Cole's Party

Somewhere between Christmas and New Year's and the post New Year's stomach flu, fell our friend's son's birthday. Cole came early two years ago and, because Jeremy and Christy hosted several New Year's parties prior to his arrival, his eagerness spoiled many party plans that year! We have forgiven him and moved on to other plans watching the ball drop, but it is always nice to gather with his family after Christmas and before New Years and celebrate his birthday. Lydia LOVES all the toys at Cole's house and whenever we go there, I see which toys she needs next. Hmm, Cole got a motorcycle this year. We may have to hold off a little on that one.

It's Raining, It's Pouring!

I finished sewing Lydia's raincoat a few weeks ago and am so glad that I didn't wait until spring. It has been raining all week in Tennessee. It's been warmer and wet and I have to keep reminding myself that spring is still a long ways away. I guess we should enjoy the rain, and the raincoat, while we can. Colder weather is certain to return.

Planning the next party!

Somewhere around the time I was hosting Lydia's first birthday party, the idea for her second birthday flashed in my head. "Tea for Two" quickly morphed into a full on Mad Hatter's Tea Party! I am falling in love with all things Alice and definitely plan on using a LOT of the original illustrations from the Lewis Carrol publication. I have been Photo-shoping during much of my time in the hotel in Phoenix pre and post marathon. I think until she is old enough to put her two cents in, and probably for quite a while after, I will plan the party ridiculously early.

And that brings me to the main point of today's post, I am grateful to have the privilege of dreaming about my child's birthday years in advance. A friend of mine is not so lucky. Her daughter was born last year and appeared to be perfectly healthy. Sadly, she did not meet her physical milestones and the doctors determined that she suffers from SMA, spinal muscular atrophy. This little girl is intelligent and otherwise healthy. Her muscles are failing her. This is a genetic disease and 1 in 40 people are carriers. People don't usually find out that they carry the gene until their child is born with SMA, and at that point it is a death sentence. Thankfully, my friend has hope for a cure.

The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation is a finalist for a Chase Community Giving Grant. This foundation is SO close to finding a cure. The award from Chase could speed things up and might mean a cure during the preciously short amount of time my friend's daughter has left. PLEASE consider going to the website and voting. You have to have a face book account to vote, but other than that it is free and just might save the lives of countless babies. Here is the link.

http://gwendolynstrongfoundation.org/chase

Snow Day!

Everyone loves a snow day! Mommy and Daddy stayed home from work and played in the snow with Liddy. Come on, she was wearing a frog hat. How could we resist!

New Years Eve

This year for New Year's Eve, we through a Redneck Themed party. It originated as an Ugly Sweater Party and evolved into all out lower culture. It was super fun and super easy to trash things up. Besides trashy food is usually fried and ALWAYS tasty. Bacon wrapped tater tots, need I say more? Everyone in my family got an ugly holiday sweater courtesy of a contribution to Goodwill. Lydia's started out as an adult sized sweatshirt with kissing Christmas scotty dogs stitched on the front. I cut it down to become a shirt dress and paired it with some bright red patterned pants. We were all having a good time until Lydia woke up after midnight and started vomiting. Over the next week we all got the stomach flu and then passed it on to everyone we know. Sorry to everyone out there who we infected! Happy New Year! Hopefully the entire year will not go the same as our New Year's Eve!

Visit from the Iowa Cousins

The week after Christmas was spent visiting with my cousins from Iowa and their kids. They braved major snow storms to get to us and were rewarded with their first experience eating Krystals. They don't even have the northern version of Krystals, White Castle, where they live, bless their hearts! We also took the kids sightseeing, like to see the holiday train exhibit at the UT Botanical Gardens and up into the mountains to see, well, mountains I guess. I went outlet shopping instead, so I'm not really sure what they saw. Regardless we had a great time just seeing them and are eager to make our annual trip up to Iowa this summer to see everyone again.

Where have we been?

Hmmmm. Momma has been taking lots of pictures. Somehow there hasn't been time to put them on the computer. Some of our distractions were fun.... family in town, parties, etc. Some have not been so great.. including a nasty stomach virus that effected each and every one of us for several days last week. We finally seem to all be on the mend and thanks to a snow day today, it looks like we may all have some extra time to rest and get this place back in order.