Saturday, March 19, 2011
Toothless
Justus finally caught up with his twin brother and lost a front tooth! I guess it's not fair to compare since Eli didn't just lose his, it was knocked out!
Makena and the Orphan Drug Act
This is part II, you may want to go back and read part I for some background.
When my wife was a child she and her sister shared a beloved record of the the songs from the musical Annie. At some point, one of them, I'm not sure who, left it out in the summer sun and it melted. The fact that this story is still told, and told with no small measure of sadness, attests to just how traumatic the experience was. This week it's another kind of orphan that has my wife upset.
She is 13 weeks pregnant with our 7th child. She has had a spontaneous preterm delivery before. During this pregnancy my wife and her doctor had decided she would be treated with 17P injections from week 16 through week 36. 17P is a form of progesterone and is used to prevent premature delivery. Even at around $200 a dose when delivered in our home by a home health company, this cost seemed like a bargain compared to the cost, both monetary and emotional, of having a preemie. At 13 weeks, we are only about 3 weeks away from the beginning of the treatment. On Monday, I read this on one of my favorite economics blogs, Marginal Revolution:
First, it is important to remember what we are NOT talking about here. This is not a case where KV developed and brought to market some entirely new treatment that was previously unknown. The patent protection given to new drugs is a related issue, but it is not a factor in this case. As noted in the quote above, Makena has been given off-label for a long time. This means it hasn't been approved by the FDA as treatment of the condition for which it is being prescribed (in this case preterm delivery). Given the fact that it has been in wide use, it would seem the standard arguments about patent protection for new drugs wouldn't apply to Makena. Here is drug researcher Derek Lowe:
The Orphan Drug Act, under which KV has gained the exclusive rights to Makena, is a law intended to promote drug development for rare diseases. According to the March of Dimes more than half a million babies a year are born prematurely. Given those numbers, it's not clear to me how prematurity still qualifies as a rare disease.
Finally, there are the circumstances around the company now selling Makena at $1500/dose, KV Pharmaceuticals. This is from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
It is still not clear if we will be able to get a compounded form of 17P or if we will have to buy Makena at the new higher price. Even at the higher price, my wife will likely still get Makena. It just means we will hit our out of pocket maximum this year.
If there is any shame in this situation, and I believe there is, it belongs to KV and KV alone, but it would be a mistake to ignore the government's role in this. Without federal intervention in the form of the Orphan Drug Act, women would continue to get 17P and prematurity would have an effective and low cost treatment.
When my wife was a child she and her sister shared a beloved record of the the songs from the musical Annie. At some point, one of them, I'm not sure who, left it out in the summer sun and it melted. The fact that this story is still told, and told with no small measure of sadness, attests to just how traumatic the experience was. This week it's another kind of orphan that has my wife upset.
She is 13 weeks pregnant with our 7th child. She has had a spontaneous preterm delivery before. During this pregnancy my wife and her doctor had decided she would be treated with 17P injections from week 16 through week 36. 17P is a form of progesterone and is used to prevent premature delivery. Even at around $200 a dose when delivered in our home by a home health company, this cost seemed like a bargain compared to the cost, both monetary and emotional, of having a preemie. At 13 weeks, we are only about 3 weeks away from the beginning of the treatment. On Monday, I read this on one of my favorite economics blogs, Marginal Revolution:
Makena is a drug used for premature birth therapy. It’s been available off-label for a long-time but KV pharmaceuticals ran a clinical trial and applied for FDA approval under the Orphan Drug Act (ODA). Under the ODA, KV is entitled to seven years of market exclusivity, this is even stronger than a patent because it gives KV the right to exclude from the market any drugs (not just similar drugs) that treat the same condition.
Now that KV has a monopoly—enforced against compounding pharmacies by threats from the FDA—the price will rise from about $10 to a listed price of $1,500. Naturally a lot of people are outraged.I'm not exactly outraged, but I am a little bit sad since a treatment my wife and I had put so much hope in will now be substantially more expensive. As someone who comments on the consequences of public policy from time to time, it's not that hard for me to set aside my personal feelings for a minute and ask whether or not granting a monopoly to KV in this case makes sense, and I'm not sure that it does.
