"Discover" Your Dreams This Holiday Season, Just Make-A-Wish!

Today was the Make-A-Wish Holiday Party which my company sponsored. It was held at the Cardinals stadium in Glendale. The theme was "DISCOVER" your dreams this holiday season, just "MAKE-A-WISH!"When Dad and I arrived, it was already 10:30 and essentially nothing was done yet. There should have been a lot more done in the 30 minutes since the MAW crew had arrived. In fact, they weren't really even ready until just 10 minutes before the event started. It was quite irritating, but oh well. It wasn't until my folks got there and wanted to get going that things started to take shape. Lorrain, Nicole, and Nan were awesome. They did so much. I couldn't do much because my foot was hurting really badly and to boot, I'd popped my knee that morning and could barely walk at all. Most of our volunteers arrived and got their areas all set up. Dad and I sat at the sponsor table passing out Discover "trinkets". He worked on his knitted hat when he could (and lots of people were fascinated by it) but mostly we visited with the families as they arrived and wandered up to our table.

It was heart-wrenching to see some of the kids who were still going through treatments for cancer or had tubes coming out of their windpipes to help them breathe. It was difficult seeing families who had children who were so handicapped that they would never be a Wish Child because they were so severely handicapped that they wouldn't even know what it meant to be a Wish Child, yet the family may have had another child who was the actual Wish Child. It all really made you think about how fortunate you are when you have a perfect child without these infirmities. I so enjoyed visiting with some of the kids and hearing about their wishes. Many were still waiting for their wish because they were still going through treatments. Disneyland and Hawaii were pretty popular wishes. The oddest one I came across was a teenage girl's wish to meet Criss Angel - the mind freak.

It was fun to watch parents doing the electric slide and YMCA with their child who is in a wheel chair and seeing the sheer enjoyment on their child's face. Even our volunteers got into it! It was wonderful to see the smiles on our volunteers' faces as they helped each one of these kids. And, it was wonderful to see the GINORMOUS pile of toys that our employees donated and the smiles it brought to not only the children's faces as they got to choose a toy, but also to the MAW volunteers that our employees had been so giving. Too bad you can only see about 1/4 of the toys we donated in this picture. All the rest were in the boxes under the tables. When the day was done, I was ready to go home...not because of anything at the party, but just because my foot and knee were hurting so badly. It was definitely an experience to remember and to give thanks to our Heavenly Father that none of our nieces and nephews or siblings have such problems.

Thanks so much to all the Discover gals and guys and Dad, too, for coming out to help. I really appreciated it!