Sunday, July 5, 2015

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2009. Mattie had already completed both of his two major limb salvaging surgeries, which meant that all three of his limbs were operated one. He was in his hospital room and though playing on the floor probably wasn't the most hygienic place to be, it was most comfortable for Mattie given his physical mobility issues. It wasn't unusual for us to put down sheets and blankets on the floor for Mattie to sit and play. Sitting next to Mattie in this was Liza. Liza was one of Mattie's favorite child life volunteers, and what was so memorable about Liza to all of us was her voice. She always reminded me of Glinda the good witch from the Wizard of Oz. Someone very sweet and kind. 



Quote of the day: Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. ~ Swami Vivekananda


I am not sure where the holiday weekend went!? For both of us, it was spent glued to a computer. Peter in front of our desktop and me to my laptop. Each of us were working away at the design of our new Foundation webpage. The irony is that we had two different groups of people offer to help us with this design. The first person was a professional web designer. He created a shell for us, but I could see this wasn't going to be a template I could manage and therefore that was going to put me right back into the place I currently am out. Whatever platform we us, it has to be easy, so I can maintain it in order to keep the site fresh, active, and current. Otherwise, the site will look old, static, and unfortunately will not capture all the wonderful accomplishments and activities we are involved in. So that option quickly dissolved. Then the next group of people who offered to help us, actually got further than the first. They created a template for us that is easy to use and got us started thinking about layout, format, and content. Which really gave me the push I needed to get this going. 

I am not sure I really wanted to devote this weekend to this project given how I am feeling, but since Peter was motivated and wanted to take this on, I got on board. Peter has really done a stellar job with the site and unlike the first website, this site is our creation together. 

As I was working on one of the content pages for the website today that focused on our snack cart at the hospital, I got the bright idea to show photos of our candy drives over the last four years. I got a chuckle out of how the candy drive has grown from 2011 to 2014. In 2011, I could count each piece of candy, which I certainly can't do now with a collection totaling 4,000 pounds. 

This illustrates our April item drive from 2013 to 2015. This drive is run every April in honor of Mattie's birthday. All the toiletries from this drive stock the free snack and item cart that Mattie Miracle sponsors at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. This cart revolves around the inpatient pediatric floor three times a week and helps to meet the needs of families in the hospital who are caring for a child with a long term or life threatening illness.