One of my favorite Christmas movie series is Home Alone. In Home Alone 2: Lost In New York, Kevin McCallister decides that he is going to thwart the Wet Bandits from stealing all of the money from Duncan’s Toy Chest that was supposed to go to the kids at the children’s hospital.  Before launching a brick through the glass window he stops and says this poignant line, “You can mess with a lot of things, but you can’t mess with kids on Christmas!”, and with that he throws the brick through the window, shattering it into tiny pieces. That line has always struck a cord with me.

As the husband of the founder and C.E.O. of Foster Arizona, I get to see all of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. There are late nights, tight deadlines, lots of calls, emails and texts, meetings…the list could go on and on, but none of that is for us, it is all for the kids. As I sit here, I look at my Christmas tree. The lights are twinkling, the ornaments are hung and the star is on the top. All that it lacks are the presents under the tree but, Amazon seems to be delivering those almost daily. On Christmas morning our kids will wake up to what Christmas should be…a day together with family creating memories that they will carry with them for a lifetime.

This Christmas over 16,000 kids in Arizona’s foster care system will not wake up to that reality. Instead they will be waking up to different realities. Some in shelters, some in group homes, some in kinship placements, and some in foster homes. While there will be people there to love on them, it’s usually not family and it’s not home. Every year Foster Arizona tries to create a day where these kids can have the opportunity to, if just for a day, have a sense of normalcy and just be kids. This year Foster Arizona has partnered with the Arizona Science Center for our One Ticket. One Kid. One Day. event. These kids are in for a treat and for a day that they will not soon forget. But this day is not possible without you. Would you consider two things between now and the end of the year?:

• Give financially. All it takes is $20 per child for a ticket. Maybe you can sponsor 1 kid, maybe you can sponsor 10, but when you give, you directly impact a child’s life.

https://www.youcaring.com/arizonakidsingrouphomefostercare-1033433

• Give time. January 6 will not be possible without the 60 volunteers needed to host these kids. To me this is one of the greatest opportunities of these events, the opportunity to have a life-on-life connection with these kids. These are some of the most amazing kids that you will ever meet and all you have to do is say yes.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090849a8af2fa3ff2-oneticket

Brian Vehon

Foster Arizona