HappyChucks   For Families Navigating the Autism Waters

I'm sure that at one point or another, we've all asked the questions "Why me?" and "What did I do to bring autism into my (our) life?"

I can't answer those questions for you.

Sometimes when we're looking for answers, what we really need is motivation.

Dick Hoyt gives me a lot of motivation. Whenever I get a little bit down, I think about Dick Hoyt and his son Rick, and I tell myself to Get Over It. Don't be a sissy, and don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself – just get out there and make Calvin's life better!

Today I stumbled across a copy of Dick Hoyt's story, so I thought I'd share it with you. The story is written by Rick Riley and published in Sports Illustrated – give it a read below. I've also included a video clip, but it's hosted somewhere else, so I can't guaranty how long we'll have access to it. Just make sure you have a tissue handy when you watch the video!

Strongest Dad in the World

by Rick Riley

Sports Illustrated Magazine, Life of Riley, 6/20/2005

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

So the question is: How many marathons did you run for your child today?

There are hundreds of alternative treatments available for parents of autistic children to try.

Researchers, scientists, and the medical community at large have made a lot of noise about the validity of most, if not all, of these alternative treatments, saying things like, "They haven't been scientifically proven to work" and "They're treating something which has been scientifically proven to be inaccurate".

They would prefer to test these various treatments using two different methods, either of which would be scientifically valid.

Double Blind Studies. Take 200 similar kids, give 50% the treatment and the other 50% a placebo, and study the effects. If the results are different between the two groups then the treatment works.

Identify a Single Variable. Keep everything else in your child's environment exactly the same, and introduce one new variable. Then see what happens. If you see improvement then the variable made a difference.

Both of these methods are great, but both of them have major problems for parents trying to help their little ones.

Problem 1. There is no such thing as 200 autistic kids who are otherwise similar - autism affects each child differently, all the way down to their brain and central nervous system's ability to process information. There are many cases where a treatment/supplement helps one child and has no effect on another child, or even makes him worse.

Problem 2. In many cases, a child will make improvements based on multiple variables working together. In these cases, it would be impossible to isolate the one variable which caused the improvement.

Problem 3. Time. If we wanted to try 200 different remedies, treatments, therapies, supplements, diets, etc., and we kept everything else constant, and we tried each "variable" for one month, it would take 17 YEARS to get through all the possibilities. And that's just doing them one at a time!

Personally, we didn't want to wait 17 years. We believed we had a small window of opportunity, a few years at the most, to make the biggest impact on Calvin's life.

We listened to the scientists for the first year or two, but then we realized they didn't really have an answer - they were guessing as much as us, but would only try one thing at a time.

After that, we tried a lot of different things, often times in combination. If we threw 6 new things at him, and if/when he improved, we were happy with the improvement. Then, over time, we could try to reduce or eliminate some of the new things to figure out what wasn't necessary and/or helpful. If we introduced new things and he had a bad reaction, we could pull the plug on some/all of them quickly.

One of the keys is to keep a detailed record of what you're doing, which I've written about before. Another key is to be patient, yet impatient, at the same time. But listening to the doctors and scientists and taking their words as gospel - that's not the key. Maybe if they had an answer or a solution I would think differently. But so far they've proven that their methods aren't helping each individual family out there.

We all have a lot of time & energy invested in our kids, especially our kids on the ASD spectrum. And I'm sure that anyone reading this, myself included, would do/buy/give anything to gain a cure for their child. I also believe that many parents out there have put aside their own hobbies, interests, and even dreams, in order to provide a better life for their "baby."

Enter Melanie Roach.

Here's the story of an Olympic athlete who will be competing this summer in Beijing, who is also a mom to 3 kids - one who has autism. There's no doubt who I'll be rooting for!

Take a few minutes to watch this heartwarming (and powerful) story.  (http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=FRdamp271826)   Then get ready to take on the world!

Thanks to my friend and colleague, Dru Bloomfield, for sending me this story. (Dru has more drive and energy than most of us - I'm a little bit surprised she's never shown me a gold medal of her own!)