First, it is important to remember what we are NOT talking about here. This is not a case where KV developed and brought to market some entirely new treatment that was previously unknown. The patent protection given to new drugs is a related issue, but it is not a factor in this case. As noted in the quote above, Makena has been given off-label for a long time. This means it hasn't been approved by the FDA as treatment of the condition for which it is being prescribed (in this case preterm delivery). Given the fact that it has been in wide use, it would seem the standard arguments about patent protection for new drugs wouldn't apply to Makena. Here is drug researcher Derek Lowe:
What's irritating, to someone like me who works at a "find a new drug" type of company, is that these no-name generic outfits (KV in this case, URL Pharma for colchicine) are doing pretty much what critics of the industry think that we all do, all the time. That is, walk up to situations where other people have done a lot of the work, a good amount of it with public/NIH money, and step right in and profit. Now it's true that these companies have to basically run Phase II/Phase III trials to take the data to the FDA, and that's a significant amount of money. But their risks in doing so have been watered down immensely by the history of these drugs in the medical community.So KV has some risk in that they have to perform the final series of trials and then go through the FDA approval process, but is this cost proportional to the benefit? In this case seven years of exclusivity, and the tremendous run up in price that comes with it. History suggests that what KV added to the Makena story may not have been that valuable to anyone other than KV since the durg had been gaining popularity as a treatment for preterm labor at least since 2003 when a study demonstrated Makena's effectiveness.
The Orphan Drug Act, under which KV has gained the exclusive rights to Makena, is a law intended to promote drug development for rare diseases. According to the March of Dimes more than half a million babies a year are born prematurely. Given those numbers, it's not clear to me how prematurity still qualifies as a rare disease.
Finally, there are the circumstances around the company now selling Makena at $1500/dose, KV Pharmaceuticals. This is from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Staring down at the former chief executive of KV Pharmaceutical Co. — what used to be among St. Louis' most successful companies — the federal judge portrayed Marc Hermelin as an example of capitalism gone awry.KV is a distressed company making a bet on Makena. But how much does KV really have at risk? Given the fact that 17P was in wide use and there were studies demonstrating its effectiveness, it would appear they weren't risking much.
"What I see when I see Mr. Hermelin is greed, abuse of power, recklessness," U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber said Thursday. "He had this great company of 1,700 (employees), and once diverted, he was sending pills across the country that were twice the strength of their labels."
...By 2008, KV was considered one of the most successful publicly traded companies based in the St. Louis area. But the criminal case against Ethex resulted in a two-year shutdown of KV's production facilities and layoffs of three-quarters of its work force. Now, the drug company is hoping to revive itself with a new prenatal drug, Makena.
It is still not clear if we will be able to get a compounded form of 17P or if we will have to buy Makena at the new higher price. Even at the higher price, my wife will likely still get Makena. It just means we will hit our out of pocket maximum this year.
If there is any shame in this situation, and I believe there is, it belongs to KV and KV alone, but it would be a mistake to ignore the government's role in this. Without federal intervention in the form of the Orphan Drug Act, women would continue to get 17P and prematurity would have an effective and low cost treatment.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Makena: Public Policy & Private Consequence
This is a post from Jerry's blog that I wanted to share here as well. This is part one of three:
Recently a drug company known as Ther-Rx sought and received approval for the first FDA approved treatment to reduce the risk of preterm birth in pregnant women. Ther-Rx is a wholly owned subsidiary of KV Pharmaceuticals, a St. Louis based company. The drug will be sold under the name "Makena" and was available to be prescribed the week of March 14th. Makena is actually alpha-hydroxyprogesterone caproate injection, prior to Ther-Rx's involvement, it was known popularly as 17P. Among women and doctors who deal with prematurity, 17P was well known and was given to women as a weekly injection starting around the 16th week of pregnancy and continuing to the 36th week. The announcement of FDA approval was hailed by the March of Dimes as a step forward in the prevention of premature birth, which undoubtedly helps women and babies. Ther-Rx also announced that the price of Makena would be around $1500 a dose, so with a typically course of treatment running 20 doses over 20 weeks, the cost would approach $30,000. A large sum of money, to be sure, but relative to the costs of treating prematurity and the potential life long health effects that can result from a preterm birth, this price may actually represent a tremendous deal.
