beggars would ride and there would be no sick and dying children. But that is not the way of nature and the world and so there are many, too many children, whose lives are constrained and cut short by disease.  Adding to the pain and sorrow of disease, medical expenses often impoverish families and limit their options.  Sometimes it seems their only assets are love and family – and they are burdened with countless liabilities and limitations. Into that sometimes grim situation, one organization exists to bring joy – and frivolity. No, they aren’t seeking cures, they aren’t paying off the medical bills, they aren’t fixing lives. They are giving joy and making dreams come true and sometimes that is more than enough.

My assistant IRL has a daughter with a congenital heart defect who is awaiting a heart transplant – complicated by the lack of doctors willing to perform a transplant on such a small girl locally and the financial impossibility of moving an entire family to another state where there aresuch surgeons unless there were a job and a place to live waiting for them. So they hope and they wait and hope some more. They are poor – despite a good income – because even good insurance has copays and deductibles and taking 16 different medications means 16 prescription co-pays. Her siblings learn to do without and the family lives frugally with no vacations, no trips, no big events. But, next week they are all of them, every single one of them, going to DisneyWorld and spending a week of carefree joy – in a lovely resort, catered to and treated like royalty. They will get taken around by her daughter’s singing pop idol and for one week out of their lives, forget privation and enjoy some privilege. All because of Make-A-Wish Foundation – so when I saw today that Ryker Beck is offering her Exodi skins at 50% and that 100% of those proceeds are going to Make-A-Wish, my eyes welled over and they can’t quite stop. It’s a wonderful foundation from people smart enough and wise enough that families don’t just need the necessities, they also need dreams. Go to Exodi today and spend your hearts out because there’s nothing better than making wishes come true.

You can see close up photos of these styles at my Flickr Set. There are more braids and tails to shoot, but I separated out all the hair with embellishments like ribbons, flowers and the like into a different set.   A Big Thanks to TearSong Vaughn who posed not just for this photo but for several more that will show up in other sets.