A quick word about Kidsave
Our Kidsave child (right) with another very sweet girl from the programI want to put in a quick plug for Kidsave, which is currently gearing up for its 2010 Summer Miracles program. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a program that brings older orphaned children to America for summer visits. The purpose of the trips are twofold: to give the children a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel out of their home countries, and to try to find adoptive families for them. (They also have a Weekend Miracles program for foster children in the United States, which you can read about here.)
Those of you who have been reading for a while may recall that our family participated in the Summer Miracles program last year. We’re not able to participate this year due to time and financial constraints, but we highly recommend the program to others. It was one of the most rewarding things we’ve ever done. We were matched with a lovely 12-year-old girl, pictured above, who was a delight to have in our home. You can read all my posts on the subject here. (Unfortunately I still don’t have an update about her. It’s been difficult to contact “Rita” since she returned to her rural Colombian town, and I’m not sure what the status is on possible adoption opportunities for her. I will post about it when I hear anything!)
If you would like to consider participating in the program, here are some helpful links:
- General information about Summer Miracles
- Pictures from the 2009 Summer Miracles program
- Information about upcoming info sessions
- Frequently asked questions (PDF)
Or, if you can’t participate but would like to support them financially, you can donate online here.
7 Quick Takes Friday (vol. 52)
Whew! I’m feeling quite a bit better after my little bout with the flu. I credit my quick recovery to lots of rest and Emergen-C. I guess it could be the placebo effect, but I really feel like Emergen-C makes a significant different in my body’s ability to fight illnesses. Anyone else have any favorite cold- and flu-fighting tips?
I got better just in time, because I’m getting on a plane tonight after the kids go to bed. My husband and I are taking a quick trip out to El Paso to visit my dad. He’s managing a cool construction project out there that he wanted us to see before it’s wrapped up in a couple of months, so he offered to fly us out for a tour. It’ll be a quick turnaround since I don’t want to test the limits of my mom’s chaos management abilities as she holds down the fort back here, but it’ll be fun to get a little change of pace nonetheless.
A couple of friends asked why we don’t just drive out there. The reason is because it’s a nine-hour drive from Austin to El Paso. We Texans often take the “subway in the sky,” cheap and easy Southwest Airlines, for travel between distant cities. (For a bit of obligatory Texas-is-big trivia, it would take about 15 hours to drive from the southern tip of the state to the northern tip.)
Speaking of Texas and travel: Fly down to Texas, have lunch with me, and you get to be in a TV commercial! Well, I guess I can’t guarantee that, although it did happen to Roxane Salonen when she headed back to San Antonio after our lunch a couple weeks ago.
Back on the subject of the flu, yesterday I got an email from “Maria,” the Colombian social worker who was here this summer with the Kidsave kids (whom I frequently mentioned in my posts on the subject), saying that she had the swine flu! She was hospitalized for 20 days but is better now. Thank goodness she’s OK!
A couple weekends ago my husband and I were honored to have Joshunda Sanders from the Austin-American Statesman join us at Mass as part of familiarizing herself with the local religion beat. It was a pleasure to meet her, and I enjoyed reading about her impressions of the service.
In the four-year history of this blog we have discussed some of the weightiest and most controversial topics known to modern man. Abortion, contraception, euthanasia, atheism, Christianity, the Catholic Church, suffering — you name it, we’ve talked about it. But there is one subject that would seem more pressing than all the rest, a topic so riveting that, when I brought it up recently, broke my “most comments in one day” record by a fair margin. And that subject was: Trucknutz.
I look forward to reading your posts!
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