"Little Boy Gets Chance to Play With Big Toys"

That was the title of the story Jeff Nelson from our local news station, WWNY-TV 7, did about Michael today. But I'm getting ahead of myself - let me go back to the beginning:

If you remember back in February, my boss's son-in-law, Bob, sent Michael a box of New Holland construction merchandise he gathered while photographing a trade show in LasVegas. Bob is a freelance commercial photographer who does a lot of work with Ford and New Holland. Michael enjoyed that box of goodies so well that Bob contacted the people at New Holland and they gathered an even bigger box of stuff for Michael. This box included several more toy tractors, a football, a soccer ball, shirts, jackets, hats, thermal coffee mugs, key chains... and the list goes on and on. It was like Christmas in April! And our family thought those 2 generous acts of kindness were more than we could ask for - but we were wrong!

(Daddy and Michael tossing his new New Holland football around.)

Little did we know, Bob was working hard to find a local New Holland dealer that would allow Michael to see the big equipment up close. And he found that in Joe at Tracey Road Equipment. Tracey Road Equipment is a dealership of big construction equipment (really BIG construction equipment) that has a location here in Watertown. In fact, they are located just off Interstate 81 and we pass it every week on our way to chemo. Michael looks every time we drive by and notices if there is any new equipment or if anything has been sold.



Joe and the other guys at Tracey ran with Bob's request to allow a little boy a chance to test out the big machines. They arranged to have a lunch of a couple of Michael's favorite foods, cheese pizza and hot dogs. They had a pile of gifts for Michael - some model toys, a couple of hats, a calendar, a can coolie and a "real" hard hat that one of the guys had airbrushed Michael's name on. And of course, the chance to "drive" a bulldozer, an excavator, a roller and an articulating dump truck.


And watching the fun today besides Jeff & myself were Jenny, Brian, my Dad, Jeff's Mom, Michael's Uncle Jeff and reporters from both our local TV news and newspaper. WWNY-TV7 aired the story tonight and has a video, a written brief summary and a couple of pictures from their story on their website which you can see here. Michael really enjoyed seeing himself on TV! The story will be in the newspaper tomorrow and I will post a link when it is up.

Michael is not feeling well tonight so I am going to end this post here and go cuddle him. I will post the Watertown Daily Times link and more pictures tomorrow. Please keep Michael in your thoughts and prayers, JoAnne