Stay informed and DJ dramas from Life as a Gringo. No making smarter financial moves today secures your financial freedom for a successful tomorrow. Tackle these situations in stride and you of course be annoyed when an unplanned expense comes up but not let it be something that slows me down, right? As I did with repairing my credit, you know, hiring somebody to do credit repair for me. That was a gift that I gave myself that allowed me to then, you know, get my first apartment. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
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Call 1-888-842-6328 for details about credit costs. Hey, it's Angela Yee searching for the perfect new lipstick. Look no further than the new Spike Valentino buttery matte lip color with 10 hour comfort in a non-drying matte finish. Spike Valentino is that girl with gold aluminum packaging fully embossed with Mason Valentino signature studs.
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An organization that seeks to raise awareness and research on pediatric cancer and support both patients and their families. Here to tell the story is Christopher Cooley's mother, Kathy. Christopher was a normal boy by every sense of the word. He loved to play in the dirt.
He loved to do all boy things, climb, get in trouble, and just just be a little boy. When Christopher was three, Christopher started pausing while he was playing and telling us he was having backache, which was odd to us. And I mentioned it to the pediatrician. I said, Christopher's saying he has back pain and stops playing. And he said, that's not normal for a three-year-old.
He said, let's check it out. So they checked his kidneys. They did some different things. And they finally did a CAT scan and they told us in Joplin that he had a hernia. So they made arrangements to see a surgeon in Kansas City. And we drove up there. They wanted an MRI, so we had to be there very early. So we left when it was still dark outside with an overnight bag for all of us.
It was his dad, Tim, me, and Christopher. And we had an MRI and we went back to the surgery waiting room and the time came and went for his surgery and they didn't come get us. By that evening, the room had cleared out and the surgeon came to see us and called us into a room and he said, I've put you off to the end of the day because this is going to be a very big surgery.
This is going to take 12, possibly 12, 8 to 12 hours. It's not a hernia. Your son has cancer and we have five minutes and we've got to get him in there. And they rocked our world. We had five minutes to sit with our little boy and tell him he wasn't going to be coming out and going home today. He was going to be here for a while and we had no idea what we were in for. We were in shock and we just held him and told him he was going to be okay and they came and got him, took him, and we were just beside ourselves.
We didn't know what to do. And what was supposed to be a long surgery within, I think it was three hours, they came out and got us and told us that they could not remove the tumor. They got a piece of it so they could send it for pathology, but they were pretty sure it was something called neuroblastoma. I've never heard of neuroblastoma. I had no idea, but they said this tumor was the size of a football cut in half and it was wrapped around his heart, wrapped around all these major organs, so there was no way they could get it. And this is a little bitty three-year-old boy with a half a football in him. And we thought, how is that even possible?
I don't think anything could prepare you for that. We had our diagnosis meeting and started our first treatments before we left and then went home and had to completely rearrange our lives. But Christopher just kept being a normal little boy when he could. We had to go to the hospital every month for treatment. His diagnosis was in August.
In December, they had shrunk the tumor enough that they were able to go in and take it out. We spent Christmas in the hospital, and Children's Mercy is a fantastic hospital. They covered Christmas.
It was phenomenal. They really made those kids feel special. Christopher was, unfortunately, because of the surgery he was out of it, but he got a picture with Santa regardless. Santa stood over his bed and took a picture with him, and that was very important because at that point, we had no idea what we were facing and if that would be our last Christmas. I mean, hospital life was our life.
That was all we knew at that point. Christopher became friends with all of his nurses. They all loved him.
He was a lot of fun to be around. He always went by Christopher, but the nurses and people naturally just assume you're Chris. So for a long time, the nurses would come in the room and say, Chris, we're going to do this. Chris, we're going to do that. And all of a sudden, under his breath, you'd hear him say, Tufur.
Tufur. What? He said, she keeps calling me Chris. It's Christopher. And the nurses finally started catching on to that and just thought that was hilarious. And then they eventually didn't call him Chris anymore. They all knew he was Christopher. So he was a lot of fun for them and gave them a hard time.
