Live Life Joyfully

Sean Lived His Life with JOY – Here is a link to a video of Sean at the Special Olympics a few months before he passed away.

Before You Judge Me

This is one of my favorite quotes; I have been asked numerous times if Sean was ever sad and I had to answer ABSOLUTELY – but he will never let you see that.  Being his mom I saw it more often than I wanted; whether it was because someone made a promise and they broke it; someone bullying/making fun of him or when the pain would get so bad that he just couldn’t hold up the happy demeanor any longer – all of which resulted in us cuddling up on the couch and letting him cry with me crying with him. 

Don’t think that he wasn’t honest with anyone because he always was, the minute he saw a friend or someone that treated him nicely so he became their friend instantly he was happy…genuinely happy – because that person was so incredibly important to him and seeing a friend made him the happiest.  But I hope everyone takes this quote to heart and before you have a negative thought or say something that is less than encouraging think of this quote and think again.  Sean was the strongest and most courageous person I ever knew and he was someone that I looked up to and he was my hero.

Happy Mother's Day

Mother’s Day was another “No Ordinary Day” in Sean’s world but honestly as I look back – everyday with Sean fit that description.  Grab a hold of his coat tails and hang on for a wild ride.  His hand made cards made my whole world because I knew that for him that was a lot of hard work and so I knew it was made with more love than my heart could understand.  

On the Mother’s Day after Sean was diagnosed my Grandmother gave me this poem from Erma Bombeck and I kept it hanging on the wall to remind me that I was blessed by God when he allowed me to be his mother.  I didn’t realize it at the time how profound the paragraph “I will permit her to see…”  

How Did We Start The Foundation

After making sure that everyone was willing to work on this – my notes say Next Steps?????  Luckily Brother Jacob advised we need to create this foundation and start raising money so we can move forward.  Everyone was to send me ideas of how to raise money and we would meet again on the ideas.  We were all planning to get together at Fuddruckers (Seaner’s favorite cheeseburger place) on Sean’s 1^st birthday in Heaven.  

Auntie Maria called me a few days after the meeting and suggested that we have a fundraiser at Fuddruckers.  Fuddruckers’s agreed that if we have enough attendance they would donate a percentage of the receipts and we prayed that it would be enough to pay for an attorney to get the foundation set up as a nonprofit.  Bill and I had donated to 107.1 to dedicate the day to Sean and they announced the fundraiser throughout the day. 

The day of his birthday brought 8 inches of snow and we were certain that it was going to be a bust.  From having Kris Smith and I struggle to get his Birthday Banner up – we must have tried everything and finally Mark Smith came to the rescue; to being certain no one would show and everyone trying to help me keep it together (I only had a few crying fits).  

But again with God’s grace people came and helped me get through the 1^st birthday with Sean in Heaven and was an incredibly successful!  We even had complete strangers that heard the announcement on the radio and came out to support us.  Fuddrucker's was so touched by the crowd that came even with the storm that they gave us an extra percentage of the receipts and we had enough to get started.  

So Bill and I contacted an attorney, Ron Pogge, and got the documents drawn up with Jacob, Kara, Josh, Bill and I as officers of the foundation.