Monday, April 13, 2020

Stay Super

Man, this past week has been super surreal with everything. We've been balancing Mia's distant learning thing with the whole Spidey in a Civic thing pretty well and things are still staying pretty busy. Last week, I did an interview with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via phone call and later that day, they published it on their website. It got a lot of praise and circled around everywhere. The next day, I did one or the Waukesha Freeman via e-mail, which was great because I could thoroughly think of my answers in a more thoughtful way. I jokingly said "if this makes the front page, we're taking a picture of me dressed as Spidey reading about Spiderman" and sure enough a few days later, I made the front page. It was pretty exciting and I'm glad so many people enjoyed the article and this whole experience. We've met so many kids and families and it's been absolutely amazing. I love being a part of something positive that brings happiness to kids. Hopefully, it inspires others to do something positive in their own way.

Friday on my last day before I was going on vacation, I had to work at store #184 to learn how to fry chicken. Luckily, the girls I was training under were very nice and patient and I was able to get the training I needed and could leave early. The store is super slow so I was out by 7:05pm. Saturday, we were up and ready to film with Pari Cruz and CBS-58 for the Spiderman story. They met us at Mia's friend Noelle's house so all of the kiddos were outside excited to be on TV. We got some great shots throughout the day with all the families. These kids were dressed up, holding signs, made chalk drawings and we even saw kids dressed as villans. One had a great DIY Doc Oc costume his Dad made. With every group we stopped at, the crowds of kids grew bigger and bigger. One of the standouts from the Spidey tour was a young boy we missed the previous weekend. Him and his sis were napping the previous weekend so there was no way we were going to miss him the 2nd time around. Him and his sister were SO stoked to see me when we rolled up. He was jumping for joy, and could barely keep contained. When the reporter was talking to his Mom, he kept staring at me smiling. I found out later he called his Grandma describing my suit in detail and everything about the visit. He slept with his stuffed Spiderman as well. These stories melt my heart and I love hearing about it.

 Later after our last house (Mia's BFF Cecilia) they did an interview and some fun shots of me on top of the car, crouching on a rock and others. Overall, we had a ton of fun with them and can't wait to see the final product. Mia enjoyed watching all the behind-the-scenes stuff they have to do to make it all happen. We did a Zoom video Easter chat with Jill's family later which was a lot of fun. Mia and I picked out a new addition to our family that we're not going to go into a lot of detail right now, but let's just say that she's completely in love with the little fuzzball and couldn't be more happy. I watched Spiderman 3 and worked on some art while Jill and Mia watched a movie in the living room. Yesterday, Mia did her Easter egg hunt and harvested her blow pops that came up over night from the magic beans. We did another visit, drove around and went home for the day. Sadly, my zipper busted on my mask but on our drive today, we did alright. Visited a few kids for birthdays. This sweet group of kids were so excited that I was there and talked to me like I was Santa. "So how's your super hero friends? Did you have a good Easter and go Easter egg hunting?" It was very cute and I felt like a character at Disney or Universal Studios. The smiles are always the most memorable, but from time to time, we'll get tears. This comes with the territory. You never know what kind of reaction you're going to get. Parents know their kid(s) would be excited to meet Spidey, but when the day comes, you just don't know what kind of mood they're going to be. It is what it is, and we move on. We're just here to remind kids to STAY SUPER.

This week, Mia's on Spring Break and I'm also on a week of vacation. We've got a lot of houses to visit this week and as always, I look forward to all the smiles and wonderful families. That's all for now, thanks for reading!

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