Daily Norseman
How the generosity of one Vikings player directly benefited my family in a very unexpected way.
Note: Eric pointed out on social media today that this is the fifth anniversary of this story going up, so I thought it was worth giving it another bump. I think we could all use some positivity, and I hope you agree.
Congratulations to the Thompson family on their daughter’s continued recovery! -Chris
If you have read my articles or followed me on Twitter over the past several years, you’re probably well aware that I’m the proud father of two daughters. I try to be conscious of how often I post pictures of them or talk about them online, but the truth is that I’m a horrible over-sharer. What can I say? I’m crazy about my girls. I just can’t help myself sometimes. I have even managed to wedge them into a few (completely unnecessary and cringe-inducing) analogies in my weekly Vikings preview articles in this space.
While I have sworn to limit mixing in my family when writing about the Vikings going forward, I’m afraid there’s no avoiding including them this time around.
Kyle Rudolph opened his End Zone in the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital in March of 2018. It’s a place for patients and their family members to escape what can be an otherwise somber hospital room experience and enjoy some fun activities. As a tangential member of Vikings media, I have been offered the opportunity to cover a couple of events Rudolph hosted in the End Zone since it opened. Unfortunately, most of the events were during my day job and it prevented me from attending.
Last week, I finally covered an event at the hospital and was able to check out the End Zone. But it certainly wasn’t in the way I envisioned.
On Martin Luther King Day, everyone in my family but my wife had the day off. So I decided to keep the girls busy by taking them to the Minnesota Zoo. I could barely keep up as my energetic daughters raced about the facility all morning. We capped the Daddy/Daughter Day with some lunch and a trip to the movies for a matinee. That night we did some reading and classic roughhousing before an early bedtime. The girls needed their sleep after the long day; my oldest had school and my youngest had an early doctor appointment that I was taking her to before daycare.
The week before, our pediatrician had noticed something during our 4-year-old’s annual checkup. She was seemingly healthy and feeling just fine, but the doctor noticed that one side of her tummy felt a bit odd. He ordered an ultrasound just to make sure everything was in order. So on that following Tuesday, I took our little one in. The appointment lasted a bit longer than I expected and the technician was rather quiet, but I didn’t think much of it. She explained that the radiologist would look at...
