Joel's last day of school, just before his back surgery, was April 25th. After getting his back fixed, he never returned to school. In the last four months, we have had minor breaks, here and there, for a day or two at a time. Last summer, we would get at least a week off at a time, but as Joel grows, his mom can only take him for that long.
So with today being the first day of school, I'm beyond excited...we will now get six straight hours of respite everyday!! Woot woot! And yes, I'm one of those parents who look at schooling as glorified baby-sitting (in Joel's case). Not that I don't care what he's doing in a day, but I don't care whether he reaches his personal goals the school lays out for him at the beginning of the year. I just don't. Joel is who is and we love him, no matter whether he can count to 50 or knows how much change he should get back.
The other thing I am excited for is picking up our new wheelchair accessible van this week. Starting in April, I applied to the President's Choice Children's Charity and to Telemiracle to get funding for a new van. Our current vehicles just don't work for Joel. First off, there's the big red beast that does have a lift on the back, but not all of the doors work, so Mike has to climb in and out through the working doors to unlock the non-working doors to get Joel in. Once Joel is inside, Mike is having to bend down all over the place to secure the straps and locks. It's a lot of work and so Mike has stayed with using our smaller mini-van to transport Joel. This means needing to lift 100lb Joel in and out of his wheelchair everytime we want to go somewhere. Needless to say, we don't go many places. Especially not as a family, since it means Miss K sitting way in the back.
Our new van is almost 100% covered between the two charities - PC covers the van portion, Telemiracle covers the lift portion. We're on the hook for any extra features we wanted in the van, so we end up paying roughly $3000 for a 2013 Grand Caravan. We need to drive down to Regina this week and pick it up. I'm beyond stoked, mostly because it means we can sell the big stupid red van. I'll post more on the specs of the new van when we get it :)
The application process was long and tedious and I wouldn't have been surprised if they had asked for a urine sample. Telemiracle was super friendly and very easy to deal with. They are an actual charity and go the distance to help people. PC Children's Charity? Not so much. They are a corporation, first and foremost. I had to argue with them and then resort to begging to get Joel approved. Superstore ended up doing a presentation to us and the local media wrote up a story. I was a little miffed that the article made it sound as though the local store banded together to raise these funds for us personally. In actuality, I had to work my ass off and just about give away my first born in order to get that funding.
Regardless, we are beyond thankful we will get this van. It really will improve Joel's quality of life and now when he asks to go to Future Shop to look at movies, we don't have to moan and groan about how much work it is...instead, we can just bitch about how much money he spends on movies :)
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