As usual for me I’m the last one on board, but I couldn’t let the opportunity to help pass me by. I just couldn’t come up with an idea of what I could contribute. Today while in the shower it hit me, it is the small and simple things in life that make all the difference.
Stephanie was an expert at perfecting the small and simple moments. So in honor of her I will be auctioning off 10 childrens stories. My favorite small and simple moments are cuddling with my kids and reading to them.
Titles:
In addition because Stephanie loves pretty things I’ll auction off a hand made bracelet. It is made of Turquoise in honor of her home in Arizona. (I have pretty small wrists and it fits me perfect)
Last but not least for all you Utah County bidders I will do a photo shoot for you and your family scheduled any day in October. This would be a great opportunity to get your Christmas photos done. I’m willing to do up to 5 of these shoots so bid away.
Please place your bid by leaving a comment with your Bid Amount in the comments section of the item you are bidding on. For the childrens books bid for item #1, for the jewelry bid for item #2 and for the photography session please bid for #3.
Following the close of the auction, the winner will pay for their item via the Stephanie and Christian PayPal account. The winner will then forward the PayPal receipt email to monicabuckles@gmail.com with their mailing address. I will then contact the person who donated the item and give them the winner’s shipping address and email to send the item.
Please bid in increments of one dollar. The auction will end at Midnight (MST) on Sunday, August 31.
Don’t forget to go over to Design Mom to see what other Nie Nie Esq things are being auctioned off!
Snuggling and story time.
Did I ever mention how much I love bed time. Oh the sound of quiet
Now I’m going to go snuggle with the big guy.
Lets just be honest, the best family nights are the ones when they A( all get along and B( listen. Last night we had a double success. To top it all off the cousins came to celebrate with us.
We celebrated back to school with a kid friendly dinner, and then topped it off with a family home evening were we introduced our families them for the year. I stole borrowed an idea from the fabulous NieNie and made “Be Prepared” our theme for the year.
We talked about being physically and spiritually prepared. We wrote a poster of our ideas on how to work on ways to be prepared.
Then we wrote our goals, hopes and dreams for the year on a balloon,
We saved the best for last and had homemade Blizzards for desert. (Can you believe the cousins didn’t know what a Blizzard was ;0) They are a staple in our family)
The End
Endless energy is the only way to describe my adorable baby boy. Not much of a baby anymore, but he’ll always be my baby!
In my never ending quest to find constructive outlets for his abundant energy level we have discovered soccer!
Last week the big kids went off for their first week of school, while little man was stuck home all by himself awaiting his grand entrance into the life of a big kindergartner. So what does a good mother do to entertain a lonely, bored, almost kindergartner? Take him fishing of course.
Seriously how sweet is he! I love this little bug!
Today he is off on his kindergarten adventure. Wish him luck, and prayers for his teacher wouldn’t hurt either.
I’ll post photos and updates on his big day later.
PS If you are reading this in a reader click out of the reader and check out my new look. It is still a work in progress but so far I am loving it. Thanks to my amazingly gifted hubby!
Words can’t explain how awesome last night was, but pictures can.
Can you believe how many people showed up?
And we have lift off!
My little man was quit the entrepreneur! He went around collecting money for Stephanie and Christian’s recovery fund. He had a goal of at least $50, and in the end he got close with $45. He took it really seriously and I couldn’t have been more proud.
How cute are Clair and Jane holding the donation jars. In the end we were able to raise $1,131.18 not bad for one night of fundraising.
Tonight hope will be floating all over Provo and Mesa as we launch balloons in honor of a fellow blogger and her Mr. Nielson. As they struggle to recover after a horrible plane crash we pray for them and celebrate their lives.
This blog as been all but abandoned for a long time now as I struggled with whether or not to continue blogging. There were many reasons why I considered giving up my blog, but most of all I felt like I didn’t have much to contribute. After reading a post from this funny lady, I realized that there is a place on the internet for all of us.
In the after math of Stephanie and Christian’s accident I have thought a lot about the beautiful things in life. Stephanie has a gift for seeing the beauty and the blessings in life and I want to try and be more like that. I also have went back and read through a lot of her older posts and I’m amazed at how inspired they are. I think our blogs can be used for many things, but I choose to use mine as place my children can look later to see the type of person their mother is striving to be.
