Connor earns his letter

For a kid who loved baseball and soccer, it is truly amazing to have that child turn into a letter earning, varsity Hudson High School swimmer.  Connor has put a lot of hard work into the last 2 years and the rewards have been amazing.  After 15-20 hours a week in the pool over 7-8 sessions, the level of fitness and definition of stroke stands as the evidence.  When an athlete measures progress in 1/100 of a second, the difference between a satisfying season and disappointment is razor thin.  In his opening event at JV champs Connor swam the 100 free.  His letter time to achieve was 54.18.  He finished with a disappointing 54.77.  Last year he missed a letter by 3/10s in the 50 free.  It felt like it was going to be a long summer.  Connor was also scheduled to swim second in the 400 free relay.  If he moved up to 1st swimmer position, the result would count towards a 100 yard letter time.  He asked the coach, Matt challenged him that he would only move him if he was going to "go for it".  Connor went off first and swam a 53.93 and made coaches, parents and teammates proud.

Kid update

 Annelise finished out her Freshman year of field hockey and had a nice season with some good contributions to the team and the fun of being part of a high school level team.  We went to the banquet and it sounds like this team has a bright future ahead of them.   Annelise and her coaches are pictured below as well as her defending on our new turf field stadium.  Her other strong interests are music where One Direction is a big hit for her and her sister.  

Isabelle also played field hockey this fall and it seems her year round love is equestrian.  She is riding for Park Place Equestrian Interscholastic Equestrian Association team as well as continuing with Chagrin Valley Farms.  In IEA they blind draw horses they have never been on and then ride against riders in their class to be judged.  She is quite good at it and great with the horses.  It makes the sport more affordable as you don't have to own a prize horse to win in competition.

Heidi and our friends Dave and Cordula Faiman at the Alumni meet held Friday of Thanksgiving weekend each year.  HS swim meets take about two hours and you know most of the kids so it is actually quite fun to be there.

Connor is a sophomore now in high school and swimming 18 hours a week and on varsity.  He is lifting and conditioning and working hard on school work to make it all happen.  Amazing what kind of fitness levels you can achieve with that much effort.  We have seen big time drops in his second year swimming at this level.  He does a 50 meter swim in about half the time it takes his dad.  He also has his drivers permit and has mastered stick shift driving on his Subaru Forester.

Too long since last post

I guess it has been a busy summer because we are now in fall. I have a new video of Isabelle to share from her first Interscholastic Equestrian Association team competition today.

Isabelle Horse Show

Paris Trip

We got the chance to go to Paris as a family a couple weeks ago.  We borrowed an apartment from a friend with a view of the Eiffel Tower.  It is amazing how you can just stair out the 7th floor window of this apartment and look at the tower.  Maybe it was time spent catching your breath from the walk up the 7 flights of stairs.  No matter, those stairs were in Paris!  We tried to do as much as possible in the 6 days we had their.  Louvre, Versailles, Pompidou Center, Cluny Museum, Arc de Triumph, Montmartre, Notre Dame, Latin quarter.   The kids were the right age to appreciate it all.  15, 14, and 12.  Annelise celebrated her birthday there.  Working on the photo and video for youtube, look for a link here when it is done.  I credit Heidi with making this happen.  We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary over there and it was very special.  She is an excellent planner.

Isabelle wins series Grand Champion at Chagrin Valley Farms 18" jump divisionClick here to see the 2:30 film

Frederik Back to Normal

I just saw what a gruesome picture I left as the last post and I think that Frederik deserves better. He has healed up great and is really back to his old self. The other eye works fine and you could say you can't tell the difference. Except for people who meet him. There is something about an eye that seems special. If he lost half his ear there would be much less reaction. Particularly because routinely 2/3s of the ears of Great Danes are chopped off anyway. Now if only he would bear weight on his left rear leg. Not much we can do about that. He was 5 last December 16th.

Frederik loses an eye

Our Great Dane had a progressive cataract in his left eye for the last year. In the last few months the eye had become irritated and his vision reduced to shadows at best. Then he started rubbing his eye and sleeping a lot. He seemed like he was not comfortable. So Wednesday we had his eye removed and he is feeling much better and just looks to be winking. Hard to see him getting older.