Another year, and another Disneyland vacation is in the books. This is one of those trips we really look forward to each year. The boys both LOVE it, and seeing them smile for 2 or 3 days straight is a joy. It's also fun to watch them grow, both physically and emotionally, from year to year. Rides that were too scary last year are lots of fun now, and rides that they could only dream about last year (due to height requirements) are fair game today.

This is also the hardest-working, most nerve-racking thing we do each year. From the minute we wake up, we're "on". High energy, eyeballs on the kids at all times, constant communication out of fear that each of us will think the other is "on duty". Not to mention walking, and then pushing a dual stroller, for miles. Eventually we get back to the hotel, get the kids ready for bed, and pass out. Only to do it again the next day on even less sleep!

This was Calvin's best trip ever, and by a large margin. What a difference a year makes! He was able to keep his body under control enough to stay with us, without physical contact, more than half the time. We were still hyper-aware of where he was, but we didn't need to have a death-grip on his hand.

We're constantly looking for progress, and I've written a few times about new things Calvin has done, but a lot of it gets lost in life's daily grind. Sometimes it takes an experience which is easily comparable to a similar experience from an earlier time to see just how far he's come..

Summer's here (it's going to be 108 today in Phoenix, which counts as summer in my book!), which means it's about time for summer wardrobe, including shoes. I don't know about your area, but around here I can't go out to the mailbox without seeing kids wearing Crocs shoes. Our boys have a couple pairs each, so we're part of the phenomenon..

Last summer we bought jibbitz for the boys – the little shoe-jewelry pieces that kids can use to customize their Crocs. They each picked out the ones they wanted, and we also ordered an autism awareness ribbon jibbit online. This year we might have to order a couple more...

If you're not familiar with them, check out www.jibbitz.com and have a look around. Or click here to see the autism awareness ribbon one ($2.49 each).

If you're fairly early in your journey into autism, this is a very important post. If you've been at this for awhile now, you still might find a few good ideas, but it'll take some effort to pull off a change!

This month marks the 7-year anniversary of Calvin's first home ABA program. That means we've been gathering paperwork from doctors, schools, therapists, the internet, etc. etc. for 7 years. And we've been making our own notes and journals as well, just trying to help make sense of what's going on at any given time. (why is he sleeping better, or worse? why did his bowel movements change? etc. – you know what I'm talking about..)

Well, here's what our filing cabinet looks like today. (yes, it's a mess!)

I could tell you the 8 schools Calvin has attended so far, and the dates he was at each one of them, but you'll need to give me a couple of hours to dig through everything first. What was the med trial we did when he was 4 or 5 that had horrible side effects? I'll need more time to find that answer, too.

You see, at the time things are happening, they seem so easy to remember. But a few years and a couple thousand pieces of paper later the details get fuzzy. If I was starting down this road today, here's what I would do differently..

Keep track of key events in a digital format (on your computer) in a highly flexible format with dynamic search capabilities. Here are some ideas, depending on your level of tech-savvy.

Create a personal blog. You can visit www.blogger.com and build a personal blog in less than 5 minutes, and it's free. You can easily checkmark (or uncheck) boxes so that the blog is not available to search engines, and can only be read by those you give permission to. This makes it a private blog, not available to the public. (although I would still avoid writing personal info like SSN, DOB, etc.)

You can create categories to assign to each post (you can even assign multiple categories to a post.) I would create categories for: ABA, Fidget Items (or Stims), Hab, Homeopathy, Horses, Illness, Medication, Music, OT, PT, Speech, School, Sleep, Social Settings, Vacation.

Write a short post whenever something noteworthy happens, with a few of the details & highlights which can jog your memory later. IEPs, Doctor Visits, Medications prescribed, Sleep patterns (he slept through the night for a week straight – yea!). Etc. The blog will time stamp each entry for you.

Over time, you'll be able to search by category, or by words, or by time, and you'll find the posts that match your criteria. Then you'll see the date you wrote it, so it will be very easy to go find the specific IEP you're looking for in your file cabinet. ;-)

Buy Microsoft One Note (<$100). (info here) Imagine having an unlimited amount of notebooks, and each one can have anything in it. A quick, handwritten note. A webpage printed directly to your notebook. Contact information for the doctor's office. etc. You can have a notebook for each of the categories, and you can add anything which pertains to that category to them.

