Make a Wish

If you're not familiar with the Make a Wish Foundation, it may be one of the coolest, more generous organizations we've ever run across. The idea behind it is to allow kids with life threatening illnesses make a wish, and see that wish granted.

They let kids meet random Nascar drivers, take them on shopping sprees, buy them computers, attend sporting events and play catch with famous baseball players, buy huge playground equipment for the backyard, and countless other things.

The time has come for Joshua to make his wish.

So we had a meeting last night with Jacilyn, his make a wish consultant. Now here's the thing - there have been families in the past who have tried to work the system a little bit, making their kids wish for a new hummer or to have their mortgage paid off. So we knew that wouldn't work. But to prevent that, each consultant has an interview time with the kid where they draw pictures together and answer questions. My assumption is that they take all this information to craft the experience.

Joshua's interview was pretty revelatory. Here are a few choice tidbits, complete with what we were thinking:

Jacilyn: What's your favorite food?
Joshua: Strawberries
(Wow - pretty healthy start Joshua. Maybe you should have said prime rib.)

Jacilyn: How about junk food? Do you like chips, or candy?
Joshua: Yes. I like Sunchips.
(Hmmm... we've had Sunchips once. At lunch yesterday. Daddy likes Skittles, Joshua.)

Jacilyn: What if you could have anything in the world? What would you want?
Joshua: A Wall-E movie.
(What? Really? How about a life sized robot to cook and clean instead? Or maybe a hummer?)

Jacilyn: If you could meet anybody in the world? Like a football player or a baseball player?
Joshua: Eli. I would meet Eli.
(That's great. Your cousin Eli. That you see 3 times a week.)

In all seriousness, though, it was awesome. Joshua did a great job, and he did just what he was supposed to do - be honest. We will not at this time be revealing what the end result of his wish is; you'll have to wait a while to find out, but we're pretty excited.