Friends,
Our Open House was Amazing!
A huge thank you goes out to all who worked so hard to prepare for our open house in so many ways. It was awesome to see so many of you here with your family and friends.
I think everyone that was here had a great experience. It was educational, entertaining, inspirational and fun. I could sense the love and level of pride so many of us had to show our family and friends what we’re all about.
Phil did an amazing job speaking, educating, and presenting again this year. I’m so thankful he’s willing to share his many gifts with us. Thank you Phil!
Rick, Joel and Dan did an amazing job writing, putting music to and singing a song about living with MS. It was really well done. They made my eyes leak. This will need to be our theme song going forward so hopefully we can all learn it.
Terry’s brother-in-law Bill Futoransky video recorded the program and did an awesome job with it. Cal is preparing it to be put on our YouTube channel and share it with you. We’re not quite ready to share it but we should have it ready soon. If you subscribe to our YouTube channel, I think you’ll be notified when it’s posted. I hope to be able to share a link in next Tuesday’s e-mail. Thank you Terry for arranging Bill to record this. Thank you Bill for recording it…great job!
Laura sent me an e-mail asking me to thank everyone from her and Pam who put in countless hours preparing for our open house. Here’s a message from Laura and Pam:
“Hi Dan,
If you have room in your weekly message, would you please add a note from Pam & I?
We would like to thank everyone that stepped up to help on the gym clean-up days, Open House set-up, donation of goodies for our guests and cleaning up afterward. Very much a team effort and greatly appreciated.
Laura”
I concur. Thank you to all who helped in so many ways! I’m so grateful.
Rick Talbert will give an update on Medicare Friday
Here’s a note from Rick:
Medicare and Annual Enrollment Period Update Presentation
Join Rick Talbert for a Medicare and AEP update this Friday in the conference room at 11:00. He’ll be reviewingMedicare.gov and updates to Medicare Advantage Plans. Bring your questions.
COVID
I haven’t heard of any COVID positive tests this past week. I’m thankful for that! I think we’re finally getting through this surge of positive test results.
To all who have reported their positive testing to me…thank you for letting me know and for being socially responsible and staying away until your symptoms are all cleared up. If you do come down with it, it’s important we let people know that you have been in close contact with so they can watch for symptoms and help stop the spread.
We’ve all been dealing with COVID long enough and are very well educated on it by now. I’m not telling you what to do but I’d highly encourage you to wear a mask again if you haven’t had it recently. Let’s make good choices and be safe.
Please stay home if you have any symptoms or know you’ve been exposed to someone with the virus. Please don’t come until your symptoms go away. Let’s also give each other some space when talking to one another and continue wiping the machines down before and after you use them with disinfectant. Again…let’s be socially responsible and stay safe!
Recyclables and Garbage
Please put recyclables only in the blue recycling containers and garbage only in the garbage cans. The recycling containers are the blue containers with the recycling center symbol on it. Thank for your cooperation with this! Let’s be environmentally responsible.
Let’s get together!
We’ll be getting together again from 9:00am – noon on Wednesday and Friday mornings at the gym. I hope you’ll join us!
Wisconsin Metal Parts – Westmound Building
W228N791 Westmound Drive
Waukesha, WI 53186
Prayer Group We’ll be having our prayer group Wednesday @ 11:00am.
I just love the way we share, pray and laugh together while we witness prayers being answered weekly. It’s truly amazing!
Thanks goes to God and to everyone that joins us. Let’s get together to share, listen, talk, give thanks, and pray however God leads us.
MS Just Keep Caring – Our Caregivers support group will be the first and third Friday of each month from 10:00 – 10:30am. The next one will be this Friday, November 18th. If you’re a caregiver of someone you love with MS, please join us and share your experience of caring for your loved one. This has been very helpful for many. Thanks to all who participate!
Friday Morning Bike Rides
We were fortunate to get a November ride in last Friday. We had 18 people show up at 7:00 in the morning. It was awesome!
It’s amazing how we all get called together. As we all know John Haupt was instrumental in bringing hand cycle racing to the Tour of America’s Dairyland bike races (TOAD). John and Todd both race these events. Last Friday, a friend of Todd’s who is a person with a spinal cord injury, Jared Fenstermacher rode with us. Todd met Jared at TOAD this year right after his accident and invited him out to ride this past week.
Jared is 38 years old and was hit by a truck when he was 31 while riding across the United States on his bicycle. He was hit in Iowa and really wanted to finish his ride across the United States. Just this year, Jared rode RAGBRAI across Iowa on his handcyle. When that was done, he shipped his wheel chair back to Pennsylvania where he lives and continued riding his handcycle all the way back to Pennsylvania with just a small bag of essentials packed. It took him a month.
We stopped in a cul de sac and Jared shared his story with us.
He’s another inspirational person with a lot of passsion to live and do what he loves even if it’s different now than how he used to do it before the accident. He also hiked the Grand Canyon from rim to rim in a Grit wheelchair with the help of some friends. We were fortunate to be able to ride with him.
Jared had a big day while he was with us. He was able to get on a two wheel bike for the first time since his accident. He rode around the parking lot a couple times with Traci on a tandem. Pretty amazing! Thanks Traci and everyone that spotted them!
Jared also came to the gym and shared his story. He’s looking forward to coming back again.
It looks like the weather is going to be too cold to ride this Friday. We will not be riding. We might be done with our Friday morning rides until spring. I’m thankful we were able to get a ride in in November. Now let’s ride indoors all winter so we can pick up where we left off in the spring. The bikes are all set up in the gym to do that. It will help make the winter go fast. It’ll be spring before we know it.
Our Facebook page is private. That means you’ll need to join if you want access to all our fun and progress. We’re now up to 300 members…awesome! https://www.facebook.com/groups/2639832389489709
Our Facebook page is very active and fun. Lots of people are doing more and sharing some of their journey on Facebook. Feel free to join and share your experience and comments. Thank you to all who are sharing!
There were some awesome pictures and videos shared again this past week.
Thai Massage with Ricky Heldt Ricky should be back sometime this week. Chrissy and Rehan may also be available to do massages.
Reiki with Linda Linda will be here on Fridays doing Reiki. Many people say Linda’s Reiki work is “magical”. We’re thankful for Linda offering her gifts and talents to us. Feel free to let Linda know you’d like to do Reiki with her. She also has a sign up sheet.
Inspirational Humor with Adam Wollert
We’ll be having our inspirational humor zoom call with Adam again next Tuesday. Adam is a gift to all of us.
Please join us if you can.
Tuesdays @ 1:30PM
Here’s the link to join us…I hope you do!
Join Zoom Meeting with this link
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/9431389152?pwd=bWlYbFNaazVnM1M1cWxWMitlODdXUT09
Meeting ID: 943 138 9152
Passcode: 3qP2hu
Phone: 1-312-626-6799
Let’s reach out
I encourage you to share a smile and encouragement with someone. Perhaps you could call someone that you have not talked with for a while just to say hi and see how they are doing. We all could use a little extra love and encouragement.
MS is tough. Let us have faith, remain calm, be flexible, help each other and learn as much as we can about the challenges of each day as we make good choices.
Let’s keep moving and smiling 😊
In God We Trust…we are in good hands
Dan
P.S. The moon was interesting last night so I tried to take a couple pictures of it after a beautiful sunset.
I have not had much experience taking pictures of the moon but I thought they turned out ok.
The clouds made it kind of interesting.
Many blessings!