This description of Makena reads like a medical that a local news station might slot for late in the half-hour, or a pitch to potential investors looking for a company on the cusp of taking off. So why does the announcement of Makena make me feel like the universe is conspiring against me? The short answer to that question is that my wife is 13 weeks pregnant, all of our children have been born early, four of them early enough to require hospitalization, and we were both counting on using 17P injections during this pregnancy to help avoid another premature delivery.
If you want to read more about our experience with premature birth and how our attitude toward family size has changed over the years (including much more personal information than I usually go into on this blog), keep reading. Otherwise, in the next post (or two) I'll look at how KV came to be the beneficiary of this sudden increase in the price of 17P and the possible implications for public policy.
In 2000 my wife and I had one child, a daughter, and were anxious to have more children. She had been subject to irregular cycles for a number of years, but no doctor had seen anything serious enough in her condition to investigate further. This was also the year that we moved to Wisconsin and my wife began to stay home full time, rather than work outside the house. Neither my wife nor I are apt to blindly accept information from experts, including well-intentioned doctors, if we don't understand what they are telling us. I like to think of it as a healthy skepticism, and this case was no different. My wife's own research suggested to her that she was suffering from polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) and this was eventually confirmed by her doctor. One of the symptoms of PCOS is eggs that would normally be released during ovulation aren't, and they can form small cysts on the ovaries.
With this diagnosis in hand, we at least knew what the problem was, and we moved on to response. We decided to try Clomid, a drug that can produce ovulation. This was successful and in 2002 we had our second child, a son. He was born at 38 weeks, but aside from a precipitous labor that required an ambulance ride to the hospital, everything else was fine. Given the success with Clomid, we decided to try again. By 2004 my wife was pregnant again.........with twins.
I'm not exaggerating when I say the prospect of having twins was dizzying. Elation was replaced one January morning when my wife woke me up and told me that her water broke. Trouble was that she was only about 30 weeks pregnant. A few exciting hours later (ask me to tell you the story some time) my twins were born. They each weighed around 3 pounds, and were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). For the next several weeks we watched as they made slow and sometimes halting progress from tiny people who couldn't breathe or eat on their own to really small people who could breathe on their own and drink from a small bottle. Parents of preemies who have watched a child's skin go ashen when they stop breathing during eating will know what I mean when I say our twins weren't always able to do both at the same time. With help from friends and family we made it through the weeks of hospitalization without any major effects from premature birth and the twins are now healthy seven year old boys.
In the time after the twins came home and life returned to a new normal. As it did, both my wife and I really began to think hard about issues around family and child bearing. It's not that we didn't think about these things at all before, but looking back I think we approached them with a self-centered attitude (we wanted to have children) rather than a God-centered attitude (what did He want for us). Family size became a topic of regular conversation in our household and eventually we decided that it was important for us to turn this part of our lives over to God and that we would no longer try to consciously control the number of children we had. This meant no more Clomid AND no more birth control.
For some this might seem like a bold step, but given my wife's medical history it's not clear that we were really surrendering anything meaningful. Soon though, we found out just what can happen when you stop trying to lean on your own understanding and turn important parts of your life over to God. In May of 2005 we found out that my wife was pregnant again, this time the old-fashioned way. It's hard to remember exactly how we felt at the time, but my memories include a mixture of excitement and fear at the prospect of another baby. The baby was due in January, which meant the twins would be less than two years old when we added to the family.