He really enjoyed giving them a lot of teasing. At the old Children's Mercy, when we were first diagnosed, you shared a room. You had roommates, but we made the best of it. We made so many friends. And some nights we might decide, we're going to have a movie night. So we'd go drive somewhere and find out what snacks everybody wanted, including our roommates.
We'd do whatever we could to make it as enjoyable as we could. And the hospital does that too. They have music therapy and they have art therapy and different things. And one day, Christopher was, they were doing art therapy and he was drawing a picture. And after his bone marrow transplant, we had to do some radiation. So when you have radiation, you get tattoos so that they can pinpoint where they need to do the radiation. So he had tattoos going down his stomach where some of the radiation had to be. And kids with cancer also get something called a Hickman catheter.
But a Hickman catheter is attached directly to one of your main arteries, but it comes out of your body and then it has extra tubes where you can put medicines in or draw blood and do everything. So he had his Hickman catheter and he started drawing this figure with a Hickman catheter and his radiation tattoos and his little belly button and all these different things. And then he took some of the stuff she had brought in there and started putting these little hearts all around him, all around this body. And he had some feathers that he used on it also. And we said, what are you drawing? What is that? Who is that? And he told us, he said, that's me.
I'm going to be the angel of hearts. And at that point, you could have heard a pin drop. I mean, the lady who was in there with him left the room briefly because it shocked her. And and we were all looking at each other like, oh, what is he saying? Is he know something?
We don't know what is going on. But I mean, he just he never missed a beat. He just kept drawing and playing. And it was like, no big deal to him.
And that was a shock to us. But I believe he is the angel of hearts. He stole all our hearts and had the huge heart. When he was in the hospital, because he got to know all these kids and was constantly around these kids, when he was there, we would always get a balloon. We would go down to the gift shop and almost every day I'd bring him a different balloon just to try and cheer him up.
And it never failed when we were leaving. He always wanted to go share those balloons. He wanted to brighten somebody else's day. So he would take them to different kids in the hospital. Or if we went and bought movies or if we bought something for him, he would say, we need to buy one for the kids in the hospital, too.
So we always had to buy two because we had to take one to the kids in the hospital, too. So he just had a big heart and very empathetic, obviously, because he was going through it, too. But he wanted their day to be bright, too. So he just had a big heart and a big heart, too.
So he was pretty special in that way. And you've been listening to Kathy Cooley tell the story of her son Christopher and his bout with cancer. Hospital life was our life. And for anyone listening, that hospital life is your life, particularly if you have a child who's struggling. Well, this story is for you and for anyone else who hospital life is your life.
When we come back, more of the story of Christopher Cooley as told by his mom, Kathy, here on Our American Stories. Tackle these situations in stride and you, of course, be annoyed when an unplanned expense comes up, but not let it be something that slows me down. Right. And also, as I did with repairing my credit, hiring somebody to do credit repair for me, that was a gift that I gave myself that allowed me to then get my first apartment, get my first car under my name, then eventually buy my own home.
These are all things that are possible for all of us. We just have to educate ourselves and put in some of the hard work that it takes to unlearn bad practices we might have inherited from our family and then also educate ourselves on the things that we don't know, the information that wasn't passed down to us because our parents weren't educated on these things. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
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And can you hear that magnetic click? Discover the 12 shades and vibrant nudes and pops of color from couture in the streets to Spike opposed to its Valentino baby. Beyond its heritage, Spike Valentino includes a breakthrough ingredient story with light diffusing gel and cotton oil extract to keep lips looking hydrated and delivers high pigment color after one stroke. Wear it bold or soft and blurred for a more subtle look.
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Call 1-888-842-6328 for details about credit costs. And we return to our American stories in our story on Christopher Cooley, as told by his mother Kathy. When we last left off, Christopher had been diagnosed with pediatric cancer, something that impacts 46 children each school day, over 15,000 kids every year. Let's continue with the story. When we were home, he insisted that we go to church. At the time we were not Christians.
