The Gunnell Family: Heart Walk

A "heart" friend of mine introduced me to an online support group called Intermountain Healing Hearts. This is a group of heart parents and heart patients with Primary Childrens. Through this group we have been able to find families with babies that have a similar diagnosis to Logan. We are also able to hear other's experiences with the doctors and surgeons at PCMC. It always comforting to not feel alone in this heart journey.

This group put together a heart walk to raise awareness for CHD. It was heart warming to see all the families come together to support their loved ones with CHD.

Our kids were troopers. We brought the wagon to pull them in, but when the walk started they both decided they wanted to walk the whole way (1 mile).

We were a little on the slow side for Ashlyn so she would run ahead and roll down a hill, or strike a pose waiting for me to get there with the camera.

Little Logan had no idea this party was even for him!

I think I might send this picture out for Valentine's Day! I love that you can read the sucker he is eating!

This is a group picture with all those with a CHD. There were adults, kids and babies. Seeing the adults always gives me hope for Logan. There is an LDS composer Paul Cardall that is a CHD survivor. He had a similar heart condition to Logan, and just had a heart transplant last year at age 36. I find it kind of ironic that we were playing Paul Cardall music for Logan before we even knew Paul's heart story.

Can you pick my little red head out of the crowd??? There were so many little red headed boys with CHD. I am wondering if they mistook the heart line in heaven for the hair line!

The most humbling part of the morning was the Angel Ceremony. This is where they honored all those in the goup that lost a loved one to CHD. A butterfly was given to every "Angel" family and it was beautiful when they let them go. The butterflies stayed around the park for quite awhile. It was interesting to watch the kids with the butterflies. They loved to chase them and watch them, but every kid treated the butterflies with so much tenderness.

We lost Tanner for a minute when he went chasing after one of the butterflies!

Have I mentioned enough what an incredible person I am married to? Brad is the BEST dad I could ever dream of for my kids.

Through this group I was able to find Angee and Severin. Up until now we had just been chating through email and reading each other's blogs, but we were finally able to meet in person. Severin was also born with HRHS. We were able to talk with their family for awhile. It was so nice to have someone understand the different things you are feeling, and also be able to understand the heart language. As great of support as our families and friends are, they have no idea what we are talking about when we say they need the Glenn and Fontan surgery!