help Ivy and her family full fill her dream

Ivy is 11 years old and has recently been diagnosed with Stargardt Disease in her right eye. She went for her annual eye exam and was referred to a retina specialist because she could not see out of her right eye. Every lens the optometrist put in front of her eye did not help. He stated her vision was at 20/2200 in that eye. We were preparing for surgery or a strong pair of glasses to help her see in that eye again. When we saw the retina specialist he told us she has Stargardt Disease. Stargardt Disease is described as macular degeneration in kids. When you have it you lose the ability to see sharp, straight ahead images with your central vision. She can only see black spots and fuzzy beams of light out of her right eye. She has lost the vision in her right eye and there is no treatment or surgery available that can bring it back. She has become legally blind in her right eye in the last six months. During that same visit with the retina specialist she has the start of Stargardt Disease in her left eye as well. The retina specialist could not tell us how fast she will lose the vision in her left eye because it is different for everyone, but there is a strong likelihood she will lose the vision in her left eye by the time she's 12 and be legally blind in both eyes. She has to have some more tests done with a pediatric retina specialist in Salt Lake City to get more precise answers.

Ever since Ivy was little she has loved space, robots, and reading. She dreamed of being an astronaut and the first women to go to Mars with NASA or SpaceX. Halfway through her 4th grade year she was accepted into the Tech Trep Academy online program and has accelerated her studies with a goal of graduating at the age of 16 and getting a degree in robotics or engineering. Because her schoolwork is online she comes to work with me and does her school work in my office and has skipped almost a grade and a half ahead in her schooling. Tech Trep Academy focuses on Technology and Entrepreneurship, but Ivy focuses on the technology side of it. For the last two years Ivy has been in Tech Trep Academy she has learned programming, coding, completed the Lego EV3 Robotics course, and is currently learning Drone Videography this year. Over the summer she attend Zero Robotics through the Idaho Museum of Natural History. Her team competed against other teams around the country and saw the code she helped with being used on the International Space Station. Ivy also discovered reading at a young age and reads everything she can get her hands on. Once she started reading Harry Potter in the 3rd grade, she read the entire series in just over a month and has reread the series multiple times. It has become her favorite book and movie series. If she's not with me doing her schoolwork in my office, she can be found at a library looking up information and checking out books. She loves reading, painting her nails, taking things apart and seeing how they work, going geocaching and finding treasures, making things explode with science experiments, building new robots, and discovering new things. She is also an ISU Bengal. She loves Idaho State University and Benny the Bengal.

Our hope is that we can to take her to Florida before she loses the vision in her left eye. We want to take her to Universal Studios to visit Harry Potter World and to the Kennedy Space Center. The ultimate trip would include taking her to Universal Studios for 2-3 days, the Kennedy Space Center for their 2-day package which includes a lunch with an astronaut, and a day at Legoland because it checks off three things on her Top 5 Places to Visit list

The ultimate surprise trip is more than we thought, but I'd be happy being able to take her to one of the places in Florida. We are trying to figure out a way to make it work. Our whole family cannot go, because that would cost $15,000 and that is a lot of money.  

A little about our family: my husband, David, is a Navy veteran. He was medically discharged in 2012. Our oldest daughter, Lillie, was born in Rhode Island. Ivy is our middle daughter and she was born in Virginia two years later. Holli is our youngest daughter and she was born in California two years after Ivy. We moved to Idaho in 2012 so my husband could go to school at Idaho State University after getting out of the Navy. He just got a job working for NetCom as ISU over the summer. I also started at Idaho State University at the same time and graduated in 2014. After graduation I worked for the Veteran Student Services Center  as the Event Coordinator and now I work as the Administrative Assistant for the ISU Army ROTC.


This trip is a complete surprise for her. Even if we shorten the trip and can only do one of them, she will be so excited. Any help we can get to take her to see Harry Potter World, the Kennedy Space Center, or Legoland is so very much appreciated.

THANK YOU!