Hello to everyone,

First of all we would like to start off by saying thank you to everyone, and by everyone, we mean everyone. Many of you were at our house during this time and helping out in any way possible, many of you are sponsors, many of you have donated to RBD, and many of you were there to support in any way that you could. This organization is a wonderful thing to have in any community and we have it right here in ours.

This whole experience has been life changing, not to mention the way the renovation will change our family throughout our lifetime. So far we have been in the new house for a couple of weeks and the changes that we have experienced are tremendous. We can see all the love and care that went into this amazing project. The access that that was given to Dia with this gift has lifted her spirits and you can see it just by looking at her. She has been able to do things that she has not really been able to do for a year.

The “Grand Reveal” was one of the most incredible days, bar none. The amount of people that showed up to support us brought tears to our eyes long before getting out of the limo. The shock of seeing our house after 6 weeks and the transformation that took place still blows our minds. The amount of work in such a short period of time, and going above and beyond, is the pure example of a great community.

Today we finished filming the second part of the Sasktel Max video and that should be released in a couple of weeks. We are extremely excited to see that and want to be able to share it to the people that supported this from all over. Plus it will be something we can watch forever and share with our daughter when she is older.

We would like to make a separate moment to especially thank Adam; he is such a wonderful guy. He has taken a vision and created it into a reality not just once but twice, and expanded from the previous. We need to have more people like him that care enough about the wellbeing of others; the people involved in these projects showed that our city has exactly that. The RBD Team has done so much as well, especially with all the little things beyond the renovation.

As for the house itself, we love it!!! We could have never accomplished this on our own, nor came anywhere close. Ashton loves the Garage it has become the hangout spot, Dia loves the spaces she can get to and spends a lot of time on the deck, and Kiersten loves her room – she knows it is hers and she will only go to sleep in there.

Once again we would like to say thank you to everyone that has done so much to help us out during such a hard time. This means the world to us and we appreciate everything. We also plan to become a part of RBD to help other families in the future. So we encourage all of you that helped; please do not stop, this has the potential to go very far and could help many more families every year.

Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts,

 The STRONG Family

September 14, 2011

Hello everyone,

Things have been very busy, as they usually are with us. Ashton has started back at school and given a fair amount of homework, even during the strike he was trying to get ahead. Dia has had a few incidents over the past few weeks, but things seem to be under control. She is looking better and the joy of everything is keeping her spirits up.

We are very excited about the Grand Reveal tomorrow at our home.  We know that everyone has worked very hard and we are so grateful. It has been very hard not knowing what is going on, but we have made it. We really actually feel that it has been harder for most of you; we could see you itching and you just want to tell us what you have been doing, lol.

There is some filming going on this evening for Rebuilding Dreams as this is being typed up. The end footage of this whole experience will be overwhelming and breath taking and I am sure it will be wonderful for all of us to watch.

We don’t know how much sleep we will get tonight but we know we definitely need it.  Tomorrow will be and very emotional day; not just for us, but many of you as well.

We don’t want to say too much in our last blog, as we were asked to make a speech at the reveal tomorrow. So, with that being said we would like you all to know: We thank each and every one of you from the bottom of our hearts. This experience has been and will continue to be life changing. Thank you to Adam and Jana, we hope that this will be the start of a good friendship, and we look forward to being involved in the organization in any way that we can help.

Thank you all and see you tomorrow,

The STRONG Family

August 30, 2011

Hey what’s up forum! So it has been a little while since our last blog, sorry! We have been very busy. Ashton just finished up his last week of his work term at Graham Construction and was sad to leave.  He has established many new friendships with people there and will miss seeing everyone there daily. He will be returning to Graham for his second work term in January and will be looking forward to working with everyone again. However he has now returned to school to continue his studies at the Moose Jaw Siast Palliser Campus. He is glad to be back at school and looks forward to getting another semester under his belt.

