Before the trip every year, Kidd’s Kids sends out a family questionnaire to each family so we can get to know them a little better before we all get to Disney World.

Well we just got back this note from Landon Carlson’s dad and we wanted to share it this morning…

You can donate any time at KiddsKids.org…

VIDEO

LETTER

As the dad, I’m usually the last to know things, but that’s typically because my wife takes care of pretty much everything☺. For this though, I happened to be the one that opened the envelope. Libby (my wife) has had to take on an extra house cleaning job to help pay the bills so she was gone at the time. I opened the envelope and read the first sentence. Time froze. I read the first sentence at least four times… ”Dear Kidd’s Kids Family: We are very excited to announce your family has been selected to attend this year’s Kidd’s Kids trip to Walt Disney World!”
When you have a child with a chronic illness you adapt. You have to. Part of that adapting for us was to take that dream every parent has, the one of taking their kids on a trip to Disney World, and put it in a box, and put that box away somewhere in a closet, because you know it will be out of reach. Well, I’ve learned one sentence can change everything. I didn’t even read what came next, I just immediately called my wife. When she didn’t answer I started texting her pictures of the letter we just got. When she finally got the messages she called me back in disbelief. I’m pretty sure her feet didn’t touch the ground the rest of the day.

Then, finally, my first real thought hit me. It was on acts of kindness. You see I knew that a single act of kindness could have a big impact on someone. And a single ‘big’ act of kindness could have an impact on a whole family. But when you receive a gift like this, one that is built off of hundreds if not thousands of individual acts of kindness from people you’ve never even met, now that gift carries a lot of weight. So I thought about all the people that must have contributed to this act of kindness, many of whom I’ll probably never get a chance to meet, many who will never even know my family but still they gave. I thought about all the other families who have received this in the past and those who are going with us this year. I thought about Caroline Kraddick and how without her passion to keep this charity going we would never have this opportunity. I thought about the love of our friends who nominated us and the hard work of my wife to help see this through. Receiving a gift like that is very humbling. An act of kindness like that gives a family memories, gives my family memories that we will keep forever. Then I thought “WE’RE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!!!”