Asked to talk about her experience as the mother of a child hospitalized for nine months at Hopkins Children’s, Kate Blue instead offered her scrapbook. With her infant son Brandon finally out of Hopkins and home in Elkridge, Md., Blue had found solace in carefully composing, in paper and photographs, a visual history of his premature birth and the months of care in Hopkins neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). “It was a long journey for all of us,” she says of those months, five years ago. “Working on the book was a great way to de-stress."

On June 13, 2009, Blue hosted a workshop for felloScrapbookw “scrappers” in the Elkridge firehouse to raise money for Hopkins Children’s. Participants paid $25. With supplies donated by Wal-Mart, they worked on their own albums and bid on silent auction items also donated by the Ellicott City store, in which Blue had first presented her scrapbook of "Brandon's Journey." Months earlier, Wal-Mart, a longtime Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) sponsor, had hosted the 2009 CMN Campaign Kick-Off for management and employees to engage them in the store's annual fundraising for Hopkins Children's. “I knew it would be too emotional for me to talk, to tell them all I wanted to say,” recalls Blue, who agreed to speak at Hopkins' invitation. "So I brought my book."

Born at 25 weeks, Brandon spent most of his infancy in the NICU on a ventilator. When he was 18 months old, he lost his hearing. He had a cochlear implant at Hopkins Children’s, at 2, and corrective surgery to repair extreme near-sightedness. Today, the 5-year-old is cheerful, energetic and in school. “I tell people that your child doesn’t have to have a chronic illness to need Hopkins,” says Blue, who maintains a blog that includes more news about her fundraiser. “The unexpected happens, too. It’s what happened to us. Thank goodness Hopkins was here when we needed it.”

Blue hopes to make her scrapbook workshop an annual fundraising event. "We had a great time," she says. "Thanks go out to Wal-Mart and Susan Miller," the store's market fashion merchandiser, who helped marshal resources.

For more information on hearing loss services at Hopkins Children's