You will find One Note fairly intuitive if you use Microsoft Office products already. It's not quite as fast and easy as the blog idea, and it's not free. On the other hand, it's more robust in what you can store, and it's on your computer so privacy is never a concern.

Use Microsoft Word or Excel. There's no reason you can't build your own journal with either one of these. It may not be as fancy or as dynamic, but either option is a whole lot better than paper stuffed into a file cabinet. Again, I would focus on making notes regarding key people and events. I would try to use the Category Words at the end of each entry, which will help you find things later.

The process can be as simple as opening Word and beginning to type – no different from opening a spiral notebook to write a journal entry. It can also be very detailed with tables, filters, drop-down categories, and more. Those of you who know how to use the power of Excel could build something pretty fancy.

Other thoughts

I'm sure there are other options out there – Outlook Journal comes to mind as another alternative. There are also some great scanners available which have come down in price. I've heard that you can get a commercial-size scanner to scan different sizes of papers and convert the paper text into searchable text for about $700. Someday I might consider one of these to sort through our mountain of paper.

BACKUP YOUR DATA! Regardless of the method you choose, please backup your data. Always think about this: what happens if your computer doesn't turn on tomorrow? CD-ROMs, DVDs, External Hard Drives, www.mozy.com – there are many choices available, please use one.

Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards is a standardized test that all Arizona students must take, and pass, before graduation. The test is adjusted for each grade level, and the results are reported publicly in statistical analysis format – rankings are available to view by school, by district, by race, by sex, by grade, etc.

Calvin recently finished his first ever attempt at the AIMS test, and we as parents couldn't be more proud of him – for so many reasons..

He took the same test as every other 3^rd grader in the state. The only modifications were in how the questions were presented to him (one at a time), and he was able to indicate his answers using letter cards, rather than darkening in a circle with a #2 pencil. (his proctor then darkened in the appropriate circle for him).

He completed the entire test. Every section. And for the most part did not require the allotted amount of time.

He did not have any coaching or verbal cues regarding the questions. Each question was simply laid in front of him for him to read on his own, and he could select his answer whenever he was ready.

He asked a couple of times to go back and change a prior answer (and each time corrected an incorrect answer.)

I don't think we'll ever get to see his individual results, and his teachers aren't allowed to give us any specific information. But we've heard "unofficially" that he did an outstanding job (probably better than most of the typical 3^rd graders out there.)

Considering this is the first year he's ever been in an "academic" environment, and considering it was just a couple of years ago when we were told, in an IEP, that he didn't know more than 15 words *receptively* - this was a big accomplishment.

For Calvin, his teachers, his therapists (and previous therapists), and for Cheryl and me – this was really satisfying news.

Great job, buddy. I'm so proud of you.

When we first mention to somebody that Calvin gets Music Therapy, they almost always assume it's a bunch of kids sitting around in a circle and singing songs together, as if they're thinking "oh, the autistic boy likes to sing songs – how nice."

On one hand it makes me a little bit angry, because nothing could be further from the truth. Neurologic Music Therapy can have a profound effect on people who have difficulty controlling their bodies, such as people with autism, cerebral palsy, and those suffering from the effects of a stroke. (On the other hand, I can't blame them, because I didn't know anything about it before Calvin's diagnosis.)

Over the years, Calvin's NMT sessions became the most important hour of his week, and the people from the clinic were terrific with him. Cheryl & I began to get involved in any way we could, both with Neurologic Music Therapy Services of Arizona (NMTSA) and with Kris' Camp, a summer camp which shares many of the same protocols as NMTSA.

Last month Suzanne Oliver, the Executive Director of NMTSA, invited me to join her organization's Board of Directors. It's one of the biggest compliments I've ever received. (it's also one of the most nerve-racking – I hope I don't goof it up!) Now I get a chance to give back even more to the one person, outside of our family, who has given, and continues to give, the most to Calvin.

