gift

Monday Magic | Kid, You’ll Move Mountains Initiative

Every Christmas season, I like to find a service project that my family can participate in. Usually, its something small and crafty-oriented. But this year, I have something else in mind.

My nephew, William has been in the N.I.C.U. for over 2 months (we are hoping he gets to come home before Thanksgiving) and during my daily visits with him, I have been reading Dr. Seuss books to him. The book, “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” has been especially poignant, as Will has had a bit of a hard time, but he’s a fighter. As we edge closer, to healing and getting him home, I have thought about this book many times and what an inspiration it is and I have came up with an idea that I just love. I have decided to purchase the book and get all the doctors and nurses that have worked with William to sign it (and add personal messages) and then when he gets to go home, the book will go home with him.

And then I got to thinking how amazing it would be if every NICU baby could take this book home with them. What a treasure it would be for the parents to have to remember all the doctors and nurses that were a part of the journey! What a treasure for the doctors/nurses to have a chance to say goodbye and share their experience! And what a treasure for the children to have as they grow up and see how special they are!So that’s what I want to do this year. I would like to start this initiative to buy as many of these books as I can to donate them to the Utah Valley Hospital N.I.C.U. in December! If it goes well, I’d love to keep this initiative going to help provide books for as long as I can. I feel that this is something that could make the N.I.C.U. a little better for all of the families that have to experience time there and just provide something extra special for them all.

Will you help me? I am using YouCaring.com to host this fundraiser and I would LOVE it if you could check it out and make a donation to help me with this project. I need help sharing it too, so if you would like to social media it up, that would be amazing! Thank you so very much for making this possible!

www.youcaring.com/movemountainsinitiative

I’m still working on finding the best place to purchase these books in bulk and will continue to research this out and do all that I can to make this succeed! If you have ideas or places I could look into, please let me know! Thank you!

Just a little magic to help start your week off right!
Fun ideas, inspiration, tutorials, or whatever I feel like!

Mondays

Jolly Holiday Surprise Adventure | The Surprise – Part 1

THE SURPRISE – Part 1

December 6, 2014

** I have been so excited about this trip that of course I had been packed for weeks. But the night before the trip, we attended my niece’s birthday party and then came home and had the kids go to bed early! And then final preparations were made by Joey and I, including getting the bags in the car and the “treasures” hidden and such. We were so excited that I don’t think we really got any sleep! Let the Adventure begin…

We woke the kids up at 6:00 am with a “Merry Christmas!” They were so confused but we told them to go get in the shower and get dressed. They were not too enthused about getting up so early on a Saturday morning. They got ready and sleepily arrived in the living room to this:

That actually woke them up pretty good! Presents under the tree! But we had them eat some breakfast, before we got started.

Every year it has been our December tradition to have a daily activity. For years we have used an advent calendar that I created out of a over-the-door shoe organizer. (It has 24 slots, perfect for our daily activities to go in the pockets). But this year, I got a great Black Friday deal at Deseret Book and purchased a new Shadowbox Advent Calendar that I have been eyeing for a couple of years:

So we had the kids sit down on the couch and we pulled out the note that was in the “6” Box. Our note said: “Grimoires of Grand Adventure” (Joey had been giving the kids some vocabulary words in the previous week, so they would understand some of our messages.)

We then instructed the kids to take the gifts out from under the tree and untie the bow. We made sure that they wouldn’t uncover the brown paper over the cover of the storybooks. I decided that I wanted to film each time we read a part of the books, so I filmed while Joey read to the kids and they followed along. Joey and I were both pretty emotional as we were actually starting off on this grand adventure that we had been planning for so long. The second page of the book instructed the kids to go on a treasure hunt.

Our video of the reading of this first part of our Storybook:

JJ and Beth excitingly took their books (which had pictures of where the treasures were) and headed out.

The kids gathered wrapped gifts, gold coins, and slips of paper with messages on them. They were having a great time collecting everything and when they got to the end of the hunt, they piled all of their treasures into the living room. Joey and I happily watched them as they opened the gifts of games, coloring books, activity books, crayons, treats, and more.

