Hannah's Wish Has Been Granted!!!

Hannah

Hannah's wish for an iPad has been granted by a very generous family in memory of one of our angels with Down syndrome, Grant Michael.  Thank you all so very much!!!!!!

Steven's Wish Has Been Granted!!!!!!!!!

Steven and his sister!!!!!

Steven's wish has just been granted to meet John Travolta!!!!!!!!!!!!  Date and details are pending.  But it will be some time this year depending on John Travolta's schedule.

I owe you all a post!!!!!!

There are so many things that I need to write about and catch up on....but life here has had me running around in circles.  We granted two wishes in the month of December...and I will write about everything I am hoping next week.  I have a few issue's here with the children that needs to be addressed, which I will write about when all is said and done.  I have a couple of wishes that I am working on while I am taking care of things here on the home front and am hoping to jump in full time later next week.  So please bare with me as I take care of things with my family and I will catch up with you.....with pictures when all is said and done.  But I will leave you with this......because Judy is so proud......she is up to 19708 dimes and the jar is now half full.  We have presently put up an event on facebook....she has 91 people presently that said they will save dimes and she is so very excited.  I told her once she hit 25,000 I will go to our local news and see if they will do a story.  So she is doing all that she can to collect them......she even came home from school yesterday and was so excited that she found a dime on the floor.....she ran in the house and dropped it in the bottle......If everyone reading could start a dime jar....that would be wonderful.  A dime in a jar here and there....goes un-noticed.....but would be a huge help to grant  wishes.     Hope all is well with all of you and I will write an update soon.

                                

 

Jaden's Wish Has Been Granted!!!!!

                                                                       Jaden




Jaden and his family got the wish of a life time!!!!! Just before Thanksgiving, Jaden went to a NASCAR race at the Miami International Speedway.  This picture was taken in the pit of Tony Stewart before the winning race!!!!! Great picture Jaden........Glad you had a good time!!!!!!!

There is a lot to post about and I will do so after the first of the year!!!!!  Happy New Year everyone.....hoping for a New Year filled with lots of wishes being granted!!!!! 

Things Have Been CRAZY!!!!!

Jaden's wish has been granted.  He went to the Miami International Speedway just before Thanksgiving and had a fun time doing all kinds of exciting things, he had cold pit passes, took a tour with the CEO and watched the race!!!!!

Jaden

I had thought that there would be one more wish granted before Christmas, but our account was so low....that I had decided that I would wait until the new year.  However,  I would like to thank Mike Buchko, for all the work he has done to collect items and then had an ebay auction for the foundation. He raised enough money to grant a wish to Grace who's wish was for a bicycle trailer.  Grace's trailer should be arriving early next week....just after Christmas.

Grace

Then a very unexpected surprise. I was contacted by a grandmother of one of our angels, who graced his family with his body but his kind soul had already been received back to his maker before his birth.  In memory of his infant soul and his birth, who now lives forever in the heart of his family, they donated in his memory a fence to Nicholas so that as any young boy would love to do......Nicholas can  run freely in his yard to play without restrictions and be safe.

Nicholas

So with that two more wishes have been granted before the end of the year.   There have been 34 wishes completed this year alone, however, there are 6 wishes that have been granted and are bending completion. In total I believe there have been 47 wishes granted including the pending wishes.....we are almost to 50, we should be able to reach that sometime next year......shooting to be able to grant another 30 wishes as my goal for next year.  It is so very exciting!!!!!!

I can't tell you how crazy things have been.  Time just seems to fly by when you are so busy and there are just not enough hours in the day, oh and it is the holiday's.  I am still trying to catch up on foundation stuff, it takes me so long to write thank you notes as I address every single wish individually.  I just think that if people are willing to donate, then I should be willing to send them a personal thank you, but I am very behind and I am so very sorry for that.  Everyone is important and I need them all to know that. 

The last several weeks have been jam packed with things on the home front.  I had to take Judy to the ENT as she has very bad sleep apnea.  Years ago she had her tonsils and adenoids out, however, the adenoids have grown back, so hence the problem, I believe.  The doctor wanted to do surgery to remove them...but I asked to try another alternative before we went ahead and did that.  Judy has been using a nasal spray and it works for about 3 hours and then we are back to square one.  She is scheduled for a sleep study this evening, so I will see what happens.  I am sure it is going to be as bad as I think it is and surgery is going to be the only way to fix it.  I know that is where we are headed!!!!! In the mean time, she also went to the orthodontist and she needs to have 2 more teeth pulled!!!!! As I see many parents say......they don't seem to get a break.  Judy has gone for several years without anything so I am happy about that, she is a trooper and takes everything in stride.  So as you can see I am running around trying to get her better....however, now she has a cold!!!!!!!!!!!  Ugh.......

Matthew, oh the trouble Matthew has got himself in lately, however he never means to......he honestly thinks he is helping me.  When Matthew leaves for school in the morning, he automatically closes the door.  O.K...no problem.  However, about 10 days ago in the early afternoon, I walked into the hallway, where his door is and I see water coming out of it.  It had just poured the night before and I am thinking that we have another hole in the roof....however, it hadn't rained that morning.  It got me thinking, we can't have another hole, if we did the water would have been on the floor when he got up.  Well, I have no idea what happened....but as I look over towards his window, he has thrown a bunch of clean clothes on the floor.  Yikes, why did he do that?   I was not  sure what he had done, BUT, what I can tell you was that he broke the knob on the radiator and it was leaking and leaking a lot!!!!!! His room had water all over the place....and as you know was now coming out from under the door.  What a mess!!!!!!!  That took me two days to clean up!!!!! I got all the water cleaned up, but the laundry was another story and drying things out, such as his bed etc. was just so time consuming. 

