Our Miracle Baby!

Saturday morning we attended the Children’s Miracle Networks State-a-thon. R. was invited because she is considered a miracle baby, or a child born with an illness or disease who then in turn is eligible for assistance through the CMN. We are very gracious for the assistance we have already received through this organization.

The theme for the event was “Jungle”. In the center of the room they had a “tree of life”. Each miracle child’s name was listed on tree.

Here we are by R’s name. We also received t-shirts to wear while in attendance. They had a lime green tree on the front and on the back had the sponsors from the event along with the word “EXPLORER” All miracle child families were Explorers where, college participants were Villagers and CMN organizers/leaders were Safari Leaders.

The facility was very well decorated with vines hanging from the ceiling, animals on the walls, & animal huts all throughout the room.

A quick shot of daddy and R.

All of the miracle children posed for a quick picture. We were honored to meet various families who shared their stories with us.

R’s name on the tree.

When we were sent the invitation, it include a little questionnaire to fill out. One of the questions was what the child’s favorite jungle animal was. R’s. was the giraffe and I am sad that I did not get a picture of our morale leader the giraffe. He stayed up till 2:30am sewing his own costume which consisted of yellow pants with brown spots and a yellow shirt with extra long arms which he threaded long poles through to act as long front legs. Very creative.

This picture, however, was of another creative morale leaders group – The panda group. They referred to themselves as the Kung Fu Pandas though and were carrying toilet paper tube nun chucks.

A little entertainment from the drum line.

Another shot of daddy and his girly! She found these smelly poster markers and would not leave them alone.

This was from the dance off. The morale leaders taught the entire group in attendance a morale dance and boy was it long. It was a mixture of about 15 songs and ranged from cheerleader arm moves to crazy turns to disco. The room was divided and the two groups held a dance off.

Participants were encouraged to mingle with the families and hear their stories, ask questions, and play with the kids. R. attracted various people with cameras and of course she shows off for the camera. We do think she is adorable though, so we understood the attraction. I may be a little biased though because she is my miracle baby.

We also shared our story with everyone, danced, watched various entertainment groups and mingled with the other families. We had to leave early because R. needed a nap badly – she was getting quite cranky. We were sad we could not stay because we knew the activities for the afternoon would not disappoint. I just saw some photos from someone on facebook and it looked like they had jello wrestling, limbo, parachute, and the miracle families could also participate in a hot air balloon ride. We didn’t go back to the event because we had other commitments to attend that night.

We will definitely be attending again in the future.