We then had them take the slips of paper to the table and try and put them in the right order. After a little while (and some help), they were able to do it:

Then we read the final page of Part 1 in the Storybook:

After reading the page, it took a bit of prompting to help the kids figure out what they needed to do. In the treasure hunt, one of the wrapped gifts included a special decoder that Joey had one of his friends make. (Joey had 4 made so we all have one so we can send each other coded messages and stuff. It’s so awesome!) To figure out how to use the decoder the kids had to use the message on the slips of paper above. The answer was 13. So they had to set their decoder to the number 13 and then they could decipher the message on the left side of the page.

Once they found the cipher they went right to work decoding the message!

And the message turned out to be:

Take the things you found and get in the car.

So we helped the kids get all their stuff into their backpacks and we put on our coats….

The Adventure Continues in another post…

jollyholidayheader I’m so excited to share my family’s magical Christmas adventure of 2014 with you!
To see all the postings in this series go HERE.

Wednesday SayingZ | Discover your gift

{ This week’s quote }

The purpose of life is to discover your gift,
the meaning of life is to give it away.
– David Viscotti –

Wednesday SayingZ I am a collector of quotes/sayings/titles and I am excited to share them with you each Wednesday. I hope they will inspire you and make your day a little better! I am also creating pieces of wordart with these quotes and will be offering them to you as a freebie! Feel free to use them in your scrapbooks or just print them out for wall decor!

Project 365 | Week 48

Monday, November 23, 2009
Bethie’s last day of school this week and they got to have a little Thanksgiving dinner. She had way fun and I thought she looked so adorable in the little pilgrim bonnets/hats that they made!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009
All packed up to head home to Orderville for Thanksgiving. JJ had his last day of school for the week and when Joey got home from work we drove down.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009
My mom and I spent today doing all the food preparations for tomorrow’s feast. It was nice to do it today so we could have tomorrow to just be together as a family. My main focus was to make our family’s traditional egg noodles (from my Grandma Sorensen’s recipe). Everytime I make these I think of my Grandma and how much I miss her. I hope she is happy where she is and proud of her family. As my mom and I made food we had a great little visit and made plans for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was very nice to be there in the home I grew up in and just be with family.

Thursday, November 26, 2009
Today we had our first Thanksgiving dinner in my sister Kori’s home. She and her family have restored my Great-Grandpa and Great-Grandma Esplin’s home and its so beautiful. I’m so happy for her and her family to have this wonderful home to live in and its wonderful that the old home can be used again. We have been having our Thanksgiving dinners out in the barn every year because it was the only place we could fit us all, but now Kori has this wonderful big home that she shared with us this year. I loved having all of us together. It was good to see Charity – I haven’t seen her in awhile and she is looking good and she and her kids have moved into a nice trailer, so I’m glad things are going well for her.

Friday, November 27, 2009
Since I didn’t get any pictures today, since we just drove back to Orem, I decided to share what else we did yesterday. After our Thanksgiving dinner, we helped Kori and her family put up their lights. Okay, so mostly we just visited and laughed as others did it – but it was a hoot. So how many people does it take to get the lights up on the house – well there was Ray to hold the rope that was attached to Colby so he wouldn’t fall (the roof was very slippery and steep), Kori to help with the rope on the roof, and Joey and Austin to provide moral support. LOL After getting the lights put up and playing more at Grandma’s, we had dessert at Grandma’s and then went back to the house for the lighting of the old house! We visited a little more and Beth got to have her very first sleepover – with Whitnee! She did so good. We also watched a movie with my Dad – which is always a wonderful tradition!

Saturday, November 28, 2009
Today was our niece’s wedding day. I can’t believe that Chelsea and Alicia are old enough to be married, but they are. It was nice to have Joey’s parents come and visit with us and good to have most of the family together for awhile. The wedding was nice and it was very beautiful with the Christmas decorations. Some good food too. Congratulations Chelsea!

Sunday, November 29, 2009
Last week, these huge giftbags were dropped off for the kids as an early Christmas gift. The kids wanted to open them then, but I decided it will be nice to wait to have another gift under the tree for Christmas. I feel so blessed that someone out there thought of my kids – thank you to whoever you are!