Last night I realized that I hadn’t taken a photo of Eva and she was already down for the night. So I missed getting a photo of her being 8 months old. Well, today I made sure I got a photo of her at eight months + one day old. Right now she is giving us a little grief because she will not go to sleep. She’s screaming bloody murder when we put her in bed and we have no clue. So she is up and smiling and happy to be with us. I’m a bit happy to have her up a little later only because I don’t get much time to spend with her at night. I come in and she is all smiles for me and today she was playing with her alphabet blocks and she motioned for me to sit with her (At least that is what I saw). So we played for a bit and then I ran to the North Attleboro Animal Shelter to take some photos of some of the cats. Oh they have some cute ones and I’ll be adding them to Flickr tomorrow. You might want to check out the post below I am looking for more photos. If you can’t take one with a sign then please send me a photo and a hope filled message. I would like as many as possible.

I got an e-mail today from Photrade. I haven’t used them in a while but I did do a write up back after Blog World Expo, anyway I have a free pro account for life. And it looks like if I invite people they get a free pro account for a year. I have 4 invites left. Tell you what. There have been many bloggers who are also photographers who have been in contact with me for a while. So they most likely have my e-mail address. If you would like an invite send me a note to my e-mail and if I still have them I will send you an invite. Many things have changed with Photrade since my phone conversation and I must say they have changed for the better. Check them out and let me know if you would like an invite.

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Over a year ago I was contacted by a former classmate who wanted me to help work on our 15 year high school reunion. I didn’t want to help, I had planned the 10 year and was burnt from all the people who could never be satisfied even if you dropped $1million in their laps. But she told me about another classmate of ours who battled Thyroid cancer and is a survivor and whose husband has stage 4 lymphoma. The reunion was to be a fundraiser for the family. It was hugely successful with a silent auction and donations from classmates. The money went to help Mike with treatments that were not covered by health insurance.

The family was also on Oprah’s big give and on the program the contestants paid off their mortgage and gave Mike a new truck and their three daughters got some small scholarships. Nothing was way too over the top a la Extreme Makeover Home Edition. In essence the family was given piece of mind because Mike is dying. He has terminal cancer. His latest Pet scan is showing that his tumors have grown.

I had thought that after I helped with the reunion my part to play was pretty much over but it was not. I was contacted by a woman who had met the family and she told me about how their town was now treating the family after The Big Give episode aired. They turned on the family and have been utterly small minded and horrible. The one thing that has been keeping Mike going has been hope and good wishes from people. The family had an online journal chronicling everything that was going on with Mike’s health. Then very negative comments started appearing on the journal and so they closed it and made it password protected.

The woman who contacted me runs a campground and she asked me if I could help make their stay over Memorial day weekend extra special. I sent an e-mail to many of my contacts who I thought would be receptive to sending a message of hope to the family. I got a fair response. Not a great response a fair response. But I was able to give the family a decent amount of messages of hope.

I am working on a second project. It was inspired by a blogger who said that something I should do should be photography related. So what I am looking for is to get as many photos of people from all over the world who are holding messages of hope. Think Good Morning America’s "Three Words". I am going to compile those photos into a video set to music to give to the family. Hope is what is keeping this family going and hope is what I want to give them.

Will you help me?

Please send a photo of yourself holding a message of hope to [email protected]. If you want to just send a photo that you already have and tell me the message of hope you want to have on the photo then I will add the text to the photo and to the video. The message must be of hope, no negativity, hope is what is keeping this family going.

I will also be creating a thank you message and post the video to my blog with links to every blogger who chooses to participate. I created a spark on Social Spark for this as well but have only gotten 2 takers.

You can read about the family here https://benspark.com/help-the-machinski-family.html

The spark is here http://socialspark.com/advertisers/benspark/sparks/274

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