Parenting a child with a disability and an incurable disease involves daily mountains to climb, fear of the unknown for the future of your child, sorrow, fatigue, and endless medical appointments. This survival story, however, is about how to use the healing power of fun and laughter each day to keep moving forward.
Fun Fuller Traditions
January
Every January, we had our Welcome, Ed McMahon and The Prize Patrol Party. Back in the day, Johnny Carson and Ed McMahon were one of the favorite television duos because of The Tonight Show.
Ed McMahon became the face of Publishers Clearing House, a company that offered a chance to win large cash prizes via sweepstakes and contests. The winners saw Ed McMahon and a camera crew arrive at their homes and deliver their giant checks.
We invited friends to watch the Super Bowl and hung a huge sign in front of our house decorated with balloons welcoming Ed and the colossal check we hoped to receive.
Poor Hayes. Every year, he thought we would be rich at the end of the day and was sad when we were still in the same paycheck-to-paycheck mode after the festivities of Super Bowl Sunday. As he grew older and wiser, he caught on to our well-meaning deception, forgave us, and wasn’t sad anymore when he saw the real winners on TV.
March
In March, The O’Fullers celebrated St. Patty’s Day with a barbecue, or we took a short drive to the annual St. Patrick’s Day Hot Air Balloon Festival in Los Lunas, New Mexico. Hot Air Ballooning is undoubtedly one of the world’s most unique and colorful events.
Being close to hot air balloons has a peaceful and magical energy. When I took this picture, I wondered if Hayes was thinking about how free you would feel if you could fly.
Easter
My cousin Carol, a talented artist, invited Hayes to color eggs. She boiled about eighteen eggs, thinking Hayes would take some home to eat. After they spent hours decorating a dozen and a half, he told her that he didn’t like hard-boiled eggs. He just wanted to hang out with her.
So, after they finished their artistic egg creations, Carol lifted Hayes into her four-wheel-drive truck, and they did donuts in a big dirt field by her place. Hayes, a fan of Daredevil Evel Knievil, loved their dusty donut time together!
Hayes got up at the crack of dawn on Easter to see if there were any prizes to find in the backyard. Jake, Hayes’ companion dog, helped sniff out the hidden treasures. Usually, the plastic eggs filled with sweet treats got a second workout when his friends stopped by later in the day, and they hid them all over again.
June
My sister and I live 1,290 miles from each other. It was a priority for both of us that our families spend time together when school was out so the cousins would have fun memories. Sometimes, the memories were in New Mexico or Illinois, and sometimes, they were during road trips. No matter the location, water was always part of the fun.
These vacation photos are just a few visual memories of the healing power of fun and how important it is to spend time with your family, whether they live close or far away. Since my sister and I both have a fear of flying, getting together was a bit challenging, but we made it happen.
Fourth Of July
Hayes loved this holiday. We celebrated with lots of good food and outdoor fun. His friends and our neighbors joined us in playing croquet, swimming in our store-bought pool, and having super soaker or water balloon fights.
At dusk, we moved the party over to The Gregoires’ driveway to blow off the combined massive amounts of fireworks.
September
The Fun Fuller Family experienced many fun times at the New Mexico State Fair. It is the place to be if you love to indulge in calorie-rich cuisine like the best mini-donuts ever or explore the Petting Farm, Horse Shows, the Midway rides and carnival games, the Hispanic Arts Building and Villa Hispana, Native American Indian Arts Building and Indian Village, or the Rio Grande Model Railroad-just to name a few.
My favorite was the country western concerts that included the bull riding rodeos. Since every rodeo has the possibility of injury, I always remember the prayer the announcer said before the rodeo began. “Our life is a gift from God. What we do with that life is our gift to God.”
When my sister was visiting one year, a Native American dancer invited her to the Friendship Dance. During the State Fair, musical performances and Native dances are held all day long at the Villa Hispana and Indian Village. Great entertainment and cultural events.
October
Albuquerque is The Hot Air Balloon Capital of The World.
Because it became increasingly more difficult to take Hayes to the Balloon Fiesta, Hayes and I established our own tradition.
We would walk and wheel to the nearby convenience store to make special coffee concoctions and then watch the hot air balloons from the big open park by our house.
Early Sunday morning for the Mass Ascension of Balloons, while we were on our way for coffee, we were startled by a loud backfire from a worn-looking Baptist bus passing by.
Hayes quickly leaned forward in his power wheelchair and yelled, “Hit the deck! The Baptists are trying to get through!” Then we both burst out laughing and carried on with our hysteria while the backfires continued for a couple more blocks until that bus got the faithful to church.