We had assumed that the preterm birth of our twins was related to the fact that they were twins, but when my wife gave birth to our fifth child at 33 weeks, we began to doubt that was the case. At around four pounds, this boy was bigger than the twins at birth, but still had trouble breathing on his own. Back to the NICU we went. This stay was shorter than that of the twins, but I recall it as being more frustrating since it was primarily feeding issues that prevented my son's departure from the hospital. Eventually he figured it out and we came home. Again, another preemie had escaped any serious health issues and joined his brothers and sister at home. Rather than causing us to second guess our decision, our fifth child only strengthened our resolve. For me, it seemed clear that we had made the right choice in being open to the blessings of more children, premature delivery and all.
That was November of 2005. By late December of 2006 my wife was pregnant with our sixth child. During this pregnancy we were diligent about efforts to prevent a premature delivery. At the time the 17P injections were not common in our area so we did not get them, though she did get an alternative progesterone treatment. Despite our efforts, our sixth child (fifth boy if you are keeping score at home) was born at 35 weeks, weighing 5 lbs. 10 oz. and still required about ten days in the NICU.
While all four of these boys received "intensive" care, it was really only the twins, born at 30 weeks, who experienced what I imagine most people think of as time in the NICU. The other two boys were fragile no doubt, but their treatment primarily monitoring and supplementing the growth process that they were trying to complete, now outside of the womb. It was no fun to be sure, but not nearly as scary as the experience with the twins.
So that was four years ago. Since then we have not changed our attitude toward family size, but we haven't had any more babies. People still ask me quite often if we are going to have any more kids, and I always tell them it is possible. Most of them probably don't believe me and suspect that we have been preventing pregnancy for the last four years. For my humorous description of how the world sees a family with five small boys, be sure to check out this post from 2009.
As to what the future holds for us, I can't really say. I can say that my wife and I have been called to love every child that He has blessed us with and that we believe in the biblical mandate to be fruitful and multiply. What, exactly, does that mean? I wouldn't presume to tell you that means you should have two children or twenty, as I suspect there is not a single answer. For a good discussion of this issue, with a biblical foundation and a humble approach, I recommend the blog of the Jeub Family.
The other thing I can say is that too many people let family size be a passive rather than active decision. They take their cues from the culture at large and do what they think they are supposed to be doing. Few people realize this and even fewer admit it. Our natural tendency is to go with the flow, not only in the area of family size, but in almost all aspects of life. It takes an effort of will, and I would say a measure of faith, to fight our natural tendencies to get along and instead to live intentionally. That would be my challenge for anyone who reads this. Think about the areas in your life that have been shaped without much effort on your part, like a canyon taking its shape from wherever the river leads, and take the time to examine these areas and make changes where necessary.
As I said, my wife is expecting in September and both of us had high hopes for the 17P injections when it came to preventing another premature birth. Now that we are only three weeks away from when they would start, I was surprised to learn of KV Pharmaceutical's brand new patent on Makena, it's new price of $1,500 a dose, and the federal government's role in how this came about.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don't actually believe the universe is out to get me, but I can't help but wonder if in this case I might be forgiven if I did.Recently a drug company known as Ther-Rx sought and received approval for the first FDA approved treatment to reduce the risk of preterm birth in pregnant women. Ther-Rx is a wholly owned subsidiary of KV Pharmaceuticals, a St. Louis based company. The drug will be sold under the name "Makena" and was available to be prescribed the week of March 14th. Makena is actually alpha-hydroxyprogesterone caproate injection, prior to Ther-Rx's involvement, it was known popularly as 17P. Among women and doctors who deal with prematurity, 17P was well known and was given to women as a weekly injection starting around the 16th week of pregnancy and continuing to the 36th week. The announcement of FDA approval was hailed by the March of Dimes as a step forward in the prevention of premature birth, which undoubtedly helps women and babies. Ther-Rx also announced that the price of Makena would be around $1500 a dose, so with a typically course of treatment running 20 doses over 20 weeks, the cost would approach $30,000. A large sum of money, to be sure, but relative to the costs of treating prematurity and the potential life long health effects that can result from a preterm birth, this price may actually represent a tremendous deal.