I had grown up in the Catholic Church, but I wasn't a practicing Christian. We didn't know where to go. We weren't going to church.
We'd tried several churches, never found a fit. So we talked to some friends of ours that were going to a church and we went to that church and that was it. That was our church. And he got us into church and he kept us in church. And we all found the Lord because of him. I mean, his dad and I were saved and he was saved. And I know God had his hand in that, just like he did in drawing this picture of the angel.
It was totally God guiding and using Christopher to write the story. I mean, he touched a lot of people's lives. And within that church, too, we did not tell people when we started going to church about Christopher and his cancer. We didn't want people to I don't know how to describe it. We just didn't want Christopher to be the kid with cancer.
And that's the only reason people have anything to do with him. You know, we just didn't want that. So we didn't tell people for a very long time, because at that point he was in remission. We were in remission. We didn't have to do any more treatments. We were good.
I mean, we still had to have lots of tests. And then when he started kindergarten, one of our church members said, you know, she was a kindergarten teacher. She said, I want him in my class. Great.
That's perfect. And at that point, we had kind of shared a little bit about, you know, having to go get tests and making sure. In his kindergarten year, he relapsed. And it was it was a challenge again. But we did it.
He did it. He was a trooper. Got him in remission a few times. And then eventually we were kind of running out of options. We had to start doing some experimental stuff.
So they sent us to New York for a monoclonal antibody treatment at Sloan-Kettering. And one day they were doing the treatment, and one of the doctors came through and they give him pain medicine, because the pain is a very painful treatment. He pushed some pain medicine, and I went to get a drink. And before I turned around to go back and I could see that he wasn't breathing. And I ran back in there and I said, he's not breathing. He's not breathing.
And my husband's looking at me like, you're crazy. And then he turned around. He wasn't breathing.
He had coded. So they shoved us out of the room and started doing resuscitation on him. Fortunately, another doctor had walked through at the same time, and he had some Narcan in his pocket. So he gave him some Narcan and they were able to bring him out of it. And eventually we did another experimental treatment in Houston. We did a vaccine therapy.
Eventually that didn't work either. So we were back at Children's Mercy, always our home. I can't tell you how much we loved Children's Mercy. After he coded in New York, I was on the phone with the doctors in Kansas City going, help me.
What do we do? I mean, they were just the best in the world, in my opinion. They cared about us and kept in touch with us the whole time, which was fantastic. But his cancer was getting bad and we were doing radiation and they had to go to the hospital. And we were doing radiation and then came home for the weekend because he had started having trouble walking. And he was using, we were using adult sized wheelchairs and the home health was going to get us a child wheelchair, but they had to deliver it to the house.
They couldn't deliver it to Kansas City. So we said, we're going to go home and get the wheelchair this weekend. And so we came home and it was on a Saturday that they delivered it. And he told us that day, he said, I'm not going back to Kansas City. And we said, well, yeah, honey, you are. We're just here to get the wheelchair and we're going to, you know, we'll spend the weekend here and we'll get to see people and people stop by.
People never stop by our house because we live out in the country and people just don't come see us. But that day, people were stopping by to see him, which was cool and good for him. He got to see people.
But by that night, we knew something wasn't right. And he had told us, he said, I'm not going back. And there was another little boy that he had known from Camp Quality.
Camp Quality is a camp for kids with cancer. And Christopher would go every summer. And Evan, another little boy from camp, he said, I'm going to go to Evan's. Well, we were supposed to go to Evan's the weekend before for a birthday party, but what we hadn't told Christopher was that Evan had passed away. He said, no, I'm going to, I'm going to be with Evan. And we said, well, I don't know that we're going to get to do that, you know, that you can do that. He said, no, I am.
I am. And by that night, by that night, we had called the nurse and said, something's, something's not right. And they had told us that his kidneys were shutting down and it just progressively got worse. And he, the week before our church had done a gospel sing as a fundraiser for him and they had video recorded it. So he said, I want to watch the gospel sing. So he laid in his room and he watched the gospel sing.
