My daughter is named Ceareigh Grace Hope.  She lives with us, and we prefer it that way.

My name is Gradie Louise McDougall.  I live in Pocatello, Idaho, with my husband, Andrew, and our five amazing kids:  Ericha Danielle (3); Sophia Janee' (5); Weston Brooks (6); Ceareigh Grace Hope (10); and Rylen James (12).  I am a housewife/homeschool teacher; my husband, meanwhile, is a firefighter.

Our daughter, Ceareigh is disabled.  You can see that immediately once you see her.  It is okay to look at her, but please don't stare or make rude comments:  she can't help how she is; it is how she was born, and people must learn to look beyond the obvious.

We don't see Ceareigh's problems.  What we see is a brave little girl with a lot of potential.  She can talk (with a word board), count, read, play games, laugh, cry, bowl (with help), eat (with help), and swim (with supervision, of course).  She just cannot walk or talk that well; it's because her brain was damaged as she was being born; it left her with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

We don't really know what caused her to have CP; we think it may have been because she was born four months early.  When Ceareigh was born, she was only 12" long and weighed nearly 10 ounces; she was impossibly tiny, but she survived, much to everyone's amazement.  She is our special child, our miracle girl; we wouldn't have it any other way.

Ceareigh is in the fourth grade; we teach her (and her brothers and sisters) here at home.  We take them on field trips on a regular basis, but now that the Christmas holidays are upon us, school won't resume until after the first of the year.  Until then, the children can have fun playing in the snow or with their  loot that Santa Claus left at our house.  They made a killing in the toy department; we'll be paying on the credit cards for months, the way things look now!  LOL

Well, Ceareigh is crying (her way of telling us she needs me), so I better go to tend to her; she must have just woke up not even five minutes ago.  I will write in here again with more about Ceareigh and the rest of our family; you haven't heard the last from us!  Take care, and may God bless you always!

~Love, your new friend, Grace L. McDougall, Pocatello, Idaho. :)