Special needs

This past weekend during our little jaunt to the big warehouse yard sale in Opelika, there was a special memory made. Chad, who is 21, and a special needs guy, usually goes along with whatever we are doing. He may or may not repeat numerous times that he wants to go back to home base and listen to his music or play his games but he never complains or whines or causes any frustration to us. He just repeats :) whatever is on his mind until he thinks he got a satisfactory answer. I personally enjoy him alot and our mutual love for Michael W. Smith music is always fun to share.

On the way over to the yardsale we told the 3 kids they could find something for $5 or spend a total of $5 on whatever they wanted. Harrison busted into the store with definite opinions of the treasure he wanted to find. There was no doubting when he found his bead chain necklace, his scary mask and freaky feet, and one of those whirly tubes that makes a cave sound when you swirl it. He was a happy camper! After he was quite satisfied with his finds, I asked him to assist me in helping Chad find something. I've discovered that he likes the challenge of helping and continue to praise him for that gift in his nature. Meantime, I helped Alex pick out a girl swirly stick that had rainbow streamers and then she wavered back and forth between a dress up outfit to take home and a wooden horse for dolls. She chose the horse :)
There were 5 or 6 rows of numerous booths and it was quite frankly hard to keep up with those 3 wanting to go in all directions. At one point the kids found a treadmill to play on while Pops supervised and I was able to scan the area for SOMETHING Chad might want. There was no cd's of interest and not much else for a special needs guy of age 21. Then suddenly he told me he wanted a radio, ah! So the 5 of us set out again to walk up and down each row looking for any kind of radio of sort. Wouldn't you know that the last row of vendors on the floor under a table, Harrison spotted a boombox. There were several older adults sitting there at this booth and they all jumped up when they saw 5 of us coming to look at their stuff. Chad ran to it and bent down and YELLED "Look, look it is only $5.00!!!!-yeah man, yeah Lolli, yeah Pops, look, Harrison, look Alex--- I got me a radio and a cd player in one!" HE was ecstatic and seeing him like this, so were we and the vendors of this booth, especially since it was the last hour of the sale and they were anxious to clear out their inventory!

Everyone was hugging each other and we did not even know these people.

I am telling you this boy was so happy and we still had to eat lunch before we went home. Let me just tell you, we heard 50 times during our hamburger lunch that he was going to play his music all weekend on HIS boombox and he was still shaking his head that it was only $5. I was a tad bit concerned that it would have a glitch in it but held my breath til we got home and sure enough the boombox did us all proud... Our house rocked this weekend! My soul will always smile back on this memory with Chad. He is a very special guy.

(click on the link here to hear Chad tell about his excitement)http://v13.nonxt2.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?id=4e8c58497c762c3e&itag=18&app=blogger&ip=0.0.0.0&ipbits=0&expire=1291571331&sparams=id%2Citag%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Cexpire&signature=4936361D0C1AB1BDEC81A9CD64BCD5D29350AF08.57F18B14C503182BD01D2126948FFBD39A94960&key=ck1