I strongly recommend you check out NMTSA if you live in Arizona, and to look into NMT services in your own state if you live elsewhere.

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Something happened this weekend that was so great, so exciting, so unfathomable not too long ago, that I had to share...

You see, for most of his life, Calvin's been a "bolter." When he was younger he pegged the needle on the ADHD sliding scale, and staying in one place was not something he could do. When you couple that with an irresistible urge to follow any given impulse with complete gusto and reckless abandon, you get a bolter.

We've chased Calving through shopping malls, grocery stores, parks, doctors offices, Target (on too many occasions), and even a parking lot (only once – but that's because we're paranoid about it!) Over the last couple of years Calvin has gained better control over his body, and he's become more of a wanderer than a bolter, but we are still very aware of our surroundings at all time.

Yesterday Calvin & I went to Home Depot to buy a few things. He drove the cart for me (80% independently), helped me pay for our stuff, and drove the cart out to our car. We opened the back of the van to load our bags, when Calvin casually took a few steps away. There weren't any cars around, so I gave him some leeway, although I was ready to sprint after him. He walked down the driver's side of the van, around the front, and opened the passenger door. He climbed in, sat down, and closed the door behind him! Then he looked back over his other shoulder to see me, and gave me a huge, proud-of-himself, smile. It was awesome – a highlight I'll keep in my "best of" memories for a long time...

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Last month I wrote about the Arizona Autism Insurance Bill (Steven's Law) passing the Senate's Health & Appropriations Committee by unanimous vote. Last week the bill passed the House, and this week the Senate followed suit. All that remains is for the governor to sign the bill into law, and we will have insurance coverage for everyone on the autism spectrum – cue the trumpets and the ticker-tape parade to start the party. Well, maybe it's not quite that easy...

Since this looks like it's destined to become a reality, I wanted to talk about some of the positive effects we'll see from Steven's Law, as well as some possible unintended consequences. These thoughts aren't in any particular order – more of a stream of consciousness writing.

Full disclosure: I'm a free-market capitalist, with an undergrad degree in finance and a master's degree in business administration. I left a job with a Fortune 500 company to go into business for myself, where my family's well being depends 100% on my ability to provide recognized value in an industry where many are seen as commodities (one no different from another.) The point is I don't generally agree with government regulation of private business, unless not doing so would cause the public great harm.

Who's covered? People who work for companies with more than 50 employees. Unfortunately Arizona has a very high rate of self employed and small businesses; these people will not be covered.

How many people will be affected? I don't know... How many people in Arizona with children on the autism spectrum work for larger companies? It has to be a fairly significant number, otherwise the law would be virtually useless. But how many actually – 2,500 families? 10,000? 25,000? The larger the number, the more effect it will have on some of my other points.

Earlier diagnoses. We all know how important early diagnosis is, and this law will help facilitate earlier diagnosis and intervention for many families.

Long-term decrease in the State's burden. More kids getting more treatment, and higher quality treatment, at earlier ages, should lead to higher-functioning adults, on average & in theory. Whether these adults are mainstreamed into the productive fabric of society or they still need help with daily living skills (and everywhere in between), a higher functioning population will require less state-provided care over the 60+ years of our kids' adult lives.

Increased Insurance Rates for all. How many families did we say would be covered by insurance mandated through the new law – 2,500 or more? (pulled completely out of thin air – I don't have any supporting documentation.) If each family receives $25,000 per year in benefits, that means the insurance companies are going to pay out $62,500,000 per year! (2,500 families * $25,000 each). This isn't money they were able to plan for by running profitability studies or devising new programs; it's money the government simply mandated they pay out. They are going to seek to recapture some of this lost money, and the best way they have to do that is to have everybody share the pain – higher rates all the way around.

This actually becomes an indirect tax, as the State reduces their financial exposure via DDD by passing the burden to the insurance companies, who then pass the hat to all their policy holders. In effect, everyone with health insurance in Arizona is going to subsidize this program a little bit. It's not really any different from simply increasing the sales tax by a sliver of a percentage point.

