A little piece of heaven

I promised an awesome giveaway so here it is. And when I mean awesome I mean AWESOME because the Kinect ROCKS.

And why, oh why, might you think, am I giving away a kinect? There are 2 reasons:

1. Because it is SO MUCH FUN for the whole family! This is a giveaway that even the mommies can enjoy. Most of us don’t ever have time to go to the gym or exercise. With the kinect you can work out, lose weight, stay healthy…all from the comfort of home. It is so much more fun than the WII! Typical kids will love it and the SN kiddos that are mobile can exercise and therapize while having fun. Check her out:

I wish that were me but it is not. But I have as much fun doing it as she does!

2. Because I need some help. We have been working with Nathan’s Dynavox for about 6 months now, and have made progress but I keep thinking there is so much more we could be doing with him. So I figured I’d combine a fun giveaway with a request for HEEEEEEEELP.

How can you help Nathan and enter to win a kinect?

We need ideas for boards to add to his dynavox. Here are a couple of examples of Nathan working on his dynavox:

The computer reads his retina, so he can look at a box that we pre-program, and it will say whatever we program it to say. In the example above, it had “simon says” in the middle, and the other boxes were actions, like jump up and down, dance, tickle me, etc.

Now we need ideas for MANY MORE boards like the ones above. We need boards that will help him learn in a fun and enticing way. Boards that will teach him the power of learning and communication in an enjoyable way.

Some examples of other boards that we have are:
– Choices for places to go
– Choices for toys to play with
– 4 boxes with the sequence and instructions for making a smoothie
– Choices of movie clips and sound clips
– Choices of books to read, and a box that says “turn the page” while another says “another book”

So what does a Kinect have to do with the Dynavox?

We need your ideas for new boards. For every board idea that you give us, you earn an entry. You can have unlimited entries. If I really like an idea, I will give you triple entries. Simply post your entries as a comment on this blog. Or if you post on facebook, a yahoo group, or somewhere else, please post a link in the comments on this blog so I know where to find it.

Entries will be written into papers and thrown into a box.

Watch Nathan pick the winner LIVE online!

On Dec 17th, at a predetermined time, Nathan and I will go online and do a live webcast drawing. You will be able to log on to this website and see Nathan and I in real time in our living room as Nathan draws a name from the box. The person whose name he draws will then win the Kinect PLUS a game of their choice. I will mail it right away so they get it before Christmas.

You can also gain extra entries by doing any one of the following:

Bonus entries:
• Follow PrayforNathan on Twitter.
• Tweet about this giveaway (once per day, please). Here’s a tweet: Win ax XBOX Kinect from @prayfornathan, ends 12/17, http://tinyurl.com/28e9njx
• Place a link from your website to prayfornathan.org
• Announce this contest as your facebook status for your friends to participate
• Post on other blogs or Yahoo groups announcing this contest, email me the links, and for every post you will gain an entry.

You must leave your email address with your entries, so I can contact you if you are the winner.

Good luck and thank you for helping us help our superhero!

We are trying out the Thevo Twist wheelchair and the Recaro swivel car seat for Nathan:

So far I really like both of them!

The Thevo Twist is pretty light, the chair comes off the base, it is easy to push, it tilts and reclines, and Nathan looks pretty comfortable in it. He will have TONS of room to grow and I think it looks like an all around good wheelchair!

The Recaro swivel car seat is a nice, well-padded, supportive car seat that also swivels. So instead of trying to get Nathan into the seat while it is facing forward, we swive the seat so it faces us as we try and get him into the car, which makes the process SO MUCH easier.

Now we have to get them funded so wish us luck!

On our way to Chicago for some work meetings I sat next to a high powered businessman and we started talking about our kids, and the conversation rapidly evolved into discussions about our jobs. He works in marketing and is focusing on internet marketing, so we had lots in common to talk about. After a few minutes he told me that he spent 11 years working on the “Got Milk” marketing campaign, and that he was one of the first marketing executives to work on that account.

What I heard was pretty eye-opening.

He explained to me that, since milk is an expensive commodity (yes, a COMMODITY), their challenge when they started the campaign was to make people believe that it was NOT a commodity but a NECESSITY.

So what they did was they formed an alliance where all of the milk distributors teamed together to hire a very expensive PR agency. They created a “tax system” whereby for every single container of milk sold, a percentage would be paid for marketing the “milk collective”. So if you think of the “got milk” campaign – you never think of a brand – it promotes drinking milk, any milk, not a brand. By forming a collective it allowed them to have a much larger advertising budget for the product, and then they would all benefit from the campaign.

11 years ago the budget started at 35 million dollars a year to promote milk.

When he left the PR agency 4 years ago the budget was 235 million dollars a year.

Yes, my friends, 235 million dollars to promote milk. To tell people that milk is a necessity, not a commodity. To shift perception of milk so people think it’s healthy. To convince people that milk is the only source of calcium and that we all need it for bone health. 235 million dollars a year so every household in America would permanently keep a gallon of milk in their fridge.

Next time you believe that you HAVE to give your kids milk, you’ve been conned.

The truth is:

– Milk is NOT the only source of calcium – there are many other very healthy sources of calcium.

– You need magnesium to absorb calcium – so it’s very possible that you’re not absorbing ANY calcium from milk unless it has magnesium, and then you will only absorb as much calcium as there is magnesium.

– In order to meet the demand on milk, distributors use hormones and other products to increase production of milk and special tools to extract it. Often there is blood in the milk from these products which then cannot be removed and is disguised in the sold product. Also, what and how are those cows being fed? Doesn’t that affect quality of the milk?

– Milk proteins are very large and difficult to digest, and can cause problems for people with sensitive digestive systems.

– There are wonderful calcium/magnesium supplements that are better for the body than milk, like Floradix.

– Raw organic milk has valuable enzymes and other health benefits.

The obvious question is, if you stop giving your child milk, what can you replace it with? Here are some good milk replacement suggestions:

– Coconut milk
– Almond milk
– Hemp milk
– Rice milk

Some people also use soy but I am not a big fan of soy because the proteins in soy are also hard and difficult to digest.

I hope you find this as enlightening and eye-opening as I did!