On Wednesday, last week, Dia was having trouble, again. She was taken to the ER at the General; she had a minor relapse and a stress headache. It is amazing how the body can feel like its slipping away, its really quite scary and the term used by the medical professionals is “minor relapse”, she can tell you that from her shoes there was nothing minor about it. We were told that within a few days to a week things would settle down again. The on call neurologist who came to see us was very calm, and took time to discuss things with us to determine the best treatment. I am reluctant that steroid pulse treatment was not required this time.

We have been hearing great things about people who have been out to our home working and volunteering. Really amazing to hear these stories, we can’t wait to get the full stories once we are back home and no longer secluded from what is happening. We are getting a little anxious and excited to see the house; we cannot wait to get home and be in our own area again. It will be great to see our neighbors again and our friends as a lot of them have been spending time volunteering. Only 16 days left…yeay!

Adam and Jana came over this past Sunday, along with Ashton’s friend, Colin, from school. They spent a few hours in the afternoon painting the last of the signs for around the house. Thank you guys for your help; Ashton would still be painting, lol.

We hope to see as many people as possible at the reveal on September 15^th; this will be a great day for everyone. Not only will we be first introduced to our new place but this will also be a great opportunity for us to meet all the wonderful people that have been involved and supported. We want to meet all of you and thank you personally, this has been life changing for us and we have not even seen our home. Our spirits are brighter and we are excited for what the future holds for us.

Thank you all and see you soon,

The STRONG Family

Hello everyone, we so far have a week under our belt, lol. Things have been great, although we are really curious as to what is going on at our house. As curious as we are, we are more excited for the surprise. Not being able to read the newspaper is hard though; so, if anyone wants to cut out any articles of us and drop it off, that would be great. lol jk

Over the weekend our friends Michael and Tara came and spent the night. They are moving back to Saskatchewan for Mike’s continued service in the Military. This was a great visit, because we do not get to see them as often as we would like. This Friday we will be going to see their new place in Kenaston and coming back Saturday evening.

Michael’s mother (Susan), and his uncle Ronnie came by last night and had us pick out a couple of Scotty Ford original prints. Ronnie is going to be getting these framed and put into our house for the Grand Reveal on September 15. We really love art and the pencil drawings they brought over are absolutely amazing.

Dia’s cousin Kristina has been coming to the suite to help Dia with some meals while Ashton is at work. Her Grandma Irene has been coming by to also check on things and to visit. Dia’s mother works downtown and has been able to come by during her lunch breaks. Plus today she had a really nice visit from her friend Melissa. All of these visitors have been really good for her; she enjoys having company and is a really social person.

We’ve heard some good things about what is going on over there, without revealing any information. Thank you to all the volunteers that have been putting in time there; we know that RBD could always use more help. We even heard some of the other families have been helping out, thank you. We are very happy that people are able to make time in their busy schedules to help out, especially the ones that are going through hardships as well.

We are also looking forward for this “Movie in the Park”. We hope to see everyone there; it will be really exciting. It will give us a good chance to meet some of the people involved and to see many of the people that have been supporting us.

Plus, a good movie is an added bonus. We don’t know too much about it and we are sure there is information on the RBD website and Facebook. We do know that we will be there with bells on…hahahaha.

Have a good week to all of you, we will be blogging every couple of days to give you more updates.

Peace, Love, and Chicken Grease,

The STRONG Family

Hello everyone! Over the past couple of days things have been good; however, it was a bit of a struggle getting our daughter to bed. She must have thought we were putting her to bed in a strange place and going to leave her there, lol. On Friday Ashton woke her up to take her to daycare and she looked at him and said, “It’s Saturday!” First off, we have no idea where she got that from and second how does she know she does not go to daycare on Saturdays? Way too smart!

One really good thing about being here is that Dia can access everywhere. Helping with our daughter is so much easier. We are working on potty training and so far over the weekend she has learned to tell us before she has to go instead of after the fact. It has been great; we are excited for the day there will be no more diapers, lol.

Since we have been here in the suite we have had more people visit then we have since Dia got sick. On Wednesday night our friends Jordan and Bobbie came over and we had a barbeque out on the common area deck. On Thursday our friend Shawn came over and we visited for a while. Friday night Crystal and Jay came over. Ashton went with Jay to their house to hook up a treadmill while Dia and Crystal stayed back at the suite with the kids.

