Buddy Walk Approaching Soon

Hello Friends,

Buddy Walk is coming soon. It is on Saturday, October 3rd. I thought we could walk together and afterward have a picnic lunch. Registration is online or between 9AM and 10AM. The walk starts at 10AM. Please bring friends and family that you want to come along. This is a family friendly place. Then afterward we will be bringing our own lunch and eating together. We are all a little unfamiliar with the area. Here is my cell phone number 253-678-7772 and we will just meet up with each other that way.

Please make a comment here if you are planning on attending. This way we will know who to look out for.

Welcome to Holland

by Emily Perl KingsleyPrint Version

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 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...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 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.

© 1987, by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved.

Reprinted with permission of the author.

I found this adroable story on the National Down Syndrome Congress website. I enjoyed it and wanted to share! We are so thankful for our Holland.