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This year on Madden's birthday we decided to host a golf tournament to celebrate, raise CHD awareness and well as money to fund life-changing pediatric cardiac research. We started the day at the cemetery with family and friends to celebrate Madden's birthday. We released balloons and had cupcakes and sent so much love to heaven ♥♥♥

In the afternoon we hosted the 1st Annual Madden DeLuca CHD Awareness Golf Tournament at the Ranch Golf Course. It was a beautiful day for the 76 golfers we had out. We aren't golfers and have never hosted a golf tournament before but the team at The Ranch was incredibly helpful and the day went off without a hitch. With year one under our belt we know that we can make year 2 even more of a success. Thank you to everyon who participated in the tournament and also everyone who sponsored the event, together you helped us raise just over $7,000 for peds cardiac research.

Happy 4th Birthday Madden ♥ Sending you so many hugs and kisses, we love you so much small prince.
xoxo,
Momma & Dad

This weekend we were able to raise over $16,000, along with sharing Maddens story and watching close to 700 kids play soccer with our sons name on their shirts. The money raised will help to fund the position we have helped to create in the Stollery Children's Hospital focusing on pediatric cardiac research. I don't think we can say thank you enough to everyone involved and everyone who participated!

Clinical & Research Fellowship Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care

Look what's been posted on the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society website; this position is literally going to touch and help mend little hearts

On August 31st, Madden's angel day, we asked that you help us raise CHD awareness as well as donate to help us fund pediatric CHD research. Kingsway Toyota donated $20 to our foundation for every vehicle they sold on this day. With their generous $200 donation we raised $962! Thank you for all your continued support as we try to make a difference in the fight against pediatric Congenital Heart Defects.

On June 4th, 2014 Madden would be turning 2 years old! We are going to celebrate his birthday the perfect way, the same way we did last year and the same way we will celebrate for years to come.

Come June the Stollery's stock of items for their small patients starts getting pretty slim. For us the timing couldn't be better! We have decided that the perfect way to celebrate Madden's birthday every year is to donate gift packages to the hospital in Madden's name on his birthday. Each package will include: a blanket, a pair of socks, one sleeper, a hat, a book and a sock monkey.

Any items you wish to donate - soothers, soother clips, infant clothing, wash cloths etc. - are necessary to the hospital and will be welcomed with our donation! You can get involved by donating one or some of these items.

This year we are hoping to donate a minimum of 365 bags, one for every day of the year.

One of the reasons this event is so close to my heart is simply because we didn't buy Madden very many things because of the uncertainty of him ever coming home. So many parents I talked to in the hospital said the same thing; there was no crib, no car seat...no nothing and it made sense, until we left the hospital without our son. That's when I realized how important his stuff was. It was all we had left. I wanted to hold his blankets when I couldn't hold him. Each member in my family got one of Madden's blankets and we all sleep with them every night. For this reason I want other families’ children to have their own things as well. And on the other hand when these sweet children get to go home they will have some of their very own things to bring with them ♥

Donations will be accepted until May 30, 2014.

**Please note that all items must be new, handmade items are welcomed!

On June 4th, 2014, Madden's birthday, Rocky, our boys and I will take all these items to the hospital and donate them in Madden's name.

To donate please contact us at [email protected] or find us on Facebook: Team Madden.

After months of preparation and lots of hard work by our friends and family, our silent auction went off without a hitch on Saturday November 23^rd.

We are blessed to be surrounded by amazing people who support us with all of our events. Without them, none of this would be possible.

Many items were donated to make this event a success. And we want to thank each and every business and individual who donated items and volunteered their time. With your help we were able to raise almost $17,000 to help support families with children fighting to survive in the Stollery Children’s Hospital.

A huge thank you goes out to Mike and his staff at O2’s on Jasper Ave for all their help in planning and executing this event. They also donated a last minute item to our auction – an NHL goal light and horn – that raised over $200!

We are already looking forward to putting on this event again in 2014!

On December 19^th our family was fortunate enough to make dinner for the residents of the Ronald McDonald House Northern Alberta. There were 9 of us altogether. We arrived with our groceries at 3pm and got to work making a dinner of meatballs, spaghetti, sauce and salad. We brought along some pre-made desserts and a couple flats of pop to round out our meal.

Dinner was served right around 6pm and lucky for everyone eating, it tasted pretty good!

We were fortunate to be able to meet some very inspiring families and catch up with some people we had met previously throughout our own journey. Our children played with some of the resident kids – I think the bingo game may have been their highlight of the night.

The Ronald McDonald House is an amazing facility that serves a very needed purpose in this community, we feel honored to be able to support the house through the Home for Dinner program and look forward to coming back to make another meal soon!...we will wait until after our baby comes as I was not much help this time around!

Thank you again to our family who came and cooked with us! We really appreciate your support ♥

The DeLuca’s

Christmas Hampers

This past Christmas we were able to sponsor 3 hospital families by donating Christmas hampers to them. Each of these 3 families are from out of town, are unable to work, have a child in a critical care unit and also have other children. Without help Christmas for these families would have been near impossible.

Each of Madden's Christmas hampers included a stocking for each family member, gifts for all the children in the families, pajamas for all members of the family, dry food & candy and over $500 in gift cards (including: old navy, toys r us, Cineplex, earls, indigo, superstore, gas cards and more). We were even able to include an iPod touch (donated by Future Shop in St. Albert) in one of the hampers and a tablet in another hamper!

The gift cards were donated with the intention that the parents would then have the ability to buy some gifts for their children – things their children need or things they know their children really want.

Thank you so much to every person who donated to these hampers. I am sure these hampers gave these families a small reason to smile during a time when smiles are few and far between. Thank you for helping us give these families some happy memories.

Wishing everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy & Healthy New Year.

With love,

The DeLuca Family

View the photo gallery to see what you helped provide these three families.

The 1st Annual Madden DeLuca Memorial Tournament was, in our eyes a huge success.

A total of 33 teams and 20 individual U6 players registered in the tournament for a total of 250+ participants. The weekend ran smoothly and the weather was beautiful.

CTV was kind enough to have us as guests on their morning news show prior to the tournament and they even stopped by over the weekend to check out the tournament.

To top off the weekend we raised just shy of $11,000 for our foundation. The money will be used to support families of children fighting to survive at the Stollery Children's Hospital through programs like: in-hospital family photos, sporting event tickets, Madden's memory bags, catered lunches etc.

A few of the weekend highlights:

Rocky and I being presented a check from a U10 SWU girls teams who had a lemonade stand to raise money for our foundation. An incredibly touching and thoughtful gesture from a group of amazing girls.
Receiving blue roses from the U12 Drillers boys team (and a few additional special people) Rocky coaches and our the team our oldest son plays on. This was incredibly emotional as blue roses are one of our symbols for Madden and arevery special to us.
An email I received from a mother of one of the players letting us know that they had their daughter read our story prior to the tournament so she knew why she was playing. Then asked her to think of Madden before she played every game. This particularly made my heart smile.
All the "MADDEN" cheers before games. I loved that so many teams truly played with our son in their heart.
Seeing all of the teams wearing the tournament jerseys with our son’s name on them.

Check out pictures from the weekend on our website here. If you have any additional pictures to add, please email them to us at [email protected].

A huge thank you goes out to every coach, parent and player that made this tournament a success. We truly hope youenjoyed yourself and we look forward to seeing you back next year!

Another huge thank you goes out to every single person, volunteer, group and organization that contributed to this event to make it possible. We are so fortunate to be surrounded by amazing, giving and compassionate people. This event would not have been possible without you!

A few lost and found items were found on the weekend: