Skip to main content

They say it's your birthday!

Well it's my birthday too! 

Not quite, but soon!

Okay, with apologies to the Beatles, my birthday is approaching. I am not telling you this because I want presents or lavish parties.  In fact, I would prefer to not make my birthday a big deal.  It's not a significant year and, quite frankly, I have plenty of physical reminders that I am getting older.   

I do have a few wishes, though.

If you would like to give something in honor of my birthday, please consider making a donation in my honor to Autism Speaks.  Our school is participating in the upcoming walk on September 29th and I would like your help and support.  Autism Speaks does a lot to help families managing the difficult diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder with research, advocacy, and family support.  You can follow this link to make a donation. Take the $5 you would spend on a beer or a card for me and give it to them. 

If you have even more money to burn, you can always donate to some of my other favorite charities:
Make-A-Wish Foundation
St. Judes Children's Hospital
ASK
CJSTUF

My birth month is also Pediatric Cancer Awareness month, after all.  Save your pink ribbons for October and bring out your GOLD!

If you have no money or would rather not spend it on me, that's ok.  I still have two more requests: I need your vote!

I am still in the running for the Eagle Rare contest this year.  Voting goes until January and you can vote every 24 hours.  You don't have to register on the website and you don't have to give anyone your email address.  Just click every day and share with your friends.  With your help, we can win $30K for CJSTUF but it will take everyone's votes every day.  

Also I was just named a regional semi-finalist for the Lady Godiva Award.  This prize, given by the chocolate company of the same name, could help CJSTUF get up to $10,000! Voting for this contest is from August 28-September 26.  You do have to register on this site but it's pretty easy.  I would really appreciate your help.  

As my birthday approaches (it's September 11th, by the way, for those who don't know), I may remind you a time or two.  Thanks, friends!


Comments

  1. Love this! Obviously as a mom to a kiddo with Autism, I appreciate the donations to Autism Speaks! But, we are also big supporters of Make A Wish as well: http://www.imjustthatway.com/2012/08/this-moment.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Edge of Seventeen

It's that time of year when the blog musings center on my grief journey. Every year, it seems like we are busy with end-of-the-year school activities and the start of summer, planning vacations, and then (kablam)...it's almost July 9.  Grief is funny. Grief is weird. I remember very early after Charlotte died, I watched the movie Rabbit Hole.  There's an amazingly poignant scene where Nicole Kidman's character is talking with another woman who lost a child over 10 years before (played by Dianne Wiest). She talks about grief being like a brick in your pocket. It never goes away. Sometimes you can even forget it's there. But it comes back and makes its presence known from time to time. And (she says) "it's what you have of them."    I probably did not fully realize then what a powerful and true analogy that is. As time goes on, our grief changes. Yet, it is always there on the edge of things. It sits in that pocket and sometimes makes itself known.  This

The Stages of Grief: COVID Edition

It's 2020. It's almost Christmas. We're still in the middle of a pandemic. In fact, we are experiencing what appears to be an incredible surge that is exerting tremendous pressure on our healthcare and social service system. The headlines are clear: we're not done with this madness and December 31, 2020 will not magically be the "end of it".  Earlier in the year, our family thought about whether we might be able to travel at this time. We thought that maybe the curve would be flat enough that we could take a few days away from home during the Christmas holidays. We realized that the pandemic would still be happening, but with the right protections and with prolific mask usage, we could get a much-needed change of scenery. During what is now (clearly) a delusional thought process, we booked a stay in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for the week of December 19th. Spoiler alert: we canceled the trip almost two weeks ago.  Canceling this trip was not a tragedy. In fact, I

Bittersweet Sixteen

I think about Charlotte every single day. However, this time of year, I'm flooded with all kinds of memories as we commemorate the anniversary of her birth. This year feels like a bit of a milestone. Sixteen.  If cancer had not taken her life back in 2010, I have a feeling I would be planning a massive birthday celebration this year. 16 always feels like a landmark year in someone's life.  I have been thinking a great deal about the last birthday party we had for Charlotte in 2009. We didn't know it at the time, but we were halfway through her treatment journey. We had been through three major brain surgeries and a few rounds of inpatient chemotherapy. Treatments were not going well. In fact, right after her birthday, we would make the trip to Houston, Texas where we would settle in for about 10 weeks of proton beam radiation treatments and a new customized chemotherapy protocol. This was the unspoken "last chance option" to beat that aggressive brain tumor into