Starlight Families Pet-A-Pet with Kiwanis Club!

Ponies neighed, balloons popped and children shrieked with laughter Saturday afternoon at Pet-A-Pet thanks to the Kiwanis Club of Washington, DC. The June Great Escape featured a petting zoo, pony rides, a bounce house, balloon animals, face painting and lots of cotton candy and snow cones; one boy was on his eighth helping of cotton candy as the afternoon was just beginning!

Starlight families enjoyed a care-free afternoon away from hospitals and doctors at the Stone Ridge School in Bethesda, MD. Families lounged in the shade as they enjoyed lunch and laughed at elaborate face paint and balloon animals. The face painting was so popular it attracted a line of children eagerly awaiting their face to be adorned with a soccer ball or Hello Kitty. The kids didn’t seem to mind waiting as they stood with smiles spread from ear to ear debating which design and colors were their favorite.

In addition to face painting, many children were fascinated by the rabbits and goats less than a month old. They got to pet the furry friends and even provided some suggestions for names! Kids got to feel like a cowboy, a knight or a princess on horseback as they rode miniature ponies around the school’s beautiful campus.

Starlight MidAtlantic teamed up with the Kiwanis Club of Washington, DC for Pet-A-Pet. The event was a great chance for families with children with special needs benefiting from the Kiwanis Club to meet and share experiences with Starlight families. Special needs and seriously ill children and their siblings had the chance to make new friends and wasted no time in doing so. Kids who had been strangers just hours before were running off to the bounce house in laughter. For some of these children, doctors and nurses are more familiar and commonplace than friends and peers their own age. It’s so important these children have a chance to feel normal and make new friends outside the confines of hospital walls. Starlight MidAtlantic hopes to continue to work with other community organizations and continue building these relationships in the future!

-Caitlin Rush, Summer Intern 2011