To make matters worse, I promised them we would go get a Christmas tree last week....so now that, that mess is cleaned up off for the Christmas tree we went.  We ran some errands, ate dinner out and got a tree.  Wowwwwww, we are doing good.  We really have no money for Christmas, so I decide that I am going to make most of my gifts.  Tuesday night Amanda and Kerri come over and help to decorate.  Matthew and Judy are so excited!!!!  The girls all stay behind while Matthew and I go and get pizza.  Yeah!!!!!! one thing down that I am not going to have to worry about.  As the girls were finishing up the tree....Judy goes to put the last ornament on the tree and it falls over.  Judy burst into tears, oh my what has just happened.  Tree fixed and put in a corner so that it doesn't fall over again!!!! Great..now that is one things done.  The next day, I have two projects done!!!!!  O.k. I am moving along.....printed out the flyer for our caroling on Monday and put them in clear plastic bags.....I am all ready!!!!! Things are going well.  I get up this morning and there is water all over the living room floor.....I have to be honest with you....I can't take much more water....where is it coming from?  It was all around the tree and under the file cabinet.....A four draw file cabinet, so it is very heavy.  Well I figured it out.  The screws that hold the tree stump in place were moved....so the water was coming out of the little holes.  I have to be honest...I was ready to throw in the towel. However, I dried up the water...got the kids off to school, started working on the Christmas projects, folded two loads of laundry...then washed three more that are presenting sitting waiting for me to fold them....then decided that I would go out and put flyer's on the doors for Christmas Caroling, I didn't want the kids out there in the rain....picked up a few things at the store and then came home to work on my Christmas tree dilemma, post pictures on face book....make dinner and now I am going to work on the Christmas presents...and chop nuts...until the weeeeeee hours of the morning.  So consequently, I have been crazy busy.The really nice things about typing is I am pretty fast at it so can get a blog post done quickly.....hmmmmm at least for the most part.

This past Monday evening we went Christmas Caroling in memory of Madeline Herman.  There were not a lot of lights on for us to go to...but we had a wonderful time and were still able to collect 160 dimes.  So we are hoping to do it next year and get the word out sooner and have more people join us.  Thank you Shera for sharing Madeline with us during this holiday season.  We hope that her memory will live on in what we are going to do annually in her memory as well as in the memory of those who have passed.

These are the Christmas projects that I have been working on.  I have made 9 blankets and many.....many cans of pretzels.  All done by hand!!!!!! So beside working on the wishes....I have been making lots of things for Christmas!!!!!!

With all of that.....it is 4 days before Christmas now and I have so very much to do and the issue is I don't know what I have left.....so I have to organize today...so I can finish stuff tomorrow after I get home from Judy's sleep study....so that I can be ready to have everything done for Friday morning. 

With that, I wish each and everyone of you a very Happy Holiday and a Happy Healthy New Year......and I will be getting back to work granting wishes as of the New Year.  All the best to Everyone!!!!!!!

Michael Got His iPad!!!!!! Look How Happy He Is!!!!!!

Michael and his iPad.

I just received Michael's picture of him with his iPad....Great picture!!!!! Michael's mom said that he loves it!!!!!!  All the wishes have been granted for the rest of the year.  I am just waiting on Jaden's picture of his wish and as soon as I receive it I will post it.  It is so exciting to be able to do this for our children......I am working on a blogpost to be posted soon.  Just wanted to share Michael's picture of his wish granted!!!!!!



Michael's wish for an iPad has been granted.

Jaden's wish to go to a NASCAR race has been granted.



Well, Michael and Jaden's wishes have now been granted!!!!  We are just waiting for the pictures of each of them with their wishes....It has been an exciting year!!!! A total of 34 wishes this year for a total of 41 granted in all.  It is hard for me to believe....knowing the little money I had to grant them!!!!  However, where there is a will there is a way.  However, I am at a stand still until more donations come in.  I have pending dates, but that is where it stops.  I continue to follow up on leads for wishes that need to be granted, however, for the most part I am catching up on all the things that I have neglected...such as thank you notes to all that have helped so many of our children's wishes to become a reality......they are going to be done, first and foremost!!!!! There are a few applications pending, that have little time left to be returned to me, that I sent out before I closed the application process......after that date, I will not take the overdue applications.  The limit is 3 months......

I am looking forward to seeing what wishes I can get granted next year.  During the month of December, while I catch up on my thank you cards, I am trying to get more exposure to our foundation.  I will be writing letters to businesses to see if I can get some of them to donate.  I am going to look for someone who writes grants.  We really need to get more money coming in so that we can grant wishes for our children......as they come in, so they are not having to wait as long as they do.  Some wishes waiting is part of the wish....but a lot of them, shouldn't have to wait and my goal for next year is to take so many wishes at a time and grant them.....Raise more money, open the application process again, grant them and then close it, unless we can get more interest in what I am doing.

I understand it takes time to get established, but I tend to get frustrated waiting.  I so think that all our children and adults with Down Syndrome deserve to have a wish or need granted.  BUT that is the way it is.....so I will just keep plugging a long!!!!!  With that I wish each and everyone of you who reads this blog a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!!