And they told us it probably wouldn't be long. And, and I don't know what time it was, but at some point he got up and he was just great. He, he felt good. He's going to the bathroom. The nurse said, Hey, I think in the morning, we'll go see if we can get, maybe there's just a blockage.
We'll go get something, put in a stent or whatever and drain him. And everybody left. It was great. And he came in my bed. We decided to go to my bed. And so he laid down in bed with me and his dad and his dad had gotten up to go out in the kitchen to do something. Of course he wasn't sleeping anyway, cause he was a nervous wreck.
And I had fallen asleep and I woke up to Tim telling me that he wasn't breathing. He waited until everybody left and he just slipped away on his terms. He made sure it was on his terms. He wasn't going to let us put him in a hospital or doing, and we weren't, we wouldn't do that anyway, but he, he made sure that it was the way he wanted it to be. And he knew he, when we look back, we see all these signs, you know, in the afternoon he had, he was sitting in the living room and he said, not yet.
And he wasn't looking at any of us. He was kind of looking up and he said, not yet, not yet. And I had said to him, not yet. What honey? Nothing, mom, nothing, just not yet. And I firmly believe he was telling God, not yet. I'm not ready yet.
You got to wait. And you're listening to Kathy Cooley tell the story of her son, Christopher, and my goodness, the fact that he brought his family to church and they weren't practicing Christians. And he somehow intuitively knew this was the right thing for his family, at least for himself and what happened afterwards. My goodness. And those words, not yet.
And then saying nothing, mom, like he was trying to protect her and what he was thinking about. When we come back more with Kathy Cooley and her son's story, Christopher here on our American stories. Stay farm knows making smarter financial moves today secures your financial freedom for a second tomorrow on my culture podcast network. We believe this too, by sharing money management tips that help you realize your dreams.
Like on our show life as a gringo with DJ dramas. Now we have a level of privilege that our parents never had. So what do we do with it? Right? How do we, how do we utilize the opportunities that we have that they don't? Right. And a lot of that is educating ourselves, educating ourselves on how to not make the same mistakes they did, how to not fall into those same traps and then how to not, you know, create the same difficult situations that many of us grew up in. Like I started the podcast earlier saying for me in my family, one of the biggest points of contention was finances.
And I know as I'd gotten older, I made it a promise to myself to say I don't want to relive that. Especially formulated to help you combat those issues that may arise. These supplements are free of seed oils, preservatives, and shady additives. And best of all, they taste delicious.
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And can you hear that magnetic click? Discover the 12 shades and vibrant news and pops of color from couture in the streets to Spike opposed to its Valentino baby. Beyond its heritage, Spike Valentino includes a breakthrough ingredient story with light diffusing gel and cotton oil extract to keep lips looking hydrated and delivers high pigment color after one stroke. Wear it bold or soft and blurred for a more subtle look.
Tell us how you wear Spike Valentino. Buying a home can be overwhelming these days. From start to finish, Navy Federal Credit Union's new home buying center has everything you need to get to closing with confidence like verified pre-approval.
A pre-approval shows sellers you're a serious buyer potentially giving you a competitive advantage when making an offer. Realty Plus connects you with an agent for continued support every step of the way. Lock and shop lets you lock in your interest rate for up to 60 days while you shop.
No refi rate drop gives you peace of mind to buy now knowing that if interest rates fall, you could decrease your rate without having to refinance for a small $250 fee. If you're overwhelmed by shopping for a new home, Navy Federal's new home buying center has solutions for every step of the process. Learn more at NavyFederal.org. Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA equal housing lender. Membership required. Terms and conditions apply. Loans subject to approval.
Call 1-888-842-6328 for details about credit costs. And we return to our American stories and our final portion of the story of Christopher Cooley as told by his mother Kathy. When we last left off, Christopher had sadly succumbed to his pediatric cancer. Here's Kathy talking about the importance of reaching out to families going through situations like hers and the organization, the Christopher Foundation.
