Oh, Happiness Giveaway!

Okay, it’s no secret that I’m not a huge fan of September this year. So what better way to try and start September off right than with a Labor Day giveaway? How about two Labor Day giveaways!

My friend Sarah Autry over at Oh, Happiness! is one crafty lady. If you remember I mentioned a while back that she was responsible for revamping my blogs, but she also runs an Etsy site selling her customized invitations and art prints. One of her latest creations are these adorable Pregnancy Prayer Cards that have customized prayers and scripture centered around your growing baby. Each weekly card details new developments for your baby and specific ways to pray for them as they grow. (All references in NIV.)

Here’s some examples:

I only wish I had these when I was pregnant with Liam! They are truly unlike any other pregnancy tracker gifts I have ever seen!  Since I have so many pregnant friends and family, we want to give away a set today!

It’s so easy to enter, here’s how:

Do any ONE of these three things:

• Repost this giveaway on any of your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or your personal blog, etc.) and leave your name in the comments section below.
•   Post the link to Sarah’s Etsy site http://www.etsy.com/people/segraha on any one of your social media accounts.
• Go to Sarah’s Etsy account (Oh, Happiness!) and favorite her site!
•  Pin it! Pin one of the images above to Pinterest with information on where to purchase the cards!

It’s that easy!

Then head over to www.throughliamseyes.com to check out our sunscreen giveaway! Winners will be announced later this week so stay tuned!

 Happy Labor Day All!!!

 

Truth

I found this recently. I've been avoiding this blog recently, one that I frequent often for her mommy wit and advice, and her overseas travel stories.  She and I discovered our pregnancies at the same time and I knew she would be blogging a lot about it, so I avoided it like the plague.  I dared to venture to her page this week and I was shocked when I read her most recent post. It was like ripping off the bandaide on an old wound, bringing anger and tears at the same time, but it was a MUST read for me. My heart needed it, and it was beautiful. I won’t spoil it or try to under explain it here, but it is well worth the time to read.
http://adrielbooker.com/dear-pregnant-woman-from-a-baby-loss-mom/

I'd do it again every night for a hundred nights

Some nights we get home and crash, forget to spend time making memories that last. Work consumes our time instead of play....Then, some nights we play, and we do not stop until dark. Those nights I wish I could repeat every single night! To make sure we have at least one a week, we have "family date night". Tonight's was too good to keep to myself- primarily how it ended.

Summary of our family date night:
1. Get the amazing yet always unpredictable Naru. Free sample sushi which I tried for the first time... Ever! Agreement from husband to wear plaid shorts if I ate said sushi-- if you know him you know he is dying inside right now.
2. Stuffed ourselves on my fav, chick-fil-a ice cream!
3. Surprise stop at the park to swing and climb. (See post on Liam's swing experience and why this is such a big deal HERE!)
4. Pull over car to kill huge spider on Amy's passenger side front seat- needless to say after Dada missed the spider Mommie road in the back with Liam the rest of the night. Dad spent time emptying and searching moms purse for spider upon the return home.
5. Highlight of our night:
"Mom!! My shoooooee!! " said the toddler from the back seat.... With the windows rolled down.
"Liam WHERE IS YOUR SHOE!"
"Out da (there)." Points outside window.
Hence the ten minute search for the shoe on the side of the road and a very large "I told you so/he's just like his dad" from my mother-in-law.

Laughter has seized us tonight and I hope it doesn't let go!

A New Kind of Easter Eggs, Tradition and Mess

Easter morning as a child in the Hinson house meant getting dressed in our best, most floral and puffy dresses (usually matching ones) and attending church with our entire family. Then home to crowd around the kitchen table and decorate easter eggs, followed by an egg hunt on the lawn, and candy filled easter baskets to sugar us up before we crahsed out for the night.

Now, to clarify, Easter became so much more than this to us as we grew older. The reality of the true meaning of Easter, that Christ died so that we might live, the GREATEST story of Grace....that all came along at an early age as well in our house. We've already started Easter traditions centered around the story of the Cross with Liam so that he too will know it from very early on.
But let's be honest....the part kids really remember from the first to say their 4th or 5th Easter, is the eggs. Eggs filled with candy, eggs filled with money, decorating and dying EGGS!!
And that's okay, their just babies! And I love family traditions! Those times we shared with all of my 7 cousins, crowded around my nana's kitchen table to take turns dropping eggs in dye were priceless.
And oh the messes we made!!
The spilt dye, the smashed and stinky eggs! I want Liam to have the experience of dying eggs but until he is older and can participate in the "mess", I thought up a new way. A more permanent route (because let's face it, noone keeps those stinky eggs!).
My new way--Wooden Eggs.
We found them at Hobby Lobby--go figure--for 40% off of $3.99 for a four pack.
Liam enjoyed painting them just like I recall enjoying dying Easter eggs way back when.  I think every year I'll use them in our Easter decorations around the house. Even though eventually we will switch to dying real eggs, maybe we will just start doing both and add to our decorations each year. With a little modge podge they are sealed for life!
A new Atkinson tradition of our own, along with sharing the story of Grace at 5 a.m. cuddled in bed with mom and dad with a picture book. Oh and the floral dresses, suits and candy filled Easter baskets. ;)

One Month Later

This morning when I woke up my heart was very heavy. I wanted nothing more than to be left alone, all alone, the entire day.... But arranged weeks ago was a day full of things I had to do and attend. I know God knew well in advance that today would be long and dreary for me, so he made sure to fill it packed full of my closest family and friends from sun up to sun down. And I truly wouldn't have it any other way.
It started off with this beautiful reminder that his mercies are new every single morning.

