MPS Awareness Day Prep

MPS Awareness Day Prep

It is a little over 2 months away, but this morning I met with the principal at the kids' school to discuss MPS Awareness Day. This is the first year Waverly & Oliver are at the same school, so I was excited to do something school wide. The district has policies against balloon launches and handing out candy, so we opted for a Purple Spirit Day. Friday May 13th, all of the kids at the school will be invited to wear purple to show their support for Waverly & Oliver. The student council still has to give it their stamp of approval, but I am confident they will. I am so thankful for administrators, teachers and school staff who love Waverly & Oliver and are excited to raise some awareness on a local level.

Mark your calendars everyone. May 15th is MPS Awareness Day - it falls on a Sunday this year. What can you do to raise awareness in your community? Dress your family in purple, hand out purple ribbons to coworkers, ask your child's class to wear purple and take a photo.

Comments

Deidre said…

Nice meeting you today at the mall. Hope that we can connect sometime soon. I look forward to getting to know you all. Dorie Thompson

March 12, 2011 at 2:15 PM

Welcome to Holland

By Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland.""Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.