A week and a half ago I shared a little video introduction of our friend Claire. So many of you immediately opened your hearts (and your wallets!) and offered love, compassion, letters, packages, and support for the Fuchs (“fewks”) family. I can’t thank you enough for your kindness, willingness to serve, and sweet gestures. I know Karlee + Chris (Claire’s parents) + Jacob (her brother) feel incredibly blessed through this whole experience. Karlee + Claire have been working on many, many handmade thank you cards lately.

Guess what? Claire Bear is now HOME from the hospital! I will fill this blog post with pictures from our visit yesterday but first … have you noticed the sidebar on my blog? Looks a little different, right? When I introduced Claire, I also announced an Ads for Claire campaign to help raise dollars for Claire’s newly-acquired needs. We were completely blown away by the number of individuals and companies that contacted us. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to all of these sponsors! 100% of what they paid to have ad space on my blog went straight to the Fuchs family.

Everyone: Please click refresh to ensure these ads show up the way they’re supposed to.  : )

Readers: Please take time to click on the ads and see what fun things each sponsor has to share with you as far as inspiration, products, or services. These ads will be here for just this month of February … and then they go away.

Advertisers: If you notice anything at all that needs to be adjusted with your ad, please email karolyn@beckyhiggins.com so we can fix it straight away. This is our first time placing ads on my site and it’s definitely a new experience for us.

Note: Because of the nature of this fundraiser and the need to keep the entire process very, very simple – we are not taking any more sponsors at this time. Anyone who wants to reach out to the Fuchs family with a note of encouragement, or a letter in the mail, or even a cash donation, can find that information HERE.

Special thank-yous: In addition to the sponsors, I am so very grateful to Karolyn + Brandi – two of my very dearest friends who managed this whirlwind project – Ads for Claire. They are amazing. I am eternally grateful to my brother Andrew who constantly works his magic on my website, and especially for staying up super late last night to get all of the ads in place in time for today. And a huge, huge thank-you to David. He is always thinking inside the box, outside the box, on top of the box … he’s seriously genius. As we were brainstorming how we could help the Fuchs and pull off some sort of fundraising effort, it was David that thought of doing the ads. Smarty pants.

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Before Claire returned home, there was so much work to do to make their home wheelchair accessible. There is still work to do, and it’s not quite finished yet, but so much progress has been made – thanks to many volunteers in our community. Her bed/bath area is nearly done.

I wish I had a before picture, but their driveway used to be pavers and now they have a beautiful concrete driveway that makes it easy to get Claire safely between the front door and the car safely in her wheelchair. So many people (adults + youth) worked hard to remove + stack all the pavers in preparation for the cement to be poured over the weekend.

You can imagine my delight when Karlee busted out Claire’s baby album and some old scrapbook pages she made. I am loving the pictures of little Claire! And I am loving that Karlee is ready + motivated to pick up where she left off. As soon as the dust settles in their home, she’ll be getting loads of pictures into a Project Life album.

Love, love, love this girl. Oh – and this family picture? This is the MOST RECENT family picture they have had taken. (Not including the very impromptu picture I snapped yesterday, at the top of this blog post.)

Um. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Yeah. I totally know that we are so going to make sure that this darling, amazing family has a darling, amazing photographer in Arizona take pictures of their family soon. Are you with me on this? I’m giddy about the idea, actually.