If you haven’t read my previously published post The Baptists, please check it out. I grew up in the Southern Baptist faith and share my insight, which I hope you will find interesting. The Bellwood Baptists had a bus just like the one featured in this story!
Halloween
My favorite Halloween was the year Pete built a frame shaped like a tank around Hayes’ power wheelchair. He covered the frame with gray, black, and white camouflage material. Then Pete attached a chute for the candy to slide down into the basket on Hayes’ lap.
It was a riot to see Hayes pull up to someone’s front door, beep his wheelchair horn, and then watch the homeowner’s reaction to looking down the barrel of a tank. Give me the sweets or else!
As I recall, Hayes made an exceptionally good haul that year.
Another Fun Fuller Halloween Tradition was painting the back of Pete’s head. He wore his overalls backward, adding to the Pumpkin Head illusion.
Christmas
We always celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with a bunch of people at our house.
A little-known fact about me is that during those holiday parties, if I consumed enough adult beverages made out of grapes, I strapped on my $1.00 accordion that Pete found at a garage sale and got the other partygoers to belt out some of the classics, like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Chipmunk Song, or Silver Bells.
I started a band when I was a kid, and you can check out how I got started playing the accordion in Midwestern Backstory
Hayes and Pete went all out to decorate our house for Christmas. Tumbleweeds are common in the open areas surrounding Albuquerque. They would search and find them, run a stake connecting the base, middle, and face. The next step was spray painting it white and adding the lights, facial features, and top hat.
On Christmas Eve Day, the guys would spend hours putting together the luminarias to welcome the Christ Child, another unique and beautiful tradition in Albuquerque. And they always made extras for our neighbors who wanted to display them on their property.
This classic Hayes tale was the Christmas one of the neighbors brought over his potato launcher. That’s right. He had a machine that shot potatoes out of a barrel. I don’t know the science behind it, but I remember sparks were involved in the launching.
One of our other neighbors had a Santa perched high up on their roof, which, as you might have guessed, became the target for the potato rockets fueled by the cheer we had been receiving from bottles.
Bruce, the owner of the potato launcher, was busy entertaining some of our guests outside. The hysterical laughter from outside did not prevent his wife and me from chatting away inside the den. Hayes remained with us but watched everything through the den window.
We stopped talking once we realized Hayes was desperately trying to tell us something. His words were, “Mama, Bruce’s hair is on fire!”
Just a few moments after that breaking news, Bruce walked in, and his wife and I cracked up because of the smoke wafting from his once perfectly groomed hair and the singe of his brows. Guess it was cosmic payback from Santa. After all, he always knows if we’ve been naughty or nice.
We always had a blast-no pun intended! The fun and laughter were worth the effort it took to host the celebrations. They gave the three of us something to look forward to on a regular basis, a much-needed break from stressful problems, hospitals, and complicated lives.
I hope the stories, photos, and graphics show the reader the healing power of fun that is possible. They are also a way for me to heal by keeping my son’s memory alive.
I’ve learned that joyful living happens one memory at a time, and now you know why we became known as The Fun Fuller Family.
Thank you for reading this survival story about my family’s journey. It is free to subscribe if you want to be notified about future blog posts or comment on this one by using the forms below.
Tough Cookie Tip: Fun and laughter were our family’s respite from a progressive, disabling, and incurable disease no parent ever wants their child to have and try to survive. It’s hard to be stressed when you are having fun and laughing. It can also be an immune booster. Laughter is a natural anti-depressant. Scientific research found that people breathe better after laughing, and their blood pressure might also be lowered. When you keep the focus on the healing power of fun and laughter, anxiety, fear, and other negative emotions do not rule your daily life. More importantly, those negative emotions do not rule your child’s life.
Fun Resource
I stumbled upon an interesting and fun website while writing this blog post. Some categories are Amazing Facts, Big Questions, Entertainment, History, Lists, Live Smarter, Quizzes, and Stories. You can check it out for ideas at https://www.mentalfloss.com.
Copyright © 2022-2025 Marilyn K Fuller. All Rights Reserved.
Great pictures and stories. You always gave your family good memories 🙂
I finally got to read this post and it is the best one to date! I literally laughed out loud throughout. The Ed McMahon parties, the Baptists coming through and Bruce the Potato Launcher’s hair catching fire were hysterical. You demonstrate beautifully how joy is all around us. Sometimes we have to find it, sometimes it finds us, and sometimes we just have to make our own. I will also always remember the rodeo prayer you shared. Priceless!