She and her family created in honor of her son who did so much for their family in the few short years he was on this earth. One thing I would tell people who are friends or family members of someone going through that is don't give up on them. They may not be calling you back or they may not be answering you right away but they need to know you're there for them regardless. There's a huge difference for us. When Christopher was first diagnosed, our friends, very few of those are in our life because they disappeared. We heard not much from any of them.
Very few of them. Some of them we did. But when we started going to church and had different people in our lives, those people were there for us every step of the way.
Every step of the way. They would drive all the way to Kansas City just to see them and just to bring us a love package and snacks or whatever. Just to let us know that they were there for us and that they loved us. People always say what can I do for you or what do you need or call me if you need something. You're not going to call because you can't think like that. You're just living in the moment and doing everything you can to take another breath and get by. And sometimes it's so crazy that you you can't stop and think oh I need to call so and so and ask them for this. You're most likely not going to.
You don't want to ask people for anything. But if people take the initiative and do something it means a lot. Christopher passed away in February and we knew that Christopher wouldn't want us to stop doing things for those kids in the hospital that he still was doing things for, buying things for. So we started just by buying things you know buying movies buying things. And then we thought you know we need to do more. So we discussed with some people about starting the foundation.
It was the end of that year when we really started getting it going. But in November Christopher's birthday was November and sometimes it fell on Thanksgiving. Tim and I had talked and I said I don't think I can be in this house on Thanksgiving because at Thanksgiving it was always a big deal for us because it was his weekend.
We would whether it was actually on his birthday or not we would be celebrating and eating all weekend long starting at Thanksgiving. I said I just don't think I can sit here. I can't. And so we decided that we were going to cook for the hospital. I said why can't we? We know Christmas is covered great at the hospital but nobody does anything for Thanksgiving. So we made some contacts at the hospital they said oh yeah that'd be great. So we rented a residence in up there and we cooked it was just just us and the kids. We cooked turkeys and ham and mashed potatoes and corn and stuffing and gravy and rolls.
It was something to get done in a residence in. My brother-in-law and his they also rented a room and helped us but we did that and took that to the hospital and we thought you know we could do this if we start this foundation this could be something we do every year. So then we started thinking of different things that the hospital didn't do and Easter was a big one for us. Let me back up and tell the Easter story. Christopher had his bone marrow transplant.
We got out right before Easter. Pictures were important to us so we wanted that picture with the Easter Bunny even though he's not supposed to be around people we said hey can we at least go to the mall and get a picture with the Easter Bunny and they had to wear these big cumbersome masks if they're ever out in public. They said as long as he has his mask on you can take it down for the picture but we found a mall and when we were there we ran into a mom of one of the kids that we had been in the hospital with and we had found out when we were in transplant there was all these flowers and stuff at the nurse's desk. We weren't allowed to have anything in transplant and we started asking questions. Where's the flowers? Well this little girl had passed away the week before so here we are at the mall and we just run into this mom who we hadn't got to see yet and we told her how sorry we were that we didn't know and she had been pregnant but she had the new baby with her and we got to see the new baby and we talked about you know how how sad it was that Elizabeth didn't get to to be there and that drove home to us.
