We had the UVA PKU picnic a few weekends ago. It was great to see familiar faces and catch up on the latest and greatest. I did a presentation for Ryan's PKU Foundation and the NPKUA. It went well. However, it also was a wonderful example of why Diet-For-Life is so important. Visiting with us that day was the first baby diagnosed at UVA with PKU. He is now 60 and it was heartbreaking. The brain damage was very, very apparent, he is....well, he is very low functioning. It was so sad. There was a 19 year old who is in college now, but the rest were kids and teens. I was amazed by how many new babies there were. It made me wonder if this disease is on the rise...that there are more people out there now with that recessive gene.

We had some great food and some great fun. Owen really likes the Maddy's sugar cookies and cakes and both were there. It was nice to see him have a full plate of food and be comfortable with it. We met a family from our area with a PKU boy in middle school. That makes three families in our county. Owen made friends with a couple from West Va that is being serviced through UVA as well. All around it was a great day. I wish we were able to get together more than once a year.

Owen has made little progress with his weight, but we are not seeing as many hypoglycemic moments. We are trying the Vitaflo Vita Joules calorie supplement to help with the weight issue. For his birthday this week, I made cupcakes with the Maddy's brand yellow cake mix. He also had his favorite "cheating" food, homemade pizza. I make regular pizza dough (but with unbleached flour) and his pizza has homemade sauce, Cambrooke shake-N-Cheese, a very light sprinkle of mozzerella and lots of mushrooms,peppers, chopped tomatoes on it.  Recently, I also made the asperagus soup, the mushroom strata and the pumpkin custard from the  "Apples to Zucchini" cookbook. These are some of his favorite foods from the book.