Mattie Miracle Walk 2023 was a $131,249 success!

Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation Promotional Video

Thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive!

Dear Mattie Blog Readers,

It means a great deal to us that you take the time to write to us and to share your thoughts, feelings, and reflections on Mattie's battle and death. Your messages are very meaningful to us and help support us through very challenging times. To you we are forever grateful. As my readers know, I promised to write the blog for a year after Mattie's death, which would mean that I could technically stop writing on September 9, 2010. However, at the moment, I feel like our journey with grief still needs to be processed and fortunately I have a willing support network still committed to reading. Therefore, the blog continues on. If I should find the need to stop writing, I assure you I will give you advanced notice. In the mean time, thank you for reading, thank you for having the courage to share this journey with us, and most importantly thank you for keeping Mattie's memory alive.


As Mattie would say, Ooga Booga (meaning, I LOVE YOU)! Vicki and Peter



The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation celebrates its 7th anniversary!

The Mattie Miracle Cancer Foundation was created in the honor of Mattie.

We are a 501(c)(3) Public Charity. We are dedicated to increasing childhood cancer awareness, education, advocacy, research and psychosocial support services to children, their families and medical personnel. Children and their families will be supported throughout the cancer treatment journey, to ensure access to quality psychosocial and mental health care, and to enable children to cope with cancer so they can lead happy and productive lives. Please visit the website at: www.mattiemiracle.com and take some time to explore the site.

We have only gotten this far because of people like yourself, who have supported us through thick and thin. So thank you for your continued support and caring, and remember:

.... Let's Make the Miracle Happen and Stomp Out Childhood Cancer!

A Remembrance Video of Mattie

December 21, 2015

Monday, December 21, 2015

Monday, December 21, 2015

Tonight's picture was taken in December of 2003. Mattie was a year and a half old and trying to capture him in photographic form was a riot! It was a riot because Mattie never stopped moving!!! So that year, we literally went to Lowe's and Home Depot. We placed Mattie in a shopping cart and wheeled him around the holiday decorations. Mattie always liked going to Home Depot type stores, so he was comfortable in that surrounding! Unlike a MALL! I am sure people in the store thought we were nuts. We took Mattie's coat off and were snapping LOTS of photos of him. Needless to say, this was the photo that went on our Christmas card in 2003. 


Quote of the day: The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything. ~ Theodore Roosevelt




Today is Peter's mom's birthday! To celebrate the day, we drove to Rhode Island. Which is about 90 minutes away from Boston. We went to tour The Breakers, a mansion I have always wanted to see.

The Breakers was built as the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, a member of the wealthy United States Vanderbilt family. It is built in an Italian Renaissance style. Designed by renowned architect Richard Morris Hunt, with interior decoration by Jules Allard and Sons and Ogden Codman, Jr., the 70-room mansion has a gross area of 125,339 square feet and 62,482 square feet of living area on five floors.[3] The house was constructed between 1893 and 1895. The Ochre Point Avenue entrance is marked by sculpted iron gates and the 30-foot-high (9.1 m) walkway gates are part of a 12-foot-high limestone-and-iron fence that borders the property on all but the ocean side. The footprint of the house covers approximately an acre of the 13-acre estate on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.

The Vanderbilts had seven children. Their youngest daughter, Gladys, who married Count Laszlo Szechenyi of Hungary, inherited the house on her mother's death in 1934. An ardent supporter of The Preservation Society of Newport County, she opened The Breakers in 1948 to raise funds for the Society. In 1972, the Preservation Society purchased the house from her heirs. Today, the house is designated a National Historic Landmark.


The road signs right in front of The Breakers! Loved the Victoria sign!!!












The Front Gate entrance to The Breakers! The entrance is regal and impressive and it gives you the feeling that you are going to experience something VERY grand! 








The Breakers captured the The Gilded Age in United States history (the late 19th century, from the 1870's to about 1900). The term was coined by writer Mark Twain in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873), which satirized an era of serious social problems (between of course the wealthy and working class) masked by a thin gold gilding.




The Preservation Society does not allow photos inside the house. So I downloaded this photo from Google to give you the feeling for the grandeur of the Grand Hallway/entrance. The mansion is filled with gold gilding and the audio tour that they give visitors is incredible. It gave all of us an outstanding feeling for how this incredible house was built in two years time, and how the lives of the wealthy and the house staff differed. It truly was like I was walking through Highclere Castle, where Downton Abbey is filmed in England. 

There are two places inside the mansion that they allow photos. One is by this beautiful poinsettia Christmas tree and another is upstairs in the Loge, which is like the terrace.

The mansion was gloriously decorated for Christmas with trees and lights in every room, not to mention a room with gingerbread masterpieces and running toy trains. 


The gingerbread houses were created by master pastry chefs. Each house was a replica of one of the Newport Mansions. This cutie is Chepstow (another mansion). 









When you look outside the loge terrace, you see the Narragansett Bay, the incredible lawns, and my favorites.... Canadian Geese!










As we were leaving the mansion, we passed this beautiful sight of the beach and the Bay! Though December, it was worth the picture!



















We asked The Breakers staff today where to head for lunch! They recommended without a doubt, La Forge. What a great setting and wonderful food. I can see why Giada recommends it! it is situated on the grounds of the International Tennis Hall of Fame, the Crowley family of Newport have owned and operated it for over thirty-five years. Named after the original owner, La Forge, the restaurant's menu, style and friendly atmosphere reflect the Crowley family's Irish heritage.

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