Seven favorite Mondays with Mike posts for 2014

That’s Mike with Gus during an earlier visit.

2014 marks the year we inaugurated our “Mondays with Mike” feature on the Safe & Sound blog. My husband Mike Knezovich had been writing guest posts here for years (particularly when I was away training with Seeing Eye dogs), and it was high time to make his posts a regular feature. You blog readers reacted favorably, so to celebrate, today I’m sharing links to my seven favorite “Mondays with Mike” posts from 2014. Those of you who missed them the first time around can read them now, and those of you who liked them when they were originally published can link to them again. Cheers!

• Mike hit the ground running – his initial post was a tribute to troublemakers. We published it when the 2014 celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday came on the heals of Nelson Mandela’s death.
• I especially liked his post about the kindness of strangers and how grateful we are to the people who have helped us get where we are today. Mike wrote this one after a visit with our son Gus in his Wisconsin group home.
• A number of you ordered Boy in the Moon by Ian Brown after reading Mike’s review of that book here. The book, and Mike’s post about it, are two very honest and heartfelt accounts of what it is like to be the father of a son with a disability.
• My mother died earlier this year, and Mike’s post about Flo during her final days was so beautiful that my brother and sisters and I had him read it out loud at her funeral.
• His Thanksgiving post was a tribute to the parents we’ve lost, the work we still need to do to make our country better for everyone, and the babies who give us hope. Mike’s an award-winning photographer, and along with that particular post we published a very cute photo he took of Whitney the Seeing Eye dog with one of our great nieces. We’ve learned that posting photos of dogs and babies always results in a lot of hits!
• We also received lots of positive comments when Mike took you along on his morning commute. We live in Printers Row, a Chicago neighborhood so close to the Loop that Mike walks to work.
• And speaking of lots of hits, as NFL’s regular season draws to a close (thank God) all of us in Chicago look forward to the 2015 baseball season. Take a look back at Mike’s 2014 Time begins on opening day post, and I dare you to claim Mike’s cup is ever half-empty. When it comes to spring and baseball, the man is forever an optimist.

Mike, Whitney and I head off to Union Station for our train ride to Wisconsin later this afternoon – we’ve got a Christmas visit with our son Gus planned. If you want to keep up with what happens afterwards, consider signing up to follow the Safe & Sound blog (enter your email in the box at the upper right of the blog and hit enter to receive email updates anytime we publish a new post). Mike will be back with a new MWM post this Monday. Thanks for reading, everyone, and…happy holidays!