Hands Down Monkey was inspired by our son, Gavin. Gavin is blind, and has Leber's Congenital Amaurosis. He is the first instance in our family with vision loss and he has sparked our passion to bring attention to Braille Literacy.

The phrase "hands down, monkey!" is repeated in our household hundreds of times a day and was the inspiration behind the name. "Monkey" as we lovingly refer to Gavin as, does a lot of eye-pressing. Those who are not familiar, eye-pressing is a common behavior with those who have vision loss. There are many ideas and theories behind the need for eye-pressing, but our concern is keeping Gavin's hands down and out of his eyes. "Hands down, monkey!" is his cue to get his fists, fingers and palms out of his eyes.

A final thank you to everyone who donated towards VisionWalk 2010. We had some more donations come in before the June 30th cut off date. Since last year, we have raised over $23,000 for the Foundation Fighting Blindness! WOW :)