Sanford "Imagine"

What a weekend we've had. Friday after work we headed up to Sioux Falls for the "Sanford Imagine" festival- Basically a HUGE company picnic for all of the Sanford Health and Affiliates employees and their families. Friday night we went to dinner at the Texas Roadhouse (VERY fun, by the way! I really encourage you to try it if it's in your area at all!) where I ran into one of the other diabetes educators from the Sanford base in Sioux Falls. "Did you hear the news today?" She asked me. Then she told me "We are curing type 1!" Read about that here:
http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080607/NEWS/806070324/1001
If you watch the clip to the right of the article, you can see a little clip about type 1 as well as an interview with Tina, Dean and Bennett (Ben) who are friends of mine from OC.

Anyway, that was some exciting news. It was all over the papers the next morning. I couldn't help but feel like God DOES have a plan for us being so far away from Washington, as I still get so homesick and often think about it. I am going to do everything in my power to somehow be involved in this. I don't know when or how right now, but mark my words I would work for free if it meant I could be a part of finding a cure for type 1 diabetes! (:

Anyway, the next day we went out for breakfast and did some shopping (found the boys shirts & khakis and Brian black pants for Jodi's wedding on the 28th). Also found some adorable brown sequinned flip-flops for me (well, not for the wedding but what did you expect with me in a mall? lol!). Then it was back to the hotel and onto the shuttle to the festival. When we got there I felt so proud to be a part of Sanford. It was definitely a day to take pride in your company! (:
I was going to take a pic of the boys with the Imagine sign in the background- and a nice older man offered to take it so I could be in the pic too- unfortunately the Imagine sign was cut out. Oh well. Oh and I didn't get my hair butched-lol- I just had a headband in and a bun too as it was so hot and needed to keep it off of my shoulders and back. (: You can see that it is darker again- and it will stay that way- No more bleaching for me.




A sculpture of Denny Sanford and his Grandchildren titled "For the Love of Children"

There were carnival games for all- and of course like everything else- they were free and unlimited so the boys have a ton of prizes!

There were at least 10 blow-up games (obstacles courses, bouncy castles, boats, etc) which I couldn't get Jax away from-lol


Also a HUGE carnival and an acrobat type of circus:


We ended up walking over to Buffalo Wild Wings about 3 to get out of the heat and get a meal without waiting for an hour in line (REALLY long food lines but at least they had free water and pop on every corner!) On the way back we found some cow planters at Canary stadium.

Tristan took this pic (I cropped it a bit) while I was in the outhouse-lol

Sitting on the event deck at the stadium waiting for Aly & AJ, Sheryl Crow, and Rascal Flatts...


More waiting and cooling off with water...


The concerts were AMAZING!! Rascal Flatts was definitely the best as they are one of our favorite groups. They waited until dark and came out in an explosion of fireworks- it was SO COOL! Wish I had the camera ready for that! There were 35,000 people there so the pics are far away and not the best- but the stage was amazing! It was HUGE! And they had these enormous screens with really cool images projected on them- it was the coolest thing! They are truly awesome entertainers!





Tristan had to get a sweatshirt as it got COLD and Brian didn't think we needed sweatshirts- I had mine on Jax and we ended up buying one for Tristan. He was pretty thrilled with that!














Rascal Flatts finished with "Life is a Highway", their remake of the original by Tommy Cochran (which was actually my class song!, which is also the song from Cars. Finally, a spectacular Fireworks show lit the way as we walked to the shuttle. It was amazing!!!