This description of Makena reads like a medical that a local news station might slot for late in the half-hour, or a pitch to potential investors looking for a company on the cusp of taking off. So why does the announcement of Makena make me feel like the universe is conspiring against me? The short answer to that question is that my wife is 13 weeks pregnant, all of our children have been born early, four of them early enough to require hospitalization, and we were both counting on using 17P injections during this pregnancy to help avoid another premature delivery.
If you want to read more about our experience with premature birth and how our attitude toward family size has changed over the years (including much more personal information than I usually go into on this blog), keep reading. Otherwise, in the next post (or two) I'll look at how KV came to be the beneficiary of this sudden increase in the price of 17P and the possible implications for public policy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
With this diagnosis in hand, we at least knew what the problem was, and we moved on to response. We decided to try Clomid, a drug that can produce ovulation. This was successful and in 2002 we had our second child, a son. He was born at 38 weeks, but aside from a precipitous labor that required an ambulance ride to the hospital, everything else was fine. Given the success with Clomid, we decided to try again. By 2004 my wife was pregnant again.........with twins.
I'm not exaggerating when I say the prospect of having twins was dizzying. Elation was replaced one January morning when my wife woke me up and told me that her water broke. Trouble was that she was only about 30 weeks pregnant. A few exciting hours later (ask me to tell you the story some time) my twins were born. They each weighed around 3 pounds, and were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). For the next several weeks we watched as they made slow and sometimes halting progress from tiny people who couldn't breathe or eat on their own to really small people who could breathe on their own and drink from a small bottle. Parents of preemies who have watched a child's skin go ashen when they stop breathing during eating will know what I mean when I say our twins weren't always able to do both at the same time. With help from friends and family we made it through the weeks of hospitalization without any major effects from premature birth and the twins are now healthy seven year old boys.
In the time after the twins came home and life returned to a new normal. As it did, both my wife and I really began to think hard about issues around family and child bearing. It's not that we didn't think about these things at all before, but looking back I think we approached them with a self-centered attitude (we wanted to have children) rather than a God-centered attitude (what did He want for us). Family size became a topic of regular conversation in our household and eventually we decided that it was important for us to turn this part of our lives over to God and that we would no longer try to consciously control the number of children we had. This meant no more Clomid AND no more birth control.
For some this might seem like a bold step, but given my wife's medical history it's not clear that we were really surrendering anything meaningful. Soon though, we found out just what can happen when you stop trying to lean on your own understanding and turn important parts of your life over to God. In May of 2005 we found out that my wife was pregnant again, this time the old-fashioned way. It's hard to remember exactly how we felt at the time, but my memories include a mixture of excitement and fear at the prospect of another baby. The baby was due in January, which meant the twins would be less than two years old when we added to the family.
We had assumed that the preterm birth of our twins was related to the fact that they were twins, but when my wife gave birth to our fifth child at 33 weeks, we began to doubt that was the case. At around four pounds, this boy was bigger than the twins at birth, but still had trouble breathing on his own. Back to the NICU we went. This stay was shorter than that of the twins, but I recall it as being more frustrating since it was primarily feeding issues that prevented my son's departure from the hospital. Eventually he figured it out and we came home. Again, another preemie had escaped any serious health issues and joined his brothers and sister at home. Rather than causing us to second guess our decision, our fifth child only strengthened our resolve. For me, it seemed clear that we had made the right choice in being open to the blessings of more children, premature delivery and all.
That was November of 2005. By late December of 2006 my wife was pregnant with our sixth child. During this pregnancy we were diligent about efforts to prevent a premature delivery. At the time the 17P injections were not common in our area so we did not get them, though she did get an alternative progesterone treatment. Despite our efforts, our sixth child (fifth boy if you are keeping score at home) was born at 35 weeks, weighing 5 lbs. 10 oz. and still required about ten days in the NICU.
