I am loving Holland how about you??

“Welcome to Holland”

By Emily Perl Kingsley, 1987.  All rights reserved.

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability – to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It’s like this……

When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip – to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It’s all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.”

“Holland?!?” you say. “What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I’m supposed to be in Italy. All my life I’ve dreamed of going to Italy.”

But there’s been a change in the flight plan. They’ve landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven’t taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It’s just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It’s just a different place. It’s slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you’ve been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around…. and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills….and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy… and they’re all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say “Yes, that’s where I was supposed to go. That’s what I had planned.”

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away…because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss. But…if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn’t get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things … about Holland.

A visit at the Bougard’s…..

This past weekend was a very for me and my family as we finally got to meet Heather and Richard and of course little Danielle Bougard.. we spent the afternoon together enjoying lunch and chatting about about life in general, Simone and Nicole really enjoyed the swimming pool and spent most of their time in the water… while Leah and Danielle decided to laze in the summer shade and enjoyed the best seat in the house (Moms lap for those that need a little more info)

Danielle is just beautiful and it was so special to finally get to hold her. She is such a happy ,peaceful little soul and we are so happy to have met Richard and Heather who are just two awesome people doing and amazing job of raising a really special little girl.

Its amazing how God puts a plan together….. and im sure this visit was  the start of something good. So before I go on… and… on…( as I usualy get carried away with excitement) here are some pictures of our visit with the Bougard family…. and the pictures were all taken by Danielle’s dad Richard…. who captured some really amazing memories on film