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

July 6, 2017

Thursday, June 6, 2017

Thursday, June 6, 2017

Tonight's picture was taken in November of 2003. Mattie was visiting Peter's parents in Boston and they surprised him with an Elmo toy. This Elmo was battery powered and could move and talk. This toy intrigued Mattie to no end. Check out Mattie's expression after I turned on his Elmo toy! PRICELESS!


Quote of the day: I can think of few better ways to introduce a child to books than to let her stack them, upend them, rearrange them, and get her fingerprints all over them. ~ Anne Fadiman



We ventured to Garden in the Woods in Framingham today! This is two miles of paths that meander over glacier-sculpted ridges and through narrow valleys. A pond, a wooded bog, several springs, and a brook bring a diversity of wildlife into the garden. The Garden in the Woods was founded in 1931, when Will C. Curtis purchased 30 acres in north Framingham, and began to create a botanical garden on the site. When Curtis died in 1965, the land and gardens were deeded to the New England Wild Flower Society. 


This is the plaque that stands by the entrance of the Garden. A sentiment by Curtis himself says.........

Garden in the woods is a dream in the realization. A years long dream about a big wild garden and finding out why wild flowers will grow here and not there. It is a tract of beautiful woodland and meadow only 19 miles from Boston where I am bringing together all the wild flowers and ferns hardy in this latitude and establishing them in natural environments where they can easily be reached and enjoyed by the interested public. In other words it is a wild flower sanctuary in which wild plants will be grown, their likes and dislikes discovered and the knowledge so gained eventually passed on in an effort to curb the wholesale destruction of our most beautiful natives. This is to be my contribution to conservation. ~ Will Curtis (1934) 

The Garden is the largest landscaped collection of wildflowers in New England, containing over 1,700 kinds of plants representing about 1,000 species, including over 200 rare and endangered native species, all nestled within a mature oak forest on glacial terrain of rolling hills, ponds, and streams that provide a variety of microhabitats.


This is a beautiful Trumpet Honeysuckle which greeted us as we entered. 



This was an Indian Pink flower. Something I have never seen before. 


This is a Turk's Cap Lily. If you look closely the yellow flower does indeed look like a Turkish hat. 
A pathway in the woods. The walk we took today was about a mile long.
The charming pond in the Gardens, filled with adorable turtles. A Mattie favorite!
A close up of the turtles! Can you see the baby turtle at the six o'clock position located near the round stone on the right?
Glorious honeysuckle..... and what an amazing fragrance that greeted us along the pathway. 
One of my favorites..... milkweed. A wildflower that attracts butterflies, especially monarch butterflies. 
This is a black eyed coneflower. Another one of my favorites, as it reminds me of sunflowers! 
The only Prickly Pear in the Garden, which maybe why it immediately caught your attention. 
Within the Gardens was a family activity center. I captured a photo of their maze, constructed out of leaves. I actually walked the maze, despite being an adult. I can assure you if Mattie were with us, he would have wanted to walk the maze with me. 
I snapped this photo to capture the woods all around us. 
Later this afternoon, we walked Sunny. Along our Walk, we came across three bunnies in the wild. 
This bunny is a little blurry, but nonetheless a cutie. A cutie which definitely attracted Sunny's attention. 
Can you see this regal bunny sitting on the lawn?

1 comment:

Margy Jost said...

Vicki,
The pictures, you took today are beautiful. I love your photos of flowers and the fact that you tell the name. My favorite in the group, you shared is the honeysuckle.. This fragrance takes me back to a perfume I wore when I first met Ken. It was called honeysuckle, have no idea where I bought it! I guarantee it was not expensive but the fragrance was very light and love the scent.

I really think it is great that you are posting pictures of Mattie' trip to Boston, this week while you are visiting.

I do believe exposing kids to books at a very early age, not just for reading to them but to give them a chance to explore the books, does create future reading interest.