Liz

Although we all knew something was wrong with our baby sister Liz from the day she came home from the hospital, it took three years for a Prader-Willi Syndrome diagnosis. After that, life at our house changed dramatically. The kitchen was locked up and we all had to hide when we were eating a snack. We would all search the house to find hidden stashes of food that Liz had left for later consumption. She was so good at walking pass the counter, and like a magician, grabs something right from under our noses. She was not an easy kid to be around; problems surrounding food always came up.

Liz continued to gain weight throughout her school years. At twenty when she graduated she weighed a very unhealthy 234 pounds. It was at this time we were able to find Prader-Willi Homes of Oconomowoc and Liz moved to Anthony Home the summer she turned twenty. Our family was very concerned about Liz's health and we were glad to find a place that knew how to deal with this syndrome.

Liz is a very social person and really liked having friends and doing all kinds of fun things with the other residents. Liz always did well with incentives, and through food control and exercise, the weight started coming off. Every time someone visited her, or she came home for a visit, we would have to go out and buy her more "skinny clothes". Shopping is something Liz LOVES to do and we were happy to buy her smaller clothes to fit her shrinking body. The whole family praised her every time we saw her for all the hard work she had been doing and how great she looked. Now at an amazing 110 pounds, Liz has lots of reasons to love shopping so much. We now refer to her as the "shopping diva", as this is one of her favorite pastimes.

Liz really enjoys working at Oconomowoc Manufacturing and loves to tell us all the details of a day at work checking out the ball bearings. I think we all know more than we could ever hope about bad ball bearings!

Liz participates in anything that is offered at her house. She is in Special Olympics and bowls, plays basketball (at 4 ft. 8 in. this is not a small feat!), bocce ball, swimming, and really likes horseback riding.

Always on the move, she never says no to any kind of outing.

For some crazy unknown reason she really enjoys watching scary movies. Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street are some of her favorites. She has most of them on tape now. Yikes!!! She loves the Twilight Saga and even talked my mom and dad into taking her over Thanksgiving weekend. You can always see her bopping around the house with her walkman on and singing to some rock songs. Her very favorite band in the whole wide world is Bon Jovi. She even got to see them in concert last year in Milwaukee and loved every minute of it. We heard about that outing for a long time.

We all know how hard she works at staying skinny and doing all her exercises. She is very dedicated. We know what a special little sister we have and are so grateful to Prader-Willi Homes of Oconomowoc for taking such good care of her. We know she is alive and doing so well because of the great program they provide.

We feel blessed that she lives there, and blessed with a great little sis!

Thank you from the Guido family.

GO BEARS!!!!