Lunch with my two boys, a three hour car ride with my sweet sister and bro-in-law to enjoy my oldest friends wedding and dinner with my sweet family.

Tonight my heart, though missing a tiny piece, is very, very full indeed.

The Most Valuable Piece of Jewelry I Own

My charm necklace.
It's been a growing work-in-progress of my favorite charms, for three or so years now.
It started with this single, solitary diamond heart, from my wonderful husband, on Christmas morning while I was pregnant with Liam.

 I don't remember ever taking it off until the second charm came about, my first Mother's Day, just two weeks before I delivered Liam.  It was perfect!

Then came the third and fourth charms just this past week.  Sometime, during the weekend when I told Brian he was going to be a dad again, he mentioned he would soon have to add another charm to my collection.
And so he did.....Not in the way that we expected, but in a way that's close to my heart....The happiest memories of our joyful giggles of excitement captured in a simple charm, of the day we found out about sweet baby #2.....A gentle reminder every day that this world is not our home.

Project 52: A Photo A Week-- Mommy Style

There is this thing going around, you may have heard of it, called Project 52 (or the 52 Project, 52 photo project, 52 portraits, etc) that so many people are participating in in 2013. The titles and themes are different but the idea is all the same...One photo per week in 2013, that's 52 photos based on a different theme per week. It's so easy when you think about it, most of us have smart phones and take at least one photo a week--if your an overly proud mama like some of us *cough* *cough*, you probably take more than one a day!
So the idea is for everyone to upload their photos to the same flicker account each week, but since some of us *cough* *cough* don't care to share their photos with millions everywhere just more of their dedicated readers :), you can also post the pictures on your blog or website to share with friends, family, and readers. I decided I wanted to make up my own themes that would force me out of my box for this project, and am incouraging my other mom bloggers to partcipate too. Come January 2014 I can't wait to look back at the year in review, one week at a time. So here are my first three weeks worth....more to come people, more to come!

Here are the first 13 weeks, if you have any suggestions for the next 13 weeks by all means give me a shout!! I may even try to feature pictures from others participating as well!
Week 1: The True State of Your House
Week 2: Playtime
Week 3: Candid Shot (including yourself)
Week 4: Affection
Week 5: Photo of a Photo
Week 6: Scrumptious
Week 7: Your Morning View
Week 8: Current Favorite Object
Week 9: Find Your Happy Place
Week 10: Time with Your Kids
Week 11: The Giggles
Week 12: Inspirational
Week 13: Nap-Time

Week 1:

 

 

 

 

 

WEEK 2

 

Week 3:

Organizing Cards

I'm a pack-rat by nature. So I love finding good organizational ideas, especial those that get rid of a whole drawer or trunk full of junk. Something that always gets shoved into drawers around our house: cards. When Liam was born and on his first birthday, we received so many sweet cards- not to mention those from our baby showers- and I couldn't just throw them away. Until now they were scattered throughout our house, but with two simple rings and a hole punch, they are now nice and neatly kept together on our bookshelf. I even used card stock paper to decorate a cover sheet, and put Liam's name in Braille.

(I think I'll do another for our Christmas cards and one for the cards from our wedding/bridal showers.)

Inside Parenting a Child with Special Needs: "Welcome to Holland"

Recently I received a copy of this poem written by Emily Perl Kingsley that I though I just had to share. I don’t talk about Liam’s condition of Albinism very much here as we write mostly on his own blog for our family and friends and those in our Albinism family to keep up with there, but I thought that this poem hit me more as a parent and as a parent of a special needs child and that even other parents with normal healthy kids ought to read this. It gives you a great picture of what life is like for parents raising disabled kids and answers the number one question that I always get from people when they hear about Liam’s Albinism…. “What is it like raising a visually impaired child?”  So for those who wondered……

 

WELCOME TO HOLLAND

by
Emily Perl Kingsley.

c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved. Borrowed from:

http://www.our-kids.org/Archives/Holland.html

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Wooden Photos

These were made by one of my best friends, Jess, who doesn't like to brag but our family thinks she is pretty awesome and did I mention talented? This comes from someone who had me walk her through creating her first painting to hang in her own house and now she is making these for others. I won't tell you how she does it, but I will tell you it takes a lot of work and a little luck to craft these blocks. If you want to know more or how you can contact Jess just shoot me a message, she would be happy to make anyone one of these to hang in their home!