Swim Chronicles

Meet Connor. Freshman in highschool. For years he played baseball and soccer. But when highschool came along, it was clear that the local experience in those two sports would not be enough to get him on the HS team. So we made a deal. If he did swim team, he could buy himself an Xbox and all the first person shooter games he wanted. Little did he or I know thatit would result in him having a shot at earning a varsity letter as a freshman after swimming 16 hours a week since September 6th. Now on the eve of JV champs, Connor is in the shape ofhis life and shaved and ready to go fast in Canton tomorrow. So proud of his efforts and zero complaints. Thanks to Dan McGovern for pushing him in summer swim team to go for it and Matt Davis and staff for getting him through his first season.

Cancer Never Wins

I have a childhood friend, Fritz, whos sister Jane has been battling rectal cancer for years now. She writes an amazing carepages update which is often filled with very powerful, insightful thoughts on living with cancer. I want to post a quote from Jane I read today which I think is important and makes a strong point. Here it is:

"So I battle. Not with cancer - I have a problem with that word, "battle," when it comes to the cancer experience. It is an obvious and useful metaphor - battle, war, warrior, soldier - I get it. But then what happens when one passes? We say they "lost the battle" or "after a long battle with cancer" or words similar. Believe me, anyone who has had cancer doesn't need to be saddled with being named a "loser" in any sense of the word. What does that make cancer? The victor? Yuck. Cancer is never victorious."

I liked to say battle cancer. But I just might change that thinking based on Janes comments. I will still say survivor, because to me that denotes winning. Heidi gets her 1 year scan results back tomorrow and I am happy to say I can attend the appointment with her to support whatever we hear. It is one thing to be along with the cancer survivor to hear the results, it is completely different to be the cancer survivor getting the results. I will try to remember that.

Reserve Grand Champion for Isabelle

You have to love a sport where second place is called "Reserve Grand Champion". It seems only dog shows where you can win "Reserve Winners Bitch" for second place rivals this. So that is what Isabelle did a week ago on Kitty. As you can see from the photo she competed in 5 classes 3 Walk, Trot, Canter over crossrails and then two flat classes. She got two firsts, a second, third and fourth. The sum total of points made her second best on the day. This was done on her new saddle which she is so proud of and now has displayed in her room. So the slippery slope of the equestrian world is luring us in. We are now looking into her riding on an IEA team in the coming months. That is the equivalent of the school riding team.

Quiet Christmas

We are spending this entire Christmas break at home. For one thing, our kids prefer to be at their own home on Christmas morning in front of their own tree etc. I like making them wait on their own stairs the way my parents made me wait. The music gets put on, the Lionel train sounds coming from the family room. Most importantly, the coffee is brewing so mom and dad can make it through the morning. I chose the Nutcracker for this morning, as it is a great background track and does not take away but adds to the scene.

We start by opening the stockings. It has gotten less formal as the kids get older. Now I simply sit on the couch with them as they pull out the small gifts which are no longer wrapped. Lottery tickets, gum (for the white things in your head that bite), usually a dollar tucked in the toe (so they don't start the new year off broke). I guess the lottery tickets have replaced that at least for this year. For generations it was one stocking at a time with all this little banter from Dad describing the gifts. I saw pictures on Facebook this year of a friends adult grown sons sitting on their stairs and I loved it. Oh, I forgot to mention the one gift that gets opened on Christmas Eve, new pajamas which we all wear. Heidi does a great job of getting this all together.

Every one gets gifts in our house. The dogs, the cats, no one gets coal, except me. I got coal in my stocking this year. Chocolate coal. They all think that is pretty funny. It tastes good. So we sit here enjoying our green Christmas with temps in the high 30's and low 40's. Great for running but not for snow sports. Which is OK because Connor is swimming two times a day everyday but Christmas and New Years.

I think I like a quiet Christmas. No travel, no pet sitters, our own beds and quality family time.