While all four of these boys received "intensive" care, it was really only the twins, born at 30 weeks, who experienced what I imagine most people think of as time in the NICU. The other two boys were fragile no doubt, but their treatment primarily monitoring and supplementing the growth process that they were trying to complete, now outside of the womb. It was no fun to be sure, but not nearly as scary as the experience with the twins.
So that was four years ago. Since then we have not changed our attitude toward family size, but we haven't had any more babies. People still ask me quite often if we are going to have any more kids, and I always tell them it is possible. Most of them probably don't believe me and suspect that we have been preventing pregnancy for the last four years. For my humorous description of how the world sees a family with five small boys, be sure to check out this post from 2009.
As to what the future holds for us, I can't really say. I can say that my wife and I have been called to love every child that He has blessed us with and that we believe in the biblical mandate to be fruitful and multiply. What, exactly, does that mean? I wouldn't presume to tell you that means you should have two children or twenty, as I suspect there is not a single answer. For a good discussion of this issue, with a biblical foundation and a humble approach, I recommend the blog of the Jeub Family.
The other thing I can say is that too many people let family size be a passive rather than active decision. They take their cues from the culture at large and do what they think they are supposed to be doing. Few people realize this and even fewer admit it. Our natural tendency is to go with the flow, not only in the area of family size, but in almost all aspects of life. It takes an effort of will, and I would say a measure of faith, to fight our natural tendencies to get along and instead to live intentionally. That would be my challenge for anyone who reads this. Think about the areas in your life that have been shaped without much effort on your part, like a canyon taking its shape from wherever the river leads, and take the time to examine these areas and make changes where necessary.
As I said, my wife is expecting in September and both of us had high hopes for the 17P injections when it came to preventing another premature birth. Now that we are only three weeks away from when they would start, I was surprised to learn of KV Pharmaceutical's brand new patent on Makena, it's new price of $1,500 a dose, and the federal government's role in how this came about.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Pregnancy Update: Week 10
TEN WEEKS... that means I'm a quarter of the way done and getting very close to finishing up my first trimester!! Honestly, time is not going by fast enough for me! This has been my worst pregnancy as far as morning sickness (even worse than with the twins). I am one of those people that will do everything I possibly can to not throw up... which means I have been spending a lot of time sitting perfectly still while trying to not make a mad dash for the bathroom. I had to drop out of my own weight loss challenge only to lose 7 pounds over the past few weeks anyway!
The first couple weeks sucking on hard candy seemed to help, but then that stopped working. I've tried all the usual things (saltines, small meals, naps, etc.) but nothing seems to help except time. The hardest part was not being able to drink anything. If it wasn't for Strawberry Frutista Freezes from Taco Bell I'd have been dehydrated for sure. I even took to trying to make them at home (never perfected the recipe). In the process though I discovered that really cold drinks were best. Lemon water with LOTS of ice is my new best friend... and it's cheaper than the Frutistas.
Thankfully, it's getting better with each passing day. Some days are worse than others but I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I take comfort in the fact that morning sickness means that this little one is digging in deep for the long haul.
My next appointment is March 9th. I'm hoping to hear a little heartbeat! The next appointment after that I will be starting a new (for me) medical treatment of weekly 17P shots. I took progesterone with J.D. in hopes of making it to full term and while it seemed to help, it didn't quite get me to the finish line. These 17P shots are supposed to be very helpful in preventing premature delivery. We're still researching the options of who will be giving these shots each week from week 16 until week 36 (any volunteers?). 36 weeks... wouldn't it be wonderful if I made it that long!?
We are already discussing names. I'm guessing our discussions will go right up to the end of this pregnancy. We are definitely going to need the extra few weeks to full term to come up with something! If you have any suggestions let us know!
