It's been way too long...

It's been a very long time, hard to believe that Thanksgiving has past and 2012 will be here before we know it. Today, I wanted to find the time to say how thankful and grateful I am to have so many wonderful people in our lives. So many of you have reached out to us, in one way or another, helping, showing concern or just love…how wonderful and giving you can be. Since we have been back from Utah in April, my co-workers wanted to reach out but did not know how. It was really about thinking outside the box regarding how they could help. A free website called www.lotsahelpinghands.com, has become a great resource, it enables tens of thousands of families in distress to create private communities of friends and family members to assist them with their needs. They have been helping us is by making meals, it has been wonderful to be able to come home and just heat up dinner without having to do the prep work. For us, sometimes the prep can take double the time it should take, stopping many times to do something for Ian, it can make the dinner time routine stressful, when you know you other things to do that evening. Those meals have been wonderful so a special thank you. To all the others who have contributed in ways we don't know about, a very special thank you as well. Those of you who know me well, know that asking for help is not in my nature…so it has been hard for me to accept this, however, we can’t do it all on our own. If you are interested in helping here is the information on the site along with the name and email of the coordinator, Cheryl Snyderman, bayforty@aol.com, for “Friends of Marci, Brian, Ian and Becca”, https://www.lotsahelpinghands.com/c/643473/. In addition, here is an article from The Washington Times by Cheryl Wetzstein on Lots of Helping Hands.

For the Katz family, the time of need arose as mother Carole was dying of ovarian cancer.

For Amy Gibson, it came when her military husband was deployed overseas three days after she gave birth to their third child.

For Sue Crawford, it came when her fiance, Patrick Durkin, was slammed by a wave at Ocean City, breaking his neck and leaving him "pretty much like Christopher Reeve, paralyzed from the shoulders down."

A free website called www.lotsahelpinghands.com is enabling tens of thousands of families in distress to create private communities of friends and family members to assist them with their needs.

The website allows a family "coordinator" to do what they would otherwise be doing by "e-mail and phone-tag" -- keep track of appointments, meals, daily tasks and who has volunteered to do what. 

Today, some 30,000 families have created private communities of friends through the Lotsa Helping Hands website, said Brooks Kenny, chief marketing officer. It is free to families, as nonprofit groups and businesses support the site as partners, she said. The communities are secured and private -- people join by invitation only.

As one might imagine, this innovation was born out of travail.

Several years ago, when his wife was sick, Massachusetts high-tech entrepreneur Barry Katz kept track of life for her and their teen daughters on a whiteboard in his office. But even with this giant "memo pad," he found it hard to coordinate their family's needs with the many offers to help that came their way.

One day after Mrs. Katz passed away, Mr. Katz found himself studying their whiteboard, covered with phone numbers, appointments, errands, and offers of help.

"What I really wanted to do, I decided, was to make our family's struggles count for something," Mr. Katz wrote in a recent issue of Guideposts magazine.

He worked with friend Hal Chapel to design a free online service "that would help other families overwhelmed by a crisis."

The website's name came from daughter Julia Katz. At her bat mitzvah, which her mother attended, Julia had talked about "lots of helping hands," Mr. Katz wrote.

"Lotsa" communities can be created and dissolved easily, and revolve around all kinds of issues: parents who need help caring for their newborn triplets, military families caring for loved ones who came home wounded, families caring for someone with Alzheimer's disease or cancer.

Some communities last only a few months.

Mrs. Gibson's friends, for instance, used the website to coordinate a few dozen people during her husband's seven-month deployment. When he came home last summer, "we threw a big party" to thank everyone, and closed the community, she told me.

Other communities, such as Mr. Durkin's are intended to be long-term.

Skilled nurses tend to Mr. Durkin's medical needs, but his online community of almost 50 people work to keep everything else running smoothly, such as walking the dog every day and cooking meals, said Ms. Crawford, who administers the site with her adult daughter.

The website eases the discomfort of people wanting to help but not knowing how, and of families needing help but not knowing how to ask, she explained. "It just puts the need up there and lets people check and say what they can do."

"We are learning the new normal," she said. "The reaching out of other people and their kindness and joy has kept us going....We are very grateful," she said.

I mentioned to Mrs. Gibson that it was nice to see the Internet used to break barriers and connect those in need, and she agreed with me.

"So much on the Internet, to me, is a lot of fluff," she said. "But this is an incredible application. I don't know any other way you could organize" things, especially with people across the country.

"I think every family could use this site at one point or another, whether it's for a month or a year," she added. "It widens the circle."

Ian is doing well, holding his own. He did horseback riding again this fall with his back rider, Smokey loved having Ian back and Ian loved seeing and riding Smokey every week, we look forward to the Spring session. He is doing great in school, reading some words and able to decode cvc words. He has told Brian and I, on numerous occasions he is going to read by the end of the year. He also wants to be able to tell time by the end of the year. Keep up the good work little man you are on your way. Once again proving to be one of our heroes, showing us time and time again how hard work can get you through each and every day.

Becca played field hockey this fall and did great. She learned many new skills and blocked quite a few goals. In addition, at the end of last school year, she got braces, what a difference they have already made. She is doing well in school, got an A in math and a B in reading on her 1st quarter report card. She continues to be our other hero, showing us each and every day what a wonderful girl she can be, loving and caring.

In their own way, both kids are comedians, they don’t even realize the things they do and say and how they make us laugh. It’s wonderful and I am going to try to start sharing them with you all.

As Thanksgiving has come and gone for 2011, I wanted to share with you what another blogger put on her blog and just how true it is…I am awed and uplifted by parents who struggle daily with some tremendous challenges that their children’s disabilities bring. The ability of these brave parents to find joy and gratitude in their difficult situations is nothing short of inspiring—even to one who lives a similar life. A person who can look past the medical issues, past the behaviors, past the limits...to see the beauty and courage and strength and gracious soul of their child...is surely one who has great wealth. I know it can be hard at times to feel grateful and I can fully empathize with families who are reeling from the unexpected shock of a painful diagnosis or a downturn in their child’s condition. In addition, relating to those momentary setbacks we all experience where reality serves as a magnifying glass through which we see the imperfections in our situations. If you are having trouble finding your piece of good fortune, please, look for the little things to be thankful over. Everyone deserves to know that life can be good. People in our lives need to know that you are grateful for them.

Please share with us what you were/are thankful for...