Here's a story that will break your heart, and then make it swell with admiration for the love and courage two brothers, ages 6 and 7, showed recently for their sisters who have Down Syndrome.

First the sad part. According to a video posted on YouTube, the Hollis family lives in Central Illinois. They have four children -- the two boys, and then two girls, who have Down Syndrome. One morning last year they woke up to find their cars and house had been vandalized with spray paint. Some of what the sickos wrote is "unprintable," but one statement really stuck out: "RETARDS (spelled wrong, ironically). Get Outta here."

It's hard to imagine what kind of a blow that was to this family. "That day changed my life forever," mom Ann Hollis wrote. To think that someone would be that senselessly cruel is depressing and infuriating. But then something beautiful happened.

It's one of those videos so inspiring that it just keeps coming back. An autistic teen named Jason McElwain finally gets the ball in the last game of the season for the Greece Athena High School basketball team. And suddenly, the special ed student is on fire, shooting basket after basket.

It's the kind of viral video you want to watch again and again, with a goofy grin on your face. But even as I'm smiling, a little anger has crept in. Jason McElwain nailed it. He did what any high school basketball star would in a game. So why was he only put in in the last game of the season? Why was he stuck being the team's manager all this time?

I read the words "mom abandons disabled daughter in a bar," and my stomach clenched. What kind of mother, I started to rant, leaves their child? Their disabled child? But then I read Eva Cameron's story. I read the story that explains why the State of Tennessee has decided not to charge Cameron, why she will be walking away with nary a punishment for driving her daughter from her home state of Illinois south to a bar, letting 19-year-old Lynn Cameron walk in to use the bathroom, and driving away.

Eva Cameron has already lived her punishment. The mother of three has an adult daughter who has cerebral palsy and is mentally just 3 years old, and she doesn't know what to do with her.

Photo by Catherine Just

There’s not a lot that makes me really, truly yearn for the toddler days. Even all these years later, I recall how trying it was to have a small child underfoot. Don’t get me wrong; I adored my girls back then as much as I do now. It was just hard for me when they were young and I remember that well. All that to say, when I discovered this incredibly tender napping series from photographer and mother Catherine Just, my mama heart melted and I immediately began to long for tender moments of the past ... when my daughters were small enough to snuggle with me like this.

That Catherine was mindful enough to begin to document this time in the life of her son and that she captured such a connection between the two of them makes me envious that I hadn’t done the same. This series might be my favorite series of mother and child I have ever seen. Something tells me other mothers that see it might feel the same way.

Opening up your home and adopting a baby who needs loving parents is always a blessing, but one couple from New York went one step further in adding to their family.

Kristen and David Coffee adopted two babies -- both of whom have Down's Syndrome. They already have one biological child, a 9-year-old son, but then while Kristen was sitting in church one Sunday morning, she suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to give a special needs baby a loving home.

Thirteen-year-old Jared Stevens is just like any other kid his age, intellectually and emotionally. Physically, on the other hand, he has the capacity of 6-month-old: Jared has cerebral palsy. But he's still determined to live the life of an average 13-year-old kid -- he's even on his middle school's wrestling team! According to his coach Clay Mayes, the seventh grader practices with his team every day, so naturally he wanted to participate in a match like everybody else. Mayes knew he deserved a chance, so when it came to matching up wrestlers, he called up the other school's coach to explain: “It wasn’t about weight class ... I told him to point me toward the kid who has the kindest heart.”

And that's exactly what he got.

This story will just break your heart but luckily it ends well. A Michigan girl named Charlotte was only 3 months old when she was lying in her crib unsupervised and the family's pet raccoon (yes, you read that right) crawled into her crib and mauled her face. In the 10 years since, Charlotte has had five reconstructive surgeries on her face. She just received her latest one, on her nose. And she may undergo another one after this, to replace her mauled ear. I can only imagine what this poor child has gone through in the past decade, because her parents had a pet raccoon!

An 8-year-old boy is at the center of a legal dispute in Coral Springs, Florida, all because a city ordinance prohibits people from keeping certain kinds of animals as pets.

Kason Ray has Down Syndrome and was given a therapy pig named Twinkie to help him with his developmental and speech delays. His parents chose to give him the Juliana pig as a therapy animal instead of a dog or other pet because Kason's dad and brother are allergic to many types of animals.