Holiday Weekend Forecast/Tropical Update/Velo-cardio facial syndrome

HURRICANES AND WEATHER
Erika (Atlantic) and Jimena (Pacific) are now only Remnant lows and The National Hurricane Center is no longer issuing advisories. Both will be rain makers as they meander over the southern Bahamas and the Baja Peninsula respectively. There are 2 other new areas to watch. Other than that, the tropics are fairly quiet as we head into the holiday weekend.

No areas of severe weather designated this Friday or Saturday for the US but much of the south having a change for thunderstorms. The rain has definitely taken an edge off the heat with highs in the 80s and low 90s expected for the southern plains and much of the southwest, except for Vegas which should hit 100 or higher. Nice and mild/cool for the west US coast and the northern states and northeast with highs in the 60s and 70s.

Houston, there was some severe weather late Thursday just to our west and some heavy rain for counties north of here. There will be scattered storms through Monday (especially on Friday and Saturday). So, make your indoor backup plans. The clouds and rain will keep temperatures more moderate...mostly upper 80s and low 90s. Enjoy!

SPANISH WORD OF THE DAY

Let's do students or estudiantes, pronounced s-stoo-dee-AHN-tehs. We spoke to some medical estudiantes on Thursday. Find out more in the AND MORE section.

I had an email from Teachers Discovery saying, okay, when are you sending our order. Well, of course I was happy to know there was an order, but I had not received one. Finally, I reached my contact and he said...ooooppps, we missed a step. Could you please send us 15 units? Of course, I did right away.

You can order our award winning Let's Learn Spanish with Frank & Paco, Volume 1 today from www.frankandpaco.com/. You can also order from http://www.venturaes.com/, http://www.dololanguages.com/, http://www.carlexonline.com,www.thecuriousmindstore.com/, http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.bestbuy.com/, and http://www.barnesandnoble.com/. For our English as a Second Language (ESL) version, go to http://www.frankypaco.com/.

AND MORE
On Thursday, Gordy, Megan and I participated in a special program put on by the Baylor Genetics department to educate the new medical students. We and 2 other families spoke to about 150 students about our experience raising a special needs child. Sarah has Smith-Magenis Syndrome and the other two families had represented Williams Syndrome and Velo-Cardio Facial Syndrome. Now, I did not know this but Velo-Cardio Facial Syndrome (VCFS) is the second most common about Down Syndrome. Yet, it took that family a couple years to get a diagnosis even with severe physical problems.

So, here are a couple of links:
http://www.vcfsef.org/
http://vcfstexas.com/

The Texas support group for VCFS is very active thanks to the family which was speaking. In fact Emma, their little girl, is on the front page of the web page.

It was the first time Megan could go with us and I was soooooooooooo proud of her. She talked about her experience being a sibling of a child with SMS. She was very poised in front of all those staring eyes and listening ears. Way to go Megan!!! I think they all enjoyed hearing about how it affects a sibling.

Here's something I had never seen before until recently. I got some new fish oil and there was a flip open top. Wow! I love that...no more unscrewing. With all the supplements/vitamins etc. we take, I figure that if they all had that, I would save 1 minute per day...that would rack up to about 6 hours a year...the things I could do with that 6 hours (like write 6 more blogs Ha!). One can only hope that all the pill manufacturers will all follow that lead.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

Cecilia Sinclair
Wonder Weather Woman