return, we are to get up to $1000 in travel expenses, including mileage, hotel and food. We thought it would help the DMD community, wouldn't hurt Brayden and it would be a nice trip to Philly!

Today was the day we were to leave. Brayden had appointments set for 8am Wednesday and Thursday mornings. My mom and niece were all set to travel. Todd had half a day at work and we were going to leave so we could have time to settle tonight before Brayden's first appointment tomorrow morning! The boys were eXcItEd!

The minute Todd got home, we found out they canceled the appointments. The only thing we were told was that one of the MRI machines was down so they canceled all research appointments. Todd tried to plead with her that we were all set to go and she said there was no way we could keep the appointments. No appointments = No reimbursement. This wouldn't be a bad thing except for the fact that we have some very excited kids AND we have tickets to the Eagles Preseason game this Thursday.

Needless to say, we are very disappointed that they canceled the appointment. We are unsure at this time if we will even reschedule with them because they waited so long and wouldn't find a way to squeeze us in. If we were traveling by air, we most likely would have at least bought our ticket, let alone have already arrived in Philly and then we would have been out that money. On top of the fact that this is all happening, we didn't even receive the call from the woman who we have been talking with all along and she hasn't returned our phone calls either.

So tomorrow morning we head down to Philly, just for fun. Afterall, who wants to let Eagles tickets go to waste! :0)