Pure Gold Baby

I'm actually talking about my mother's heart, but above is one of the examples of her love for our family. 

This morning my mom got up early and drove the boys' applications for LISS funding (this is a Maryland state specific grant for special services) all the way to Columbia, MD, which is close to a two hour drive for her.  And she got them there at 8am, one of the first people through the door.  I have been working on these applications for months, filling out applications, getting invoices, etc, but with all the time I have been taking off of work for study appoinments and regular appointments I was worried about taking more time to do this.  So my mama did it for me.  These grants are crucial for our family and would really improve our over all quality of life, so getting them in on time was really important.

When my mom texted me and told me that the person accepting applications said everything looked complete I literally burst into tears.  To give you an idea of why, this is potentially $6000 of funding for the boys.  The money goes directly to the service providers and would assist greatly with Cisco Center and also enable us to send Jack for special needs swim lessons. 

About 15 minutes later my mom texted me a picture of almond butter (I pictured our newly acquired stash above).  She was at Trader Joes!  Now, I am sure the general population is not aware, but there is apparently an almond shortage in the U.S.  Almond butter costs essentially 10 bucks a pop at the grocery store and even at that price it is often out of stock (think of all the peanut allergies out there).  We don't feed Nate peanut butter as we have observed majorly increased stimming when he has it.  Anyhoo, Trader Joes has it for under 6 bucks!  I discovered this one day when I went in for something else.  So a few weeks ago, I ignorantly went in to stock up and was told by one of the employees that they get one box a day and that in order to get some, you have to get there early.  So AFTER already delivering this important paperwork for us, my mom went and snagged us 5 jars!  What a woman!