When we first learned about what Carter was faced with, as you can imagine there was a lot of time spent wondering why? What can I do? I spent a lot of time saying to myself it there was only a way I could fix him…I would do anything! One day I needed to go on a long walk to have some time to myself, I threw on my walkman….er…ipod and walked and walked and walked,,, as I…uh…walked a song by Coldplay was playing in my ears and i started to listen to the words and realized that this song was really hitting home…it made me cry and cry which helps sometime when you are stressed. This song to me as become a little bit of a soundtrack to my “Little Warrior” (IN MY OWN MIND). So I wanted to bring it to you all. WARNING: This video may really tug at your heartstrings a bit, but it’s meant to be inspirational… because if you listen to the song it’s about doing what you can to try and “Fix You” which is what I am trying to do for Carter Trace. I love you guys….enjoy!
Since we last spoke, there has been quite a lot of things going on in and around our life. Most of you know and if you don’t know Deni and I finally got a chance to go on a vacation to unwind, relax, laugh, embrace and enjoy. We did all this where we went on our short 3-day honeymoon–San Francisco. We were excited to get away, but it was tremendously tough on both of us to leave our “little Warrior” at home. Carter wasn’t too quick to let us go either… just days before we were scheduled to leave at one of his weekly checkups he was running a 101 degree temp, but the wonderful staff at Children’s were quick to treat it and they practically told us that we were getting on that plane no matter what even if they had to watch them their selfs. We knew it would be okay to leave Carter in Grandma’s caring hands. Mom did so much to help accommodate our trip she even took off a couple of days from work, and switched shits to the night shift so her schedule balanced out better. So we were all ready to go, but first we went to go see Jack Johnson play at Red Rocks. (See this is where I go into a story within a story by using a little flashback)
It was probably around 2 or 3 weeks after Carter’s initial BMT, where one day I just got relieved by Deni at the hosptial to go and get some lunch at the Spicy Pickle…no… Chipolte and just when I am coming up on that “never turn back zone” that we all know about at a Chipolte, but just in case you don’t know it’s where you walk up to the litlte mexican lady behind the counter and she throws the tortilla into the steamer and says, “do you want black or pinto beans?” Once this happens, there is no stepping back or flintching you have to move forward and order almost like a mexican burrito nazi. So I’m ordering my two naked steak ritos and I’m walking down the line when….”Ring”…. Oh yea, my phone goes off, I’m kinda thinking I should ignore it or they might put the wrong salsa on the wrong brito…”Ring”…. “Cheese?”…. “YES”…. “Sour”…”Ring” “cream?”…”YES”… I looked at the caller ID and it actually says “unknown” so, 99.9% of the time I put it back in my pocket and wait for the random voice mail… but for some reason, maybe it was the lack of sleep, the stress of the brito line up, or just the stress of the whole situation, I answered the phone. “Hello”…. “Hi, Trent?” “Yea, who is this?” “It’s Jack Johnson” Yea right I think to myself “Yea I wanted to call you and tell you that we had been keeping up on the blog and wanted to extend my prayers and good thoughts to you, because see I’ve got a son around the same age as you.” Now if you know me…tears start running down my face as I’m standing right there in brito line up and I haven’t even told them what kind of salsa I wanted. It was probably one of the coolest and nicest things anyone has ever done in my book… just a phone call can do so much for people that need a little support. Anyway the conversation went on for almost 5 - 10 minutes (yes I made it through the rito line up with little damage forgot to get my Guac on mine) and we shared some father stories and he invited us to his show when he comes to Denver this summer. It was preety cool, he was a tremendously nice person and very sincere and it made us all feel a little better that day, although we would rather never have had to have that conversation it was nice.
So anyway… on Aug. 17. We went to his show thanks to our good friend Janisa and her sister, Katie, who actually was the link to Jack. See Kate lives in Hawaii and works for Jack Johnson’s Foundation The Kokua Hawaii Foundation. The cool part was that we got to go back stage after the show and meet Jack and his band and lovely wife. Very cool. Here is some pictures from the show.
It was such a fun night hanging out with Janisa, Murphy and Deni. I had a blast and the concert was AWESOME!
So…. where was I… oh yea we were just getting ready to leave on vacation our friends and family helped with. Carter was not wanting us to go, but we had to get some R&R so off to San Fran we went. Carter realized real quick how lucky he was to spend a whole 6 days with Grandma was going to be a real treat. San Fran was awesome and we did it a such a great time to… Denver was being spotlighted by world for the DNC and we couldn’t think of a better time to be out of town than then. We were really excited about seeing our good friends Jeff and Rachel Hunter and their two kids, Lilly and newly born James. Their wonderful family offered up their house while they were out of town so we were treated to a wonderful place in the Bernal Heights area of San Fran, with a view of the city from their hot tub on the roof. COOL. We can’t thank Meg and Gavin enough for this wonderful place to stay. While in town we ate amazing food, listened to some amazing music at the Outside Lands Music Fest and relaxed as much as we could including a two night stay at Bodega Bay, Ca just 50 mins north of San Fran on the coast. It was well deserved so needed. and we couldn’t have had any more fun and it really helped energize us when we got home…. here is a little video that I call “San Fran Trip in :30 Sec: So it’s back to the habit we were in, but we are ready to go refreshed and energized… Carter was so good for Grandma and was so excited to see us come home with his patened smiles. That smile was with me the whole trip and it was so fun to see it when we go home.