She was doing the same thing. She was getting her picture with the Easter Bunny and that drove home to us how important those pictures are and those things are so as part of the foundation we wanted to make sure that we could take the bunny to the hospital and those kids that can't get out could still get that picture. Those parents could have that picture of their kid with the Easter Bunny so that's that's another thing we wanted to do. So we started the next year. So we started the foundation. We had our very first fundraiser in 2002 and we decided we had it Christopher passed away on the first Sunday in February so we had it on the first Saturday in February and we've had it every year since then on the first Saturday in February we always have our annual gospel sing because he loved that gospel sing so much he was listening to that tape from things so that's why we do a gospel sing every year so people always ask me why a gospel sing because he loved that gospel sing he laid there and listened to those groups singing and that was just meant a lot to him and to us that they did that for him so that's what we do every year and we have you know silent auctions and things to go with it that weren't part of the original one but that's where we get all of our funding every year is from that gospel sing. I think one thing I would tell people when your child dies or anybody people quit talking about him and that broke our hearts because he's still our son and he means the world to us and there are very few people in our life that still will bring up stories and it's so special to us whenever someone will start talking about him and and remembering and and sharing a story about him with us because we can't make new memories with him all we have are those memories and to hear them means a lot so don't be afraid to talk to someone who's lost their child lost their child about their child because they want to know you remember them and they want to know that you thought they were special. When we were in New York we always had to walk to Sloan Kettering from the Ronald McDonald House and Tim and Christopher were walking ahead of me one day and there was an older gentleman out on his they call him stoops and he came down to me in the street and he said is that your son and I said yes it is he said there's something very special about him he said there's just something an an aura around him he said there's really something special about him he said I see these kids go by here all the time he said I've never stopped anyone he said I just want you to know your boy is special and that stuck with me forever I think sometimes we don't always truly listen to our kids and when it comes to God I think kids can be so much more in tune than we can sometimes they have such purity of heart and they don't have the jaded vision that we have from being in the world as long and if you just sit and listen to your kids you can learn a lot I mean this little little kid saved his whole family by taking us to church and and introducing us to Christ and a whole different way of life sometimes we need to just listen to our kids and a beautiful job on the production by Monty and a special thanks to Katrina Hein for the storytelling it was just so special and indeed we do have to listen to our kids and what a thing Christopher did you heard it from the mom our son saved our family when your child dies she said or anyone people stop talking about him or her it's so special when people bring up a story about someone you've lost we don't have new memories and by the way if you want to find out more about the Christopher foundation go to angelofhearts.org that's angelofhearts.org angelofhearts.org the story of Christopher Cooley told by his mother Kathy here on our American stories hey it's me Tyler those open earbuds are stylish the color the way it looks it looks almost like a earring you know so I feel like it could go with anything my style is very fun I feel like I always look like I'm on holiday I just really like playing around with it and tying it to the music so yeah I really feel like the music I'm making right now feels like a holiday so I want to look like it too check out bows.com for more Roku has what you need to make your college home away from home feel more like your own make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV or bring a Roku streaming stick to easily access all your favorite free and premium content like I heart radio stream your favorite playlist with the Roku vibe setting smart light strips to sync your music to millions of colors and make your dorm feel more like you make your dorm the place to be with Roku TV streaming players and smart lights head to roku.com or your favorite retailer to deck out your dorm we've all tried protein drinks on the go but why don't they taste more like the ones we make at home or from the juice bar they're too chalky and too sweet from sugar or artificial sweeteners we love the health benefits but hate the taste now you can finally get both with don't quit protein drinks loaded with 33 grams of protein 26 vitamins and minerals and a cleaner approach to ingredients that use no artificial flavors or sweeteners but still delivers that smooth texture and delicious taste we all crave fuel your perseverance with don't quit clean protein drinks get yours now at amazon sure the hollywood reporter makes it easy to stay on top of news about film tv fashion culture and the business of hollywood but to make it even easier head to THR.com and subscribe to our newsletters like Feinberg forecast and be in the know on the latest about award season or sign up for today in entertainment for a good sense of what's happening in the industry our THR charts newsletter highlights what content is trending and worth watching and where to find it head to THR.com for all of those and more and subscribe to our newsletters today this is Malcolm Gladwell from Revisionist History eBay Motors is here for the ride with some elbow grease fresh installs and a whole lot of love you transformed 100,000 miles and a body full of rust into a drive that's all your own brake kits led headlights whatever you need ebay motors has it and with ebay guaranteed fit it's guaranteed to fit your ride the first time every time or your money back plus at these prices you're burning rubber not cash keep your ride or die alive at ebaymotors.com eligible items only exclusions apply
