When we got to the Ronald McDonald House after getting “hooked up”, it was time for a free pizza dinner and pumpkin painting. He ate two pieces of pizza and painted his pumpkin “sparkly blue”. Only 4 of the kids that we saw were wearing costumes and 3 of them were little boys (including Eli) dressed up as Spiderman. 🙂 Our new friend Charisma, whose son Emmanuel also has Neuroblastoma and is the “muscled up” Spiderman in the picture, snapped some pics with her iPhone and e-mailed them to me.
http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/NewYorkCity/photo#5126980045689590354 From New York City
After the Ronald McDonald party, the backpacked Spiderman (yes, he’s still wearing the costume today and yes, he slept in it last night) made his way to Barbara and Stewart’s apartment to visit them and their dog Uno. They have a 16 year old son, James, who is a great kid as well, but we didn’t see him tonight. Eli had a blast playing with Uno and checking out the goodie bag that Barbara got for him at the Bloomingdales trick or treat event he missed out on. There is something about the Zobian clan that makes Eli come out of any shell he was in during the day and he feels right at home with them and has a blast. Uno wore his Superman outfit to compliment Eli’s costume. Oh yeah, and Spiderman stopped by the Zobian apartment to drop off a special picture for Eli. He was so thrilled with it. He talked about it the rest of the night and it even made it into his prayers. Every night I ask Eli what we should thank God for and here was his list tonight: “Dear God, thank you for the Spiderman picture. Dear God, thank you for Spiderman. Dear God, thank you for Barbara. Amen.” Mine sounded a lot like that Eli’s, but I had about 1,000 more things to add in addition to Eli’s top 3. 🙂
http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/NewYorkCity/photo#5126980011329851970 http://picasaweb.google.com/HornIT/NewYorkCity/photo#5126980088639263330 Thank you all for your great voice mail messages. He was laughing tonight at a few of them. Sure enough, I usually have to pause them and restart them because he has so many questions. Here’s a perfect example. “Hi, Eli, this is Janice from Oklahoma.” Eli: “What is Oklahoma dad?” 🙂 Five minutes later we are able to resume until the next question comes out. It’s definitely a highlight of our day!