Time for the Kickoff

I finally got our page set up for our team -ready and waiting now for people to come by, click in, sign up to walk with us or to donate to a very worthy cause - Autism Speaks.

My kids and I had a team - Maya's Team - last year and we walked in the 3K walk over in State College for the Autism Speaks organization. We raised, in total, a little over $2,000 that went towards research about the disorder, Autism -finding out what causes it and also, learning more about ways to help those who have the disorder.

My granddaughter - Maya - was diagnosed a year ago with autism and her little brother, Kurtis, was just diagnosed last week as also having Autism - so quite naturally, my family - ALL of us - feel very strongly about helping to support the Autism Speaks organization. This year, we will have a team participating once again in the walk -to be held on April 12th, at State College, PA.

Here's a picture of "Maya's Team" from last year's event.
Front row: daughter, Carrie, Amie Mather, grandson Alex, Stepgranddaughter, Sierra and my good friend, Sharon Rolley. Back rows: Robert Brickley, son, Clate, Lois (a co-worker of daughter Mandy's), daughter Mandy and Kerri Cowfer, the behavior/play therapist Maya had and who now works with Kurtis.

This year, so far, here's who has promised to walk with us: Me, Mandy - Miss Maya too and grandson, Alex, daughter Carrie and her fiance, Robert, son Clate and his girlfriend Teresa and a friend of ours from church, Denise Shimmel. We're hoping that a few more will come forward and sign on to walk with us too though.

I know I mentioned last week about this walk and that I would be posting further information about it and how anyone can donate to our team - help us as we walk to try to put the donations over the top. Well tonight, I have the website available now where you can click in, locate our team and if you are of a mind to help us out, make your donation right there, online! Easy as pie!

This is the website:

http://events.autismspeaks.org/site/c.jvKSL7MTIwG/b.3884743/

Once you are there, you can scroll down the right side of the page and near the bottom is a place where you can search for the team name (ours) to make a donation towards our efforts. The name of our team is: "WE ARE for Kurt and Maya"

And I have a little surprise too - the first person who donates to our team and who did so from reading this page on my blog -will win a little surprise gift too! Just make sure you leave a comment on my blog telling me you donated and as soon as I get the confirmation from Autism Speaks, I'll contact you for your mail address and will be sending this gift your way!

Thanks a whole bunch from my kids and from me but mostly from Maya and Kurtis for your support!



Now, I have a little story for you too - about Maya. Sunday morning, Mandy and Maya went to church. They were seated directly behind our next-door neighbor, Deb and her daughter, Kylie. Mandy always takes some little things -a tiny book or two, crayons, paper to draw on, maybe even a sandwich bag with some cheerios too -to keep Maya quiet and relatively calm and settled during the service.

Today, Maya had the paper and crayons and was drawing. She had drawn four items - kind of looked like boxes across the top of the page and each box then also had stripes drawn on them. She proudly showed her artwork to Kylie but she had no idea what this was supposed to be so Kylie had asked Mandy, "What is it?" Mandy said she was as confused as Kylie was so she asked Maya what that picture was of that she'd drawn there. Maya's reply -in a tone that implied she couldn't believe her Mom and Kylie didn't recognize this art work -"Elephants!" Why sure they are!

Guess that will teach Mandy and Kylie to check closer on Maya's artwork before they ask her to identify things, huh?