Hi Thanks for visiting my blog!
I'm Sandie Flannery ...and it seems like my entire life I have been involved somehow with Special Needs children. Back in grammer school, I was the 'future teacher of tomorrow' volunteering at lunch time to help with the special education kindergarteners. In high school, I started a Saturday morning Special Recreation Program. I got a Bachelors degree in Special Education from the University of Florida ("Go Gators!") back in 1972. Wow! I'm dating myself! And a Master's Degree in Early Childhood Special Education in 1984! I've been working in Early Intervention for over 30 years now!!!
After giving birth to two healthy sons, Kristopher, age 26, and Lee, age 23 God blessed me with my daughter Jillian Joan, age 18 who has Agenesis of the Corpus Collasum, a midline birth defect and is severely developmentally delayed. It was hard for me to understand WHY God had given me such an involved child especially after having had two stillborn daughters and I worked as an Early Intervention Teacher/Consultant! After I realized that He had been preparing me all along with the skills and support I needed to raise my Special daughter, I stopped questioning and accepted! But I still always thought that there was another reason that my life was the way it was and that God had given me Jillian. I knew He had plans for me!
Those plans were laid out clearly for me this summer when I found myself in an orphanage in Vorzel, Ukraine.
I had gone over there to help a dear friend, Jo Ann Torres and her husband Ruben bring back their three precious little girls with Down Syndrome, whom they adopted......
Thanks for inviting us to your blog! We would like to hear more of your story when you have time, you are a busy lady! We would LOVE to meet you and Jillian someday. You can never have too many grandmas! I will get Ben to ask about his Dad's office. So far we have gotten a bit of a mixed response about this adoption from our family. I wish they could be more understanding but we have found a new Reece's Rainbow family and support in surprising places. Thank you so much for everything that you do. How do we go about buying a bonnet? You should put a ChipIn widget on your blog. I bet a lot of the RR families on the message board would want to contribute too.
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