We want to wish a Merry Christmas to everyone who reads our blog and has supported our family since Callie’s SMA diagnosis.

We’d like to especially thank All God’s Children preschool at North Side Baptist in Greenwood, S.C. The preschoolers and their teachers created handmade cards and ornaments for Callie. Callie loved them all, and they look great on our tree.

The preschoolers also have given an offering every Wednesday this school year to help with the various costs of Callie’s care.

Thanks also to my friend Beth, who hosted a special Christmas Pampered Chef party to help raise money for Callie and the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation. Beth donated 100 percent of her profits to the SMA cause, and plenty of people helped by ordering Pampered Chef products.

Overall, Callie has been in good health so far this winter. She had a bout with (almost) pneumonia. We were fortunate to catch it very early.

She was immediately put on antibiotics, and everything cleared up quickly.

We are still struggling to get Callie the calories she needs. We’ll be talking with her doctors about getting a feeding tube in the near future.

She had a poor appetite a few weeks ago (that was not related to the pneumonia). Going without food and liquids for eight hours or so caused her oxygen saturation to decrease while her heart rate and resporations increased to dangerous levels. We were able to get things back under control but she ended up losing some weight and strength that she’s still trying to gain back.

These recent health scares reminded us of the delicate balance we have with Callie’s life, and we’ve found that holidays and other celebrations tend to be bittersweet. Watching Callie feed her new baby doll, knowing that if nothing changes she likely will not have the opportunity to grow up and have a baby of her own, reminds us of the uncertain future Callie faces.

But with help from friends, family and strangers, we’ve savored today.

Callie’s video is now available on our home page. Callie’s uncle and aunt, Brock and Lauren Smith, put the video together. It was part of the Nov. 7 love offering concert for Callie in Ware Shoals, S.C.

The love and generosity of an entire town overwhelmed our family last night as First Baptist in Ware Shoals hosted a Love Offering Concert for Callie.

Since we learned Callie has SMA, First Baptist members have responded with notes of encouragement, prayers and donations. But a group of church members wanted to do more.

So they formed a committee which planned, publicized and executed Sunday’s concert. We simply showed up and joined about 400 other people in the audience who had come from several local churches and from towns throughout the Upstate of South Carolina.

I arrived a little apprehensive about putting Callie’s weaknesses in the spotlight and dwelling on her illness in a public setting.

But the words and music that followed did not focus on grief and sadness. Instead, they celebrated Callie’s life and her purpose, the strength of a community and the fact that we are not alone as we face the challenges of Callie’s journey with SMA.

During his introduction, newspaper publisher, church member and family friend Dan Branyon put the evening into context by pointing out Callie’s ties to First Baptist, which go back at least five generations.

Several of Callie’s aunts, uncles, a great-aunt and her grandfather were among the array of musicians who presented a poignant selection of traditional and inspirational music, while downstairs volunteers prepared a reception complete with an Elmo cake, which Callie loved.

A video (which we’ll post on the site soon) gave an overview of Callie’s journey so far, and Christy talked briefly about SMA and Callie. Pastors Marcus Bishop, Dan Compton and Leon Jones spoke. And members of the congregation responded with such generosity that we still are stunned and humbled.

Thanks to the donations to Callie’s fund over the past few months, Callie now has a manual wheelchair, giving her mobility, more independence and a way to maintain and increase her strength.

She loves having the chair at preschool because now she’s on the same level as her friends.

Here’s a photo of Callie at the school.

Callie enjoying her chair in the hall at preschool.

First Baptist Church in Ware Shoals, S.C., is hosting a Love Offering Concert for Callie on Sunday, Nov. 7.

The concert is open to everybody, so if you’re in the area and are free at 6:15 p.m., you’re invited.

Child care will be available during the concert.

Nathan grew up in First Baptist Ware Shoals, and church members have been very supportive and generous over the past few months as we’ve learned about Callie’s diagnosis.

Our family is planning to make the drive down for the concert. Nathan and I will also speak about SMA and our personal experience with Callie. We encourage anyone who’s interested to come out and join us.

