Welcome one and all!

We are finally sending out the link so everyone is visiting our blog for the first time. 

The main blog will be about Tim’s health journey through ALS. But we intend to have a link/tab for Grove’s achievements and updates. We hope to set up a donating area- that sounds selfish, but many people have been already asking how to financially help and asking if they can. And possibly more picture updates as well. 

Please bear with us. It is hard getting anything done with our one-year-old, but at the same time we’d rather be with him anyway. 😛 Robyn will be the one mainly posting to this blog and she does not always have computer access easily available. 

Thank you for coming to our blog and taking the time to read our story, pray for us and encourage us. We are so appreciative of you all. 

When it began

I don’t even know how to attempt to summarize what we have been experiencing as a family. But, I will try. This may be long. 
We started noticing some things going wrong in the fall of 2013. Tim was starting his third semester at LHU. He found a group of students to go running with about three times a week. This was normal for Tim, as he was very active. In high school, he was on the cross-country, basketball, volleyball, and soccer teams. Not to mention, he was in the active-duty Marine Corps for five years. The end of his active-duty requirement was reached in August 2012. In the Marine Corps, he took part in activities like: going on hikes or “humps” for miles carrying heavy packs, running for miles, swimming, running with a log (the size of a shortened telephone pole) on his shoulders (with other Marines helping–but still a difficult thing to do), MCMAP (Marine Corps Martial Arts Program) training, PT (physical training) every day, combat fitness test (CFT) and physical fitness test (PFT). Tim also rode his bike regularly until the end of the 2013 fall semester. He received his bike from his awesome wife for his birthday, soon after we moved to Lock Haven. He started coming home and saying several times a week “I fell off my bike today” and “When I tried to run, it felt like I was running through a swamp”. I just sympathized at the time, being a college student and former Marine that had to be humiliating. We both just figured it was from lack of exercise. I did find it odd, but I didn’t think about it much more.  Then, around Christmas time, we started noticing that when he would get down on the floor to play with our 9-month-old son, he had a really hard time getting back up. It would take him about five times as long to get up than a normal person. However, when we thought back to when this could have started, we recalled some things being “weird” towards the end of his time in the Marine Corps. He wasn’t able to keep up physically, and they were worried about his weight gain. They said that he had sub-clinical hypothyroidism. We could date the slow progression back to late 2009, toward the end of his Mediterranean, which is when we started “dating”. I guess dating me broke him down. 😛

Tim was at a VA check up mid-January when we mentioned his weakness to Kathryn Wilt, his PCP. She performed a strength test with him, where he had to resist her and push against her, arms and legs. Kathryn is a petite and small-framed woman. He couldn’t hold her off as much as expected. It shocked me. She was concerned about it and decided it was worth looking into. So she got us in touch with the Pittsburgh VA and Dr. Clemens.

Back on track. New railroad.

It has been quite a while since I wrote or even stopped by this blog. But some life events have called me back into the blogging world. Let’s see if I can get past one post.

Since my last post, we have had the joy of becoming parents to one of the cutest kids you will ever know. Grove Oliver.

We have moved to Lock Haven, PA and have been settled here for almost two years (August 2014)! This is not really what we were picturing or heck, even in our wildest dreams IMAGINING that this would be our story. Yet, here we are. As we planned, Tim is studying Applied Physics: Nanotechnology at Lock Haven University. We are settled and have found many good friendships in a new location. I, Robyn have yet to secure a steady job, but we are hopeful. What we didn’t expect, Grove came into our lives and gave us a never ending joy. Tim, most unfortunately, has been diagnosed with a degenerative neurological disease: Lou Gehrigs/ALS.

Tim’s diagnosis is the main reason I returned to the attempt to blog our lives. We have been so blessed to see an outpouring of love, prayers, support and even financial boosts from many friends and family to help us cope and deal with this scary news. I will probably back track a bit, to when we first noticed things going wrong and what has happened up to this point. But we hope to keep you well in tune with our triumphs, struggles, prayer requests, and health updates (physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually).

oh, and we live near a railroad now. Just for the reference.

Our son turned one a month ago- March 21. Soon after the celebrating died down, we had three separate parties,

Good definition of Marriage

Marriage is two people choosing to not give up on each other.

-Sometimes your spouse needs you to selflessly be there for them, despite what you are going through. Even if just for a moment.