Supply & Demand of Therapists. (follow me on this one.)

More people having access to therapy will increase the demand for therapy, which could cause a shortage of therapists, leaving some families without services at all.

The shortage in therapists will allow the providers to raise their rates; some of the increased revenues will be shared with the therapists in the form of higher wages. This will attract more, and higher quality, therapists to Arizona. Some will move from other states, while others will seek out this major in school.

If the inflow of new therapists happens too quickly, it could lead to an oversupply of therapists. This could lead to a class system, where the high-end providers charge the most money and have the highest quality therapists (and serve the wealthy and the large-company-insured families), while the lower quality therapists work at providers who accept DDD payment and serve the less fortunate and less-insured families.

Eventually the insurance companies and DDD will come together to create a price list of allowable charges, which they hope will even the playing field. Even then, however, there wouldn't be a great incentive for the good therapists to leave the high profile clinics to go work in the lower quality clinics. In this scenario, it would take a very long time to self-correct.

This is a quick list off the top of my head; I'm sure there are other costs and benefits we haven't yet touched on. I'll update this list as I think of things worth sharing, and I' love to hear your thoughts as well - feel free to comment below...

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Last week, in the first of 3 cases to go to trial, federal health officials concluded that childhood vaccines contributed to symptoms of autism in a 9-year old Georgia girl (as reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution.)

The details from the court case are not yet completely available, but the result is. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that the family of Hannah Poling, of Athens, GA, is entitled to compensation from a federal vaccine injury fund. The amount of compensation is still being determined.

Obviously, this is going to add fuel to the vaccination debate fire. It's going to get even hotter when we look at the week's events in total. Let's take a look at how the week unfolded.

1. Senator, and Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, John McCain was quoted as saying "there's strong evidence" that thimerosal is responsible for the increased number of diagnoses. This brings up a wave of federal spin following Senator McCain's comments.

2. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Immunization Safety Review Committee all stated that no scientific evidence points to a link between the two.

3. The associate director of the American Council on Science and Health expressed disappointment that McCain seemed to be poorly briefed on the issue. "I would hope that, as president, he would have advisers who would get it right. I attribute this to a misstep rather than policy."

4. The program director of the Arizona Partnership for Immunization says "...It doesn't surprise me that someone would not completely understand what the science is indicating." The group advises parents to discuss any vaccination concerns with their pediatricians (and we already know what the American Academy of Pediatrics says. – emphasis mine.)

5. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that a family is entitled to compensation due to a vaccine's contribution to a girl's autism diagnoses.

Hmmmm. I wonder what Senator McCain really knew...

I'll stand by my article from last month – there are more questions than answers on this topic, and anyone who accepts the vaccination schedule as 100% safe across the board, dismissing any and all correlation between vaccines and autism, is probably earning a living from an organization who espouses that view.

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Ah, Springtime. It is absolutely beautiful out right now – warm enough to bask in the sun during the day, but it still cools off nicely at night. It's the perfect time to get outside and... Pull Some Weeds!

I don't know about you, but our yard's a mess right now. All the nice rain we had this winter set up perfect conditions for weeds to grow like crazy – especially in the desert-landscaping sections! I started to pull weeds, using my hands &/or a hoe, but they overwhelmed me after awhile, so I reached for the spray.

I hate spraying RoundUp or other herbicides, since Calvin is so sensitive to chemicals. Not to mention Jonas is still only 3 (for a few more weeks, anyway) and plays back there every day – he's awfully young to be exposed to harmful chemicals.

Last week, on the advice of a friend, I sprayed a section of weeds with White Vinegar. Plain ole, store-brand, $2.99 per gallon, white vinegar. And it worked great! Maybe not quite as fast as RoundUp, but a week later you couldn't tell the difference; the weeds are dead. This week I'll spray vinegar on the rest of the weeds.

I haven't tried using vinegar on weeds growing in the grass, as I'm afraid it will kill the grass, too. Maybe I'll dilute it and try it on a small area..? I've used Weed B Gone (another herbicide) the last couple of years. It works great, but I'd much rather have a natural, non-toxic remedy. If anyone out there has any ideas, please share.