Good News - Bad News - Christmas 2011

Coburn’s 2011
Good News Bad News : 16th Edition

Good News: Full return to “old school” photo card and letter this year.
Bad News: It took two photo shoots to get pics we all could agree were right for the card.
Good News: Michael and Connor again visited Fritz and his boys in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for four days of skiing in February.
Bad News: Last day in Jackson produced -41 without the wind chill, grounding our plane.
Good News: Isabelle continues to ride horses at Chagrin Valley Farms and has gotten pretty good and looks like a champ in her riding outfits.
Bad News: We are now hearing talk of leasing horses, buying a saddle…this is bad, expensive news. Is horse ownership in our future?
Good News: Annelise played both Field Hockey and Lacrosse in Middle school this year.
Bad News: She stopped swimming to accommodate these other sports.
Good News: Connor finally got his X-Box and all the first person shooter games you could want.
Bad News: He signed up for High School swim team as part of the negotiations.
Good News: The kids all swam for Hudson Park Estates neighborhood swim team again.
Bad News: Kids weren’t too excited about early morning practice on summer break.
Good News: Heidi walked in the Rock and Roll Half Marathon in San Diego in June with her friends Sonya and Karen.
Bad News: Heidi was not fully trained as she was still recovering from gallbladder surgery.
Good News: Our first summer vacation was to a dude ranch in Central California with Jackie and all of Heidi’s siblings and kids. Two rides a day, games and lots of fun.
Bad News: Square dancing. Something kinda weird about eating burgers surrounded by grazing cattle.
Good News: Our second summer vacation was a cruise to Mexico to celebrate Jack’s 80th birthday along with all of Heidi’s siblings and kids.
Bad News: Jack could not make it due to health issues for his wife Linda (she is fine now) but we all went anyway. Wore pre-planned t-shirts proclaiming “Celebrating Together”.
Good News: Our third summer vacation was with Michael’s side of the family, 17 of us in a house together for a week in Indiana leading up to a massive Murphy Family reunion with 70+. We are lucky to have such great families and opportunities to travel.
Bad News: Three family vacations in 2 months is a lot and our pets barely saw us this summer. Credit cards are still smoking. We missed the Pan-Mass Challenge.
Good News: We held another successful Tick-Tock Triathlon with 200 kids registered.
Bad News: Our kids can’t get out of this activity until they pass 18 years old.
Good News: Michael and Connor went with Steve Malerick and his boys to Ontario for a fly in fishing adventure on a 1948 DeHavilland Beaver plane.
Bad News: We went primitive with tents, no electric, no running water, latrines …
Good News: Heidi went to Atlanta for a girls’ weekend with her friends Dorothy and Sonya. They had lots of laughs and saw Duran Duran and Yacht Rock (google them).
Bad News: Where is the guy’s weekend? Heidi says, “what about Jackson Hole and fishing?”
Good News: Heidi, the girls and Kevin Malerick went to Harry Potter at Universal Studios in December. They had a fantastic time.
Bad News: Butter beer, 10 feet of churros and new wands add up to a lot.
Good News: We are spending Christmas at home this year as our own family around the tree.
Bad News: Connor will be swimming 2 X per day everyday but Christmas and New Years as it is hell week for the swim team.

Carcinoid Cancer google alert

One thing I found helpful is to create a google alert for Carcinoid Cancer and then whenever something new appears on the web, like this blog post, you will get an alert to it. Today I got a comment from someone on a post from a year ago. Her mom was just diagnosed and she found our story encouraging. That is great.

Like mother like daughter

Isabelle our 12 year old has been actively riding horses for 5 years now. Her progress is really coming along. She is now up to an 18" - 2' class and really looks confident and happy on the horse. Her mother, Heidi, as well as her grand mother and great grandmother on my side were all "horse women". There is some magic that takes place between a rider and horse and it is often girls of this age who just like to hang out at the barn and take care of the horses. Heidi puts a lot of time into making this happen and someday, Isabelle will really appreciate it.

Swimming gets serious

Connor is a freshman at Hudson High School and has gone full force into swimming. As a kid who only swam for 6 weeks each summer on our neighborhood team (forced) and never goes to the pool for pleasure (he hates chlorine), he is doing great. I have already heard him say that he will likely swim all 4 years. This requires swimming 6-8 practices a week with each practice lasting 2-3 hours. He is really committed when you look at the tradition he just endured where all the boys bleach their hair and then shave it in February. Great job Connor.

As if Carcinoid Cancer were not enough, it's Movember!

