Taylorsville High School Charity Week

Every year Taylorsville High School chooses a charity to donate to during their Charity Week.

This year they chose Intermountain Healing Hearts!

A few Heart Moms and I went to their kick off assembly to speak and show off our cutie patutie Heart Warriors. Two of our Board members spoke about IHH and CHD's. Then each of us introduced ourselves, our kids and explained their CHD's to them.

As one of the Board members was speaking she was saying how you would never be able to tell that these kids had such broken hearts. That they look normal, but tire out faster than a "normal" kid and turn blue in the cold. Other than that you would never be able to tell unless you saw their scars. At that point she asked her son, Jack, if he wanted to show the students his scars. He proudly pulled his shirt up and showed off his zipper and other badges of courage. He got such a huge applause it made me cry!

While we were speaking Tanner got restless. He kept trying to pull me back to the bleachers from standing in the middle of the gym. Since I couldn't go I let him go by himself. He ended up making a game out of running back and forth to me. Each time he did it I would hear an "awwww" from many of the students. They just loved him and all of the littles!

Another thing Tanner did that I don't want to forget is he spotted the stairs going up the bleachers. He is really into stairs lately and wanted to go over to them. I still had to stay in the middle of the gym so I let him go again. He climbed allllll the way to the top of those stairs! I of course had my eye on him the entire time, but I was very touched that all of the students on each row of bleachers extended their hands to him if he needed it and made sure he wouldn't fall.

I was happy to let Tanner run around and have all of those students see that he is very "normal" and of course what a cute and tough guy he is!

He was a little nervous about the crowds, so he sate behind me between two bleachers.

The students did a relay race with a bunch of different balls. Of course Tanner wanted them. So after they were done I let him run over and get himself a ball to play with.

Then all the other kids joined in.

Our beautiful Heart Moms and Heart Babies.

One of our heart buddies is obsessed with balloons. He spotted old balloons stuck on the ceiling in the gym and kept trying to get some of the students to help him get them down. Since that wasn't possible two girls ran to the store and got all of the kids their very own balloon!

That sweet gesture just made these kids' day.

The girls that got the balloons and the BOC.

 These special kids just melted the hearts of the teenagers that I have never seen happen. They were all so sweet and caring to our little ones that it has restored my faith in humanity. For this generation at least.