Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Cheer competition in St. Louis

We went to the ASC cheer competition this weekend. We stayed at the Embassy Suites and the girls LOVED it. On the first day we watched all of the teams compete and noticed one team called the Capitol City Cheer Sparkles at the very first. They brought out a teddy bear that was wearing a pink shirt that said "Miracles for Margaret" and sat the bear in front of the big blue mat facing the judges. After their routine was finished we noticed that the group of parents to the right of us were all standing clapping and most of them were crying. After a while of watching we noticed that all of the Capitol City Cheer squads were wearing pink ribbons tied on their uniforms. That night we asked some of their parents what the ribbons were for and gasped as we were told of little Margaret Romph. She is a five year old that is a member of the Sparkles team. On Friday, Jan 2nd, 2009 Sherline (Margaret's mom) was working at McDonalds when Erin (sister), Margaret and Grandma Kay came to visit her. Shortly after leaving they were in a very serious car accident. Sherline saw the ambulance and fire trucks go by her work and immediately felt sick. She called Erin and no one answered. She called Kay 's phone and was told she needed to come to the scene. When she got to the scene, they would not let her see Margaret. Erin and Grandma Kay were taken to St. Mary's to be treated and were released. Margaret was life-flighted to the University. She is suffering from severe head trama, where they had to shunt her head to release pressure. Other injuries were 2 broken femurs and a broken neck. She is in the pediatric intensive care at the University. The doctors say that it is too early to give a prognosis but if she does make it through this she will probably be paralyzed from the neck down. The extent of her head trauma is unknown at this time. A few of us parents decided to get together and see what we could do to help. I learned from talking to the parents that Sherline would be coming to the competition the 2nd day to watch another of Margaret's sisters perform. It would be the first time she had left the hospital. We had already made our minds up to go online and donate to the benefit fund, so knowing Sherline would actually be there we changed our minds. We did our best to collect donations for Margaret and ended up hand delivering over $200 to Sherline. As my good friend, Amy Slane said, "We came home with second place but we all arrived home safely." Thank you Jesus for that. If you would like to help the Romph family please feel free to visit one of their sites below.

www.caringbridge.org/visit/margaretromph
http://www.romphbenefitfund.com/

Stay safe,
Sunny