Dia has had some visitors during the day as well. Her grandma, mother, auntie and her cousin have all been by during the day to help her get out of the suite for a while. Even though the building is wheelchair accessible Dia has trouble wheeling it her self. She has an electric scooter that her brother Justin had brought here to help her get around easier; but Dia has some difficulties in areas trying to maneuver it, get onto the elevator quick enough or through doors before they close. Ashton was trying to get her to maneuver it on her own and she almost drove into the other side of the elevator trying to beat the doors from closing. Bahahahaha!

Ashton made it back to work on Thursday. All of the commotion has made him very tired but despite all of that he had still been getting up at 5am to workout. There is a full gym in the basement, and he is really enjoying that. Working out had become a huge part of his daily routine and it is great that he can maintain it.

We are also looking for some people to help us paint some signs. We were hoping to get started over the weekend and had some trouble finding a place to work. We will be working on it during the evenings this week and it would only take and hour or two for a couple of nights, if we have sufficient help. We cannot access our Facebook to post it on there.

We would like to once again give a big SHOUT OUT to the RBD team. We have not heard anything that is going on at our place but have heard that things are going really well. Please to all of you reading this consider volunteering because we also heard Adam hurt his thumb working really hard.

Hello to all, this is the Strong family here. First of all we would like to apologize for the delay of our blog; everything has been moving so fast and very busy. If we did not have enough to do before our schedule is definitely full now. Lol. Thank you so much for all of your support over the past month. It means a lot to our family to see so many people come together and be a part of this amazing organization.

So, the announcement came to us at about 2:30 p.m. on Monday August 1^st, and to be quite honest Ashton was starting to think we were not picked. He felt that there was no way they would publicly announce the family before informing the family first. “What would stop someone from texting or calling the family” he said. When Adam and the parade of people showed up to our house we were in complete shock; so much that Ashton was speechless, and that does not happen often. Dia just had a good feeling about the whole thing and cried when she seen all of the people. At the announcement there were interviews almost immediately and we got to meet a few of the sponsors.

During Monday evening we sat down and went over some of the details. We met with Adam, Jana (with their son whom we hope becomes our daughter’s good friend) and Amber. During this meeting we were given an opportunity to make a “Wish List”. Basically this is things that we feel would make our house suited to our needs. We were told that these are not guaranteed, which we totally understand, but they wanted to know so they don’t renovate a house that will not work for us. Another thing is that we have been banned from viewing any type of media (ie. Newspaper, Local News, Harvard Radio, and Facebook). Ashton likes to bug Adam about this, and Adam knows he is joking; but it will be good for us, especially Facebook.

On Tuesday morning we had many family members and friends come and help us pack. The movers came in the afternoon and our house was cleared out by about 8:30 p.m. Some of our family also went to the suite we will be staying in and even unpacked our things so it was ready when we got there. Things moved very quickly and even without us being there for some of it, we had interviews during this time as well.

The suite at Obasa is an extremely nice 2 bedroom condo unit and is completely accessible for Dia. There is a mezzanine on the 4^th floor (a common area for the tenants) with a deck that has barbeques and a hot tub. We were out there meeting some of the tenants, whom are really nice people. We are sure we will fit in nicely and get along great.

We are very grateful to be chosen as the 2011 ReBuilding Dreams family. This will mean the world to us, enabling Dia to get back some of her independence and allow her to be a larger part of raising our daughter. One of the biggest things will be her wheelchair making it farther than the front door, even though Dia can walk a short distance, the wheelchair access will allow her to do things around the house safely. Our hope is for her to move freely throughout the house and be able to enjoy life again.

Adam, Jana, Amber and the RBD team have been so great. You can tell they all have BIG hearts and we have all confidence in the rebuilding of our home. We have seen the videos and pictures of 2009 and know they went way and above code to produce an amazing home. We have no idea as to what is happening to our home and have no intentions of finding out until September 15, for the “Grand Reveal”, which we hope to see everyone there. So if there are some of you that will be talking to us over the next 6 weeks please keep anything you know to yourself as we DO want the big surprise.