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Saturday night's Wine & Cheese Event capped off one of the craziest weeks we've had in a long time, and the results were worth the effort! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and the event went off without a hitch. (well, except a slight technical glitch.. darn Macs.) I saw a lot of great things during the night, but there were a few things I was most happy with:

Success. We ended up just short of our goal, but our goal was set high. This event raised a record amount for Kris' Camp – yea! And that was without a handful of notable people friendly to our cause, who couldn't attend for one reason or another.

Next year. After moving to a new venue last year, and then implementing some new behind-the-scenes changes for this year, we've set the stage to do even better next year. I'm confident we're going to beat this year's numbers by a long shot next year.

Raffle Winner. Watching the drawing for the winner of the Plasma HDTV raffle was the highlight of the event. The winner is a special needs teacher and reading specialist, who works at Kris' Camp during her summer "vacation". She is one of the most energetic and engaging people you'll ever meet, and our kids love her without exception. I think the whole room was rooting for her to win (as a second choice anyway, if they didn't win!), and was genuinely happy to see her accept the prize.

Here's a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who participated &/or attended. We really appreciate your support!

Here's a BIG CONGRATULATIONS to everyone involved in putting this together – you all did a great job and made this a great event!

We'll see you at Kris' Camp this summer, and then we'll do it all again next year! ;-)

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Kris' Camp is a travelling summer camp program offering intensive therapy and education to children with autism and their families. We've been involved with the amazing folks from Kris' Camp for the last few years, and have been fortunate enough to attend camp the last two summers.

Cheryl is chairing the Silent Auction this year, which is going to be held this Saturday at St. Stephen's Hall – 16^th Street & Northern. I'm proud of the work Cheryl & her team (Michelle, Jen, and Tiffany) have put into this, and I'm looking forward to a great event!

Anyone is welcome to attend, buy raffle tickets, or make a donation. If you're reading this and you live in Arizona, there's no reason not to attend – you'll meet some great people, have a fun evening out, and help out a terrific cause.

This is a great organization, and we've seen firsthand how much they help families. Please click the flyer below for more information (and ignore the rsvp date!)

It'd be great to see you there!

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I had a chance to attend the KEEN (Kids Enjoy Exercise Now) town hall meeting earlier this week, and I came away from the meeting impressed with the people who are running it and with what they're trying to accomplish. They are absolutely dedicated to their mission, and they have a track record of success. They also have some pretty impressive corporate ties, sponsors, and "friends". Just as importantly, or maybe even more so, is that they know what they are and what they are not.

KEEN is not going to replace your current ABA program, or your other therapies, or your summer school/camp programs. They are not going to attempt to implement a full-scale, follow-the-rules game of basketball, baseball, or soccer. They are not imitating Special Olympics (although some of their athletes have gone on to compete in Special Olympics.)

KEEN is going to provide an outlet for your special needs athlete to burn off some steam, in whatever capacity he/she is capable of. They are going to provide one-on-one support in a semi-chaotic and free-flowing environment, where each athlete will be playing sports of his/her own choice and at his/her own pace. They encourage friendships among the athletes, volunteers, and parents. But mostly, they provide something for the athletes (and volunteers) to look forward to each week, and to enjoy. They provide side effects of increased coordination, self-esteem, and confidence. (and a little respite for parents!)

Applications are being accepted for athletes and volunteers. More info:

When? The program is scheduled to start on March 30^th. It's expected to be on Sundays and run for one hour. Exact times have not yet been determined.

Where? The initial location will be the Boys & Girls Club on 23^rd Ave & Missouri.

Cost? Free to both athletes and volunteers.

Commitment? Athletes will be asked to make a commitment to attend each week, as there will be a waiting list to join. Volunteers will have no commitments at all – show up whichever weeks you can.

Sign up form. as an Athlete or a Volunteer.

More Info? Visit http://www.keenphoenix.org/ for all the details.

I hope to see you there!

Ad: Need Sports Equipment for your athlete?