Taking the Scenic Route

http://kerflop.com/2006/11/02/chemical-burn/

Arg.  The vacuum cleaner died.  It still sounds like a plane landed, and there isn’t a clog, but it won’t pick up cracker crumbs.  I hate shopping for vacuums when we don’t own the carpet and the carpet is so crappy it hardly seems worth the effort.

In other news, the developmental ped appointment got pushed back a month.  I misunderstood her and thought she wanted us to bring videotape of him to the appointment.  She wanted it in advance of the appointment.  whoops!  Although it will provide a better look at his progress over the recent months.  Reviewing the videotapes this week even I am surprised at the difference.

Zach is, once again, working on the Holiday Helper site.  Wow that thing grew into a much bigger animal than we were anticipating.  It feels good to be able to help though.  I am just so proud of him I could burst.  Reading the stories of the families on there just makes me weep.  We have been there, but we were so very, very blessed to have friends and family step up to help us when we were teetering on the edge.  So many of the families are facing difficult circumstances with no support at all.  It also drove home something that I knew when I was working on the form…families with special needs kids are hit very hard financially.  I know that.  I live it, but when you read the needs, it seems like the vast majority of them have a special needs kid and the financial strain from that is a big contributor to how they find themselves in that position.  It just breaks my heart to read because I can’t imagine how difficult it would be with no support system at all.  It makes me realize just how incredibly blessed I am.

I hope to have the halloween photos, including some better photos of Zora’s hat (as requested), uploaded tomorrow.  Seems like a lot of things aren’t happening as fast as I want though.  Between getting sick last weekend and the site that has gradually taken up more and more of our time in the last weeks, my ‘to do’ list is getting insane. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-stagliano/the-fearless-voice-of-the_b_32915.html

MDC has done a Holiday Helper project the last few years.  It has grown a lot every year, to the point it is really hard to administer the project.  Zach has put in a lot of hours to make a database from scratch to help with this process this year.  For those of you curious as to what the Families in Need see when they get registered, here are a series of screen shots.

click on pix to see it larger 

The first page

“Individual Needs” section

This is what the “Family Needs” page looks like when you go in and edit.  (I didn’t want to bug him to set up a new account just to show it that way)

On a more personal note, the hands used in the logo at the top came from the PECs card we made for ds, who has difficulty asking for help when he needs it.  Seemed appropriate.