Wow! What an eventful couple of weeks! It’s going to take me forever to capture it all in writing. I think I’ll start by telling you about our day at the Mountain Valley Garden Tour.
I already mentioned how excited I was after the reception we attended for garden owners and volunteers. I am still in awe at the kindness of these people whom we had never before met! They opened their hearts and their homes to us and I will be forever grateful.
The tour ran Friday and Saturday. Since Brian was away on a pioneer trek (I’ll tell you about that in another post), I decided I could probably only handle attending one day with Patrick.
So that I wouldn’t be doing it alone, my mom and my good friend Tifanie came along. We left here bright and early and arrived at the first garden moments before it was scheduled to open. We were thrilled to find that it belonged to the one garden owner that we hadn’t been able to meet at the reception.
The tour organizers gave Patrick a gift basket of toys and music and other things to entertain him on that day’s drive. In that basket was a little garden shovel and rake. And the rake was his favorite of all the gifts. After greeting our hosts, he set to work in the garden right away. However, instead of raking the dirt, he busily combed the flowers with his rake. And he did it everywhere we went.
It was fun to meet and visit with the people who were there. They all loved meeting Patrick and he charmed them as only he knows how.
You could always spot one of the visitors because they were decked out in their adorable gardening clothes.
At 11:00 they had planned a meet and greet at one of the gardens. Loretta and Shan, the owners of that garden, were very kind and enthusiastic to have us there. They let Patrick feed their fish. (They have a trout pond almost as big as my entire front yard! Patrick loved feeding them. At least, until one jumped and touched his foot. Then he wouldn’t sit down by them anymore.) They let him pet their dogs. Shan even let Patrick rake his hair. And before sending us on our way, Shan who is an entertainer by profession, made Patrick the most amazing spiderman balloon.
By the time we left there, Patrick was pretty exhausted. We were going to head home, even though we’d only been to a few gardens. However, we noticed that one garden’s description mentioned it had antique cars and, well, that sounded like Patrick’s dream garden.
So, we grabbed some lunch and started the 30 minute drive from Park City to Heber to see the cars.
Patrick fell asleep immediately.
And when we got to Heber, he was still asleep.
So, Tifanie and I decided that, since we’d come all that way, we’d at least go in and see the garden and thank the owners and volunteers. The kind man who owned the garden and the amazing garage full of antique cars offered to let me bring Patrick back another time and we were on our way back out.
And that’s when Patrick woke up.
So, since we had come all that way, we got him out and let him look. He was in heaven! The garage had 6 antique cars in it and Patrick just ran from car to car touching the wheels and making faces in the bumpers and trying the door handles. I’m sure that they had to polish all of the cars again after we left. But they were so kind to let him explore!
It was a perfect day and all of the gardens we saw were so beautiful!
We made one last stop to thank the volunteers running the silent auction at the grocery store in town. And then we drove back home.
We still haven’t heard final results from the fundraiser, but we know that there were 83 attendees on just Friday.
This event came along at just the right time. It’s been a long time since our little fundraising account has seen any activity and COTA was beginning to ask me if we were done with fundraising. While I know that many of us are tired and feel we’ve done the biggest and best we can, our thermometershows we still have $50,000 to go. And in a month where we had unplanned home repairs and travel for checkups in Seattle and hospital stay expenses and tax woes, it was nice to see that people really do still care and want to help. It left me wondering if maybe it’s time for another restaurant day or facebook or e-mail challenge again. What do you think?
I can’t express enough thanks to the people who put this garden tour together. A few months ago, they had never even heard of our little family. And yet, they just put their arms around us. If any of you involved are reading this, thank you for your love and support. Thank you for helping us in our journey. And thank you for a much needed dose of hope.
What the tour organizers didn’t know was that they happened to schedule this event on Patrick’s second Miracle Day. July 15 is the 2 year anniversary of the day that Patrick’s heart stopped and then was started again. I couldn’t have planned a better celebration.
Patrick Hoopes 