Sunday, April 15, 2012

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2009. Mattie's art therapists, Jenny and Jessie, created this cape for Mattie to wear at the Mattie March. Jenny took a picture I had taken of Mattie wearing his circus glasses and placed it onto super man's body. Thereby creating "Super Mattie." In many ways, this was the perfect name for Mattie because what he had to endure to fight Osteosarcoma was indeed super human. As our supporters know Mattie Miracle hosts an annual childhood cancer walk every May. This tradition was actually started by Team Mattie, because in the spring of 2009, they planned an amazing "Mattie March" in which hundreds of Mattie's friends, family, and community members came out to support him. Though Mattie is no longer physically with us, I can't help but associate the Foundation walks with the March that symbolized his super fight.


Quote of the day: If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right. ~ Henry Ford


It is 9pm on Sunday, and we have finally stopped working for the day. Our last task before raising up the white flag was scrubbing and washing our outdoor chairs and tables. All our plants and outdoor furniture were in our living and dining rooms this weekend, as both outdoor spaces were being painted. All this clutter was making me crazy. So tonight, we brought everything outside into our common's space and scrubbed our outdoor furniture and then placed it back where it belonged. I wish this is all we did today, but unfortunately it wasn't.

In the afternoon, we went to the Georgetown University campus to see a lacrosse game. I haven't seen a lacrosse game in my life, but one of the team players (who was in the undergraduate class we worked with in the Fall of 2011) invited us to the game and wanted us to know that the team has a wonderful water boy. The water boy happens to be a childhood cancer survivor at Georgetown, and the team has basically adopted him. What surprised me was the huge turn out of people to see this game, I had no idea that people spent their weekends going to at-home college games. I frankly had no idea what I was watching, but I caught on quickly. However, I gave a lot of verbal commentary about players getting hit with the lacrosse sticks, so I am sure the fellow next to me was probably wondering about me!

We spent the remainder of the day working on the Foundation's walk website and I was also cutting out hundreds of shapes for my Matisse "cut out" session for the kindergarten kids on Wednesday. This cutting of construction paper is a labor of love, because Matisse's shapes are not straight forward. After hours of paper cutting, almost every finger aches. This picture illustrates one of several plates I filled with cut outs I generated today.