In the midst of the SC Governor coverage and all the MJ hype, Alex was declared Mayor of Charlotte for the day.  And Alex has done nothing but wear his title with a smile all day.  We had our big day with the Mayor today.  What a special day for our entire family.  Alex was presented with a certificate to recognize our fund raising for paws4people and raising awareness of Mitochondria Disorders.  Mayor Pat was so down to earth and just right there with us.  He even connected some of Alex’s issues to those of his own family.  He was so sweet to Alex and made our whole family feel at ease.  We felt so honored to be there.  Media from all the stations were there and there was another media company that is putting together a video of all this.  It was real cute because they got footage of Alex’s roll to the mayor’s office and then of course Mayor Pat pushing Alex up to his desk.  He gave him a soccer ball signed by Mia Ham and a business card that he wrote Alex’s name on.  It was a perfect day.  Alex had a ball and you guessed it…… he smiled nonstop!

Here’s a video clip from News 36. 

http://www.wcnc.com/video/news-index.html?nvid=376115  It is also running on the other local stations and then News 14 for those with Time Warner.   This was just great.  We have a 3 fold thing going here.  We raised awareness for Alex’s disease, we raised awareness for paws4people, and we also kicked off the start of forming a foundation in Alex’s name.  We hope from this, that we can help many other non profit organizations that have helped Alex.  This is only the beginning of so much more!

We ended our day with a little knock on the door.  There stood little Jonathan, a neighbor friend of Alex’s.  He wanted to tell us he saw Alex on TV.  He had lots of thought filled questions that I tried to answer on a 7 year old level.  And he just sweetly patted Alex’s head and looked at him with concern.  How can you explain to a 7 year old that his friend will never walk like him or talk like him?  Despite the tough questions, one thing remained.  Jonathan was proud to be Alex’s friend.