I have a friend who just got diagnosed with Prostate cancer. I was growing my moustache for fun and then it all changed. What was a convenient excuse to keep my corporate buddy's from razzing me too much became a real cause. Help me raise a few bucks for a cause to cure Prostate Cancer. I still will raise $10,000 for Carcinoid cancer during next years Pan Mass Challenge, but this one needs my and your help too.

Go to this link to donate: Even $1 helps the cause.

http://mobro.co/MichaelCoburn

The Benefits of Cancer Support Groups

A reader of the blog asked if I could post an article he wrote on the topic listed, here you go:

The Benefits of Cancer Support Groups

Cancer is one of the most common health problems that people face today. In fact, studies have shown that 30 percent of women and half of men will get cancer in their lifetime. There are groups that can help support you when dealing with this awful disease. Whether you receive a diagnosis of a common cancer like breast cancer or a very rare diagnosis like mesothelioma, there are groups that can help you gain the knowledge to help fight back.

People who receive a diagnosis of cancer will have their lives changed forever. Having cancer means that one will have to endure endless doctor visits, painful treatments and a reduced quality of life. People who have cancer often feel hurt and angry. They wonder why they had to be afflicted with such a devastating condition. It is not healthy for people to keep their feelings bottled up. Talking to other people and writing those feelings in a journal are two healthy outlets for expressing one's emotions.

A person may turn to his or her loved ones for support, but friends and family are not always helpful. It is very easy for someone who does not have cancer to say something like " I understand how you feel completely." However, the only people who truly understand the heartbreaking effects of cancer are those who have lived through it themselves.

Those who do have cancer do not know what it is like to undergo painful treatments. They do not know what it is like to lose all of one's hair. People without cancer also do not know what it is like to go to bed at night and wonder whether they are going to wake up in the morning.

It helps to have a group of people who are going through the same ordeal. The key to overcoming the painful and negative effects of cancer is to have support. The best support that a cancer patient can get comes from other cancer patients. Support groups also allow patients to discuss their feelings with other patients.

It is important to note that cancer can be overcome. There are millions of people who have survived cancer. Those who are undergoing treatments would also benefit from talking to people who have survived cancer. Sometimes, it is best for people to hear encouraging words from those who have been down the same road and made it out on the other side.

Words cannot describe the havoc that cancer wreaks on one's body. However, having a support group of cancer patients and survivors can help a person overcome the devastating effects of that ordeal.

By: David Haas

David Haas Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance Guest Blogger - http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog/ Personal Blog - http://haasblaag.blogspot.com/

Family Vacation #3 Bass Lake Indiana

CLICK ON ANY PHOTO TO ENLARGE

Mom and her 4 kids clockwise from left: Karen, Kevin, Cassie, Michael, MomAll the grandkids who were there.

Michael, Karen, Heidi and Mark (Karen's husband) after the 5 K. Mark took 5th overall.

Mom's sibs: back row Mike Murphy, Cathy Shea, Rick Murphy

front row: Trish Borla, Ronnie Rubino, Mary Anne Coburn

The Murphy family reunion took place in late July with nearly 80 of my mom's family on hand including her 5 siblings and most of the cousins and 2nd cousins. Bob and Trish Borla hosted at their lake house in Knox, IN. My mom rented a nice house in Culver about 9 miles away and we 17 spent the preceding week there in Culver and joined the events on the big weekend. Heidi and I brought bikes for the whole family and managed an 11 mile loop around Culver lake in the near dark but we made it. Then in the Bass Lake Days festival events, Heidi got 3rd in the 5K walking division and took 2nd overall female in the 8 mile bike loop of the lake winning a nice trophy. I managed 3rd in the bike race losing to a 68 and 64 year old in the sprint. The kids had a great time tubing and jet skiing while I used all of the 3 sailboats my Uncle has on hand there. We even got some fishing in with my son Connor and nephew Jason. Our summer of heavy vacations is done.

Buffett comes to Cleveland

It had been 8 years since Jimmy Buffett had been to Cleveland and more like 21 years since Heidi and I had seen a show. So last Tuesday we had an awesome time on the lawn at Blossom Music Center 8 miles from our house seeing him put on a rocking show. Check out his encore here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAf95h0rliU