Ware Shoals is about 45 minutes south of Greenville on U.S. 25. The church is on South Greenwood Avenue, the main street through town. Here’s a map.

Thanks to everyone’s orders with Mary Kay, another $125 has been raised for gene therapy research!

Ruth Edwards has generously offered to donate 10 percent of her profits to the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation from now on. Just put “SMA” in the comments section of your online order form.

In other news, we’ve ordered both a manual and a power wheelchair for Callie. We expect the manual chair to be here any day, and it could take 3 to 4 months to get her power chair. Callie chose “popstar pink” for the color of her power chair.

Callie continues to thrive in preschool and is currently going through a period of strength. The other day, Callie sat unsupported and played for about 20 minutes! That’s something she hasn’t done since infancy and it was very exciting. We’ve heard about other children with SMA having periods of strength. We also attribute this to her physical therapies and to the many prayers on her behalf.

We’ve started Callie on a calorie supplement that we add to her milk to help her gain weight. She’s still not to the 3rd percentile, which is where we’d like her to be. We’re hoping that she can gain some weight before winter sets in–if/when she gets sick, she needs to have more weight on her, and right now she doesn’t have any she can afford to lose.

We look forward to posting a picture soon of Callie in her new set of wheels!

Ruth Edwards, Mary Kay sales director, will continue her support of SMA research through Oct. 13. Ruth has also increased her donation to 25 percent of profits! You can go to Ruth’s site to place your order. She keeps every Mary Kay item in stock, so orders arrive quickly.

Ruth also sent out a flyer to every customer who ordered in September, telling them about SMA and Callie’s journey. Because of her, about 75 more people are aware of SMA.

We’re grateful to have her support and friendship.

Here’s the final tally for this week’s Spaghetti Night with Callie: 240 attendees with almost $1500 raised for SMA research. That’s triple our original goal! Thanks to everyone who made this possible.

And remember if you need cosmetics, please contact Mary Kay’s Ruth Edwards, who is donating 20 percent of September profits to SMA research. Learn more.

Our spaghetti fundraiser tonight was fantastic! Over 200 people attended. We can’t wait to get the final numbers to report.

This was all possible because of our church, First United Methodist in High Point. The church provided the meal so all proceeds from the dinner could go to research. And several church members volunteered in the nursery so parents could attend the program after the meal.

Angela Guy, Callie’s preschool teacher, was the organizer in chief. She made sure the dining room was beautiful — decorated with table cloths, centerpieces about SMA, balloons and pictures of Callie. She also made sure everything went off without a hitch, which it did.

Kim Myers and her team cooked spaghetti all afternoon and made sure the meal was delicious and pleasant for everyone. Countless people set up the dining hall, dished out salad and dessert, served spaghetti, made sure people had ice in their cups and cleaned up after the entire event.

And a special thanks to Dr. Anderson, Callie’s pediatrician, who volunteered his time and expertise to educate us all about SMA.

We’re honored so many people made time to support this cause. Because of them, we’re closer to a cure than we were yesterday.

The day Callie was diagnosed with SMA, I considered dropping out of the cake decorating classes my friend Sandy and I had signed up for. But I decided that it might be a good outlet. So Sandy made my icing, in addition to her own, for all of our classes. That’s not as easy as it may sound. She also made sure I had tissues when I started crying during class while making flowers.

That’s the kind of friend Sandy is.

Tomorrow she and her family will be leaving to live overseas for the next 4 months.

She’ll be leaving behind an unfinished remodeling job in her bathroom. That’s because on the special weekend set aside for the project (while her children were visiting their aunt) our son Peter decided he would be born. She gladly took our older 2 boys in the middle of the night as we were on our way to the hospital. That was almost 3 years ago, and to this day, the cabinets are missing their doors and part of the baseboard is simply missing. But she doesn’t mind so much.

We joke that when we’re old, we’ll spend our days together, doing what we do now–endless mounds of laundry, talking, philosophizing and of course, eating.

I hope she hurries home.