If you are the praying type please keep Stephanie, Christian and their children in your prayers as they fight a good fight.
o far our summer has been very productive. Not busy, just productive. We are homeschooling our kids in the summer, and it seems to be going well this year. We have been doing it consistently for 3 summers now and I see a big difference in how well they retain what they have learned as well as keeping them busy so they don’t get bored during the long summer months.
If the kids get there chores and school work done by noon then we like to go and do something fun. Yesterday we went to the pool. It was our first pool trip of the season and they had a blast.
Sissy is off at girls camp, so it is a little lonely around here without her. We do have lots and LOTS of house guests so I am pretty busy. Some days it feels like we are running a hotel, but I love it.
So in an earlier post I eluded to the fact that hubby will be getting a new job. I have been really excited about this turn of events. Yes it is stressful, but exciting to. The idea of finally having health insurance is almost overwhelming.
In all my excitement I overlooked the fact that this will mean that hubby will have to get up and go to work everyday. This may not seem like such a big deal to most of you, but he has worked from home for 10 1/2 years. He will now have to join the masses in commuting to a “real” job.
My 2 youngest have no concept of what most dads do. They don’t understand that not all dads are home all day everyday. My oldest was only 3 when hubby started working from home.
I thought that I would be excited to have the house and my time all to myself, but now that it is upon us I’m not. I feel a great sense of loss. In some ways I feel like I am loosing my best friend. I am so used to having him home to talk to all the time. I feel a loss for myself and for my kids. I think all kids should get to have there dads around all the time. I know this isn’t the norm, but it has been our reality for most of our marriage and almost all of my kids lives.
I still feel this is going to be great, but I can’t help feel a little sad.
Our friends, Phil and Adria, just learned that their youngest daughter has Leukemia. She’s too cute to have this happen to her and they could use your support.
Check out Serenity’s blog for updates, information, donations and to sign her guestbook with your thoughts.
We visited her in the hospital last Saturday, the day after diagnosis, and she was very sleepy. Sunday morning she went in for her port surgery so her treatments will be easier to handle over the next 2 1/2 years. Can you imagine chemo for 2 1/2 years?
If you can help, please go donate. Otherwise at least go visit her site, learn a thing or two about Leukemia and drop her a note on her guestbook.
* I just found out that after a really rough week Serenity if finally home with her family. She is still very sick, but resting at home now. She has a long LONG road ahead of her, but making it home is a big step.
You may have noticed the lack of photos on my posts for a few months now. This was all because someone talked me into upgrading to a newer version of wordpress. Since updating I have not been able to get anything to work especially posting photos. My wonderful hubby kept telling me if I would just switch to Firefox the problem would go away. Yeah I’ve heard that before. That is what caused the problem in the first place. Never mess with something thats working.
Finally I gave in and converted to Firefox and so far so good. I was able to upload photos without much trouble (the photos still won’t center).
Since I haven’t been able to post photos for a while (or blog for that matter) here is some of what we have been up to.
We moved, from here…
to here. It’s a long story.
Sadie and I went to the Scrapbook Expo
We met my friend Dev and a few of her friends their.
We had a suprise birthday party for big guy
Little man graduated
Aren’t they so cute!
Not to flip subject so abruptly, but a good friend of mine is at a children’s hospital with a very VERY sick baby girl. Go over and wish her and her little girl well. They could use all the good thought and prayers we can send there way. Many of you may know her as chezadria.
Today was our youngests big day. He graduated from preschool. This is bitter sweet since he is my youngest and last baby and will now be in kindergarten
We are definitely starting a new phase of life, and I’m not sure I’m ready for it.
They had a magician come and entertain. The kids loved it.
Mrs. Rebbecca gave a little speech and said “goodbye”.
OK so I have a confession to make. When I as in high school I was one of those band geeks. I started playing the flute in 5th grade and ended up playing for 7 years.
When I first started I loved it, and I have to admit I was pretty good. I was never the best, but I was always in the top 3 in my class. My mom sprung for private lessons, and I improved even more.