The first couple weeks sucking on hard candy seemed to help, but then that stopped working. I've tried all the usual things (saltines, small meals, naps, etc.) but nothing seems to help except time. The hardest part was not being able to drink anything. If it wasn't for Strawberry Frutista Freezes from Taco Bell I'd have been dehydrated for sure. I even took to trying to make them at home (never perfected the recipe). In the process though I discovered that really cold drinks were best. Lemon water with LOTS of ice is my new best friend... and it's cheaper than the Frutistas.
Thankfully, it's getting better with each passing day. Some days are worse than others but I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I take comfort in the fact that morning sickness means that this little one is digging in deep for the long haul.
My next appointment is March 9th. I'm hoping to hear a little heartbeat! The next appointment after that I will be starting a new (for me) medical treatment of weekly 17P shots. I took progesterone with J.D. in hopes of making it to full term and while it seemed to help, it didn't quite get me to the finish line. These 17P shots are supposed to be very helpful in preventing premature delivery. We're still researching the options of who will be giving these shots each week from week 16 until week 36 (any volunteers?). 36 weeks... wouldn't it be wonderful if I made it that long!?
We are already discussing names. I'm guessing our discussions will go right up to the end of this pregnancy. We are definitely going to need the extra few weeks to full term to come up with something! If you have any suggestions let us know!
AWANA Grand Prix 2011
Our family had three cars in the AWANA Grand Prix this year. Since our lucky first run, when Wesley took 3rd place for speed, we haven't had another trophy come home... until tonight!
Here are the cars:
With the exception of Eli's, this year's cars started out as a blocks of wood. We were a bit late in purchasing our cars and that meant we could only get one that was already shaped. We didn't really have woodworking tools that could do anything too exciting to shape the cars so we did a little internet research to come up with some creative ideas. In the end, having to shape the cars ourselves actually made the cars more interesting.
Wesley was pretty pleased with his when he was finished and J.D. liked it so much he tried to take a bite out of it!
The night of the big race came and all the boys had graphite in their wheels and high hopes. This year there was a new aluminum race track to race on and I think all the cars went faster than in previous years. Even though our cars broke the 200mph mark... it wasn't enough, we didn't take home any trophies for speed.
Wesley was super happy to take home a trophy for 3rd place design. Honestly, he didn't care what it was for... he was just happy to have a trophy!
Here are the cars:
 |
| Wesley's Hershey Bar Car |
 |
| Justus' Packer Helmet Car |
 |
| Eli's Striped Racing Car |
Wesley was pretty pleased with his when he was finished and J.D. liked it so much he tried to take a bite out of it!
The night of the big race came and all the boys had graphite in their wheels and high hopes. This year there was a new aluminum race track to race on and I think all the cars went faster than in previous years. Even though our cars broke the 200mph mark... it wasn't enough, we didn't take home any trophies for speed.
Wesley was super happy to take home a trophy for 3rd place design. Honestly, he didn't care what it was for... he was just happy to have a trophy!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Answers
Remember this "Inquiring Minds" post from December? Remember when I said:
If you are anything like the general public, I am sure you have a few questions... so here are my answers:
"There is something very freeing about trusting God in this area. There is no doubt or confusion about what is God's will, if He wants you to have another child you will, if not you won't. Simple as that. Which is where we are now..."Well, we weren't sure what God had in store for us, but now we've got at least one answer! Shown Baby Number Seven is due in September 2011!
 |
| Have any name suggestions? |
If you are anything like the general public, I am sure you have a few questions... so here are my answers:
- Yes, they're all ours. (Yes, all from the same father.)
- No, we're not ... crazy, Mormon, Catholic, trying to keep up with the Duggars, etc.
- Yes, we do know what causes that.
- Yes, we'll have our hands full... better full than empty, right?
- Obviously, we do get a little time to ourselves.
- He works at a door company and, no, we're not rich.
- A white 15 passenger van.
- About 3,000 square feet with 4 bedrooms.
- Fixed?! Nothing is broken.
- We're glad it's us and not you too!
- Yes, we've really been asked all the questions that go with these answers! If you want a taste of what it's like to have a large family read Jerry's funny post about it here. And whatever you do please don't give us that near-sighted beaver look! :)
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