Our Summer Obsession

Our friend Kathy has a beautiful family.  A boy named Tommy, and little girl, named Kyla and a  baby girl named Macy.  Macy was born with a little something extra, Trisomy 21 Down Syndrome.  We follow her family Blog and enjoy seeing a small glimpse into their life.  On day on her blog we saw a post that didn't make much sense to us, but got us interested and wanted to find out what she was talking about.

That lead us to THIS.  The Cox family in the Ukraine adopting a 4 year old girl with Down Syndrome.  Rachael and I were instanly hooked.  We checked this blog every day, multiple times waiting for an update on their daily visit with Mia Kareen.  Rachael would call me at work and say "New Post" and I would be trying to pull it up on my cell phone or run home at lunch to check it out. 

From there we went to the "Blog's I follow" on Kareen's page and have followed some of the other families who have a child with down syndrome.  Rachael has always had a soft spot for children with down syndrome, when she was in Head Start a little boy in her class had down syndrome and she wanted to learn sign language to communicate with him.  We picked up a basic sign language book and learned some sign language.

This is the best video ever - Mia Kareen - one less orphan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUo3F-t8GM

It is great that Rachael and I have such a fun thing to share with each other.  We don't know any of these people, but are so thankful for the love that we feel for them and the children that they have brought into their homes. 

Many of these families have shared this story on their blogs and it is one that we now treasure:

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,

“Well, I made a difference to that one!”

Thank you to the Cox family for making a difference not only to Mia Kareen, but to us.  We are better because of you.