I started competing at music festivals and loved it. I loved hearing the judges tell me what I did well and what I could work on. For a child who was lacking in coordination finally I found something that I was good at, I mean really good at and it felt great.
When high school rolled around I suddenly became painfully aware of how uncool band was and my desire to continue playing came to a screeching halt. My social life soared and my grades dropped. I needed to keep my grades up to not only keep my parents off my back but to keep my GPA within a reasonable range. So back to band I went.
Band was easy if you showed up you got an A, and I really needed that A. Then came out of town trips, and I was convinced that band was the coolest thing ever (as long as my friends didn’t find out I was in band).
Our first trip was to Canada, and never being out of Washington that I could remember I was excited. Not only was this going to be a trip out of town, no parents, but we also had a curfew of 4 am can you believe it. Who thought that giving a bunch of 16 year olds the chance to run around a town they didn’t know anything about until 4 in the morning was a good idea?
We slept at a local high school camped out (co-ed) on the gym floor. We watched movies, ordered pizza, and went shopping at the local mall. Shopping in Canada rocks! No taxes, and everything was so much cheaper.
So what would you do with no parents, out of town, with friends and a 4 am curfew? I know what I would do, invite my boyfriend to drive up and stay with us. Of course being the loving boyfriend that he was he agreed. He made the 3 hour drive and picked me and some friends up. Great boyfriend huh? Yeah I thought so to that’s why I married him.
* I wrote this almost 2 weeks ago, but held onto in because I wasn’t ready to share with the world.
A bad day would be an understatement! Today my dad went in for open heart surgery. He is actually under the knife as I type this. This came as a surprise. Yes he does have a family history of heart problems but he is only in his 50’s. The surgeon will be replacing 5 out of his 6 arteries.
Just for fun to make this day even worse my husband lost a major contract. He works with a family business and it was his brother who told him “his services were no longer required”. He gave us no notice, and I don’t even know if we are getting a paycheck tomorrow (even though he did work those 2 weeks). Oh and by the way he did it through email, can you believe that?
Then to top it all off I have to go and put a smile on my face and teach Enrichment Night tonight.
Blah
As many of you know “07″ wasn’t very kind to our family. If I could I would erase it from history and pretend the whole year just didn’t happen. Since that is not possible we are just moving on and making the most of a new year.
Among many horrible events of “07″ there is one that sticks out the most. For the first time in my life I got an up close look at cancer and what an ugly horrible disease cancer is. I very unexpectedly lost my biological father to cancer. This came just weeks after my mother-in-law found out she had breast cancer.
Loosing my dad was a huge shock, I didn’t even know he was sick. I just got a phone call one day that he had died. I missed the chance to say goodbye, and maybe resolve old issues.
The loss of my dad also made my mother-in-laws cancer uncomfortably real. I don’t deal well with things I can’t fix so I threw myself into caring for her the best way I knew how. I cooked, I cleaned, I ran errands, I took her to her appointments, and I prayed a lot.
I watched as cancer took everything from her, first her hair and slowly it robbed her of her ability to even get out of bed. Through it all she was a tower of strength and dignity. She was worried about how her kids and grand kids would react to her bald head. It didn’t bother us any, and she slowly started going without a wig more and more. We laughed and joked with her about the situation and she helped get all of us through it. My hubby even suggested she dress up like Uncle Fester from the Adams Family for Halloween.
After 9 long months she beat it. She worked really hard at getting her strength back, and is now in London with my father in law on a church mission. I’m sure she would say that all she went through was worth it to be where she is now. We are truly blessed to still have her with us, and to have her healthy enough to serve the way she is.
This year in honor of my wonderful mother-in-law and all the other brave women battling this ugly disease our family will be running in the Susan G. Komen breast cancer race in Salt Lake city. The race will be on May 10th at the Gateway mall. If you want to join the fun you can register here online.
I am in no way ready to run a 5k, yes I am that out of shape. I am setting my standards very low. My goal is to finish the race. I think that one I can manage. I will be running with my sister-in-law, my 13 year old daughter, and many friends who are joining the cause. I hope to never have to deal with cancer again although I know this is very unlikely.
