Well, the Hartwig’s had a snafu this morning. At just the last minute the company that was going to build the custom deck for Taylor’s wheel chair had to back out of the project.

Well, never fear, the City of Oak Grove is not without it’s own hard working day laborers!

The Sni-Valley Fire Department stepped in and volunteered to build the deck for Taylor.

At the crack of ‘hot coffee and cold’ they showed up, tools in hand and hats on head. With no shortage of energy or enthusiasm they quickly started the project.

The photo to the right was taken at about 11:00am this morning.

A local concrete company has volunteered to put in a sidewalk from the front of the house to the back deck to provide a safe path for Taylor to use regardless of the weather.

By 1:00pm today they were on the site getting things organized.

Normally in these types of situations a wooden ramp system is built on the front of the home.

This house has a pretty steep yard and this would require A LOT of lumber and it would create quite the “Z” shaped structure in the front yard that would be quite unattractive not to mention a real challenge to mow around.

I believe it was Johnny’s idea to go with the concrete pathway and I think it was a good one!

By 6:pm this evening Maria Antonia and cameraman (sorry dude, you guys don’t get your name mentioned often enough, do you?) were walking the property preparing this evenings update for the broadcast on the local ABC affiliate.

There is no doubt that the city of Oak Grove and all of Kansas City has been moved deeply by this story.

The family continues to be very grateful for all the help. They certainly could not have gotten all of this done on their own.

Look for another update tomorrow evening as Taylor is currently scheduled to be home sometime in the early afternoon.

Stephanie Bueneman, cheer-leading coach and math teaching extraordinaire, has organized a benefit dance to raise money for Taylor.

I remember how hard Taylor worked last year to make the cheer leading team. Now she is taking on a big fight just to be able to walk again.

Stephanie has been our cheer leading coach for several years now and her commitment to this community and her girls is second to none.

She has worked hard on this dance and is looking for great financial donations that she can pass on to the Hartwig family.

Here is the flyer and a copy of the order form for the T-Shirts.

If needed here is a copy of the order form so you can fill it out ahead of time.

T-shirt Order Form

When this all started last Monday evening my goal was simple. I wanted to see Taylor have a great 14th birthday regardless of her health status. I put together her donation page on this site in about 20 minutes. It was a mad rush against the clock to get it done before my live broadcast of the Blue Collar Business Podcast started at 8pm.

I executed my show pretty much the same way I usually do with the exception of mentioning the donation page and what I wanted to do for Taylor. Within an hour of the show ending we had $125.00 in donations. The rest of the night came to a close and I was feeling REALLY good with our current total of donations. I was pretty sure the DSi was in the bag, even if I had to make up the difference, no biggie.

I got up the next morning and headed to my part time job. By the end of my work day we were up to $175.00 in donations and I was excited so I sent out a status update to all my Facebook pages and my twitter followers with an update. Shortly after my update I got a message from one of my listeners. He works for Apple in the Education Sales department. He offered to cover the difference and order an iPad for Taylor complete with a case! He and I had talked before so I knew his offer was legitimate and immediately forwarded $175.00 from the paypal account over to him. By Wednesday morning I had confirmation that the iPad had been shipped and would be delivered on Friday.

As Tuesday evening and Wednesday moved forward the Taylor Donations page picked up steam as Facebook users from our community picked up the link and posted it to their pages. Suddenly the news of what we were trying to do for Taylor was all over Facebook and it wasn’t long before KCTV5 here in Kansas City picked up the story and contacted Johnny for an interview.

The rest, they say, is history.

Julie and I (and the kids) spent Thursday evening picking up accessories for Taylor at the Leawood Apple Store here in Kansas City. I have never had so much fun shopping in my life! Not just because it wasn’t my money (that’s always fun, right?) but because it was selfless donations from friends, family and community members from the area and I knew it was going to blow Taylor’s mind!

I even made it a point to keep this a surprise to Johnny and Shelly as well. I wanted them to be as surprised as I knew Taylor would be.

We made it to Children’s Mercy Hospital at around 11:00 AM on Saturday, gift bag in hand to make the personal delivery.

Being the polite young lady that Taylor is she started with the card, little brother watching from not-so-far-away. She thanked us for the card and moved on to the bag, weighty as it was in her arms. As she started to tear the paper from the box her eyes welled up with tears and little brother gasps at what the paper was hiding. It was none other than the iPad purchased and sent via FedEx just days before.

Yeah, it was a special day for Taylor yesterday as people from literally all over the nation play their part in the story that is making up Taylors last couple of weeks.

She may have been spending her birthday in a hospital but there is no doubt that she was feeling very loved by A LOT of people, both known and unknown.

Taylor wanted me to pass on a special thank you to everyone who has taken part through finances, prayer and spreading of this page across the internet or word of mouth. We helped to make her day one she will never forget.

Wendy Childress has organized a spaghetti dinner benefit for Taylor! Thank you Wendy and everyone over at Cowboys For A Cure for taking on this project for Taylor!