July 22-24, 2016 "First Mini-Vacation!"

I started to list all the wonderful gifts/donations that people have given us in the past but there are so many that I thought I would miss someone. Please know that we greatly appreciate each and every one.

I had some very sweet, loving, caring, giving, and concerned first graders in my class this past year. They were always asking about Rayden, bringing him gifts, making him things, and telling me how much they pray for him. One special child, Maddie Gray Hales, was always asking me if I could take Rayden to the beach with her when she went. Of course, I didn't take it too seriously. At the end of the school year Maddie Gray and her mom handed me the sweetest invitation to take Rayden to the beach. We are so grateful to Rebecca Hales and her family for offering us their beach house for the weekend so Rayden could get his little toes in the sand.

We only took Rayden to the beach in the evenings when the sun was going down, the crowd was gone, and it wasn't so hot. He was not afraid of the water one little bit. He wanted to get down and splash in it. When we put him on the sand, he immediately picked up a shell and tried to eat it! He wanted to sit so close to the water that it would splash on his little toes. He laughed so hard he cried.