Giving Back :)

Helping to head up the American Heart Association Fund Raiser this year for my hospital!  So far we are on track to meet our goal.  Orchestrated a bake sale this past Friday which proved to be an phenomenal success!  Yay for sweet tooths like myself!!

My Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins were a hit!

The whole kit & caboodle  :)

In addition this week I'm organizing the canned food drive for our hospital being put on by Gentiva Health to benefit Second Harvest Food Bank! 

 

Bravo for Non-profits and those who work there!  You make our world a better place :)

JoJo's B-day!

26 here we come!!!

So for Jodi's Birthday I made an fat free Vegan Dessert!  Aka a dairy free giant cupcake with strawberries & icing, delicious!!

First we have the giant cupcake form, which resembles Madonna's Infamous Cone bra, circa 1990:

Then some fat free angel food cake, baked per instructions:

Icing made of 4 cups confectionary sugar, 1 tsp vanilla flavoring, 1 tsp butter flavoring and 1/4 cup water (more as needed if too thick)

Drizzle 1/2 to 3/4's of icing over bottom half of the cupcake:

Add half of the Sliced Strawberries :)

Gently place top of cupcake over strawberry and icing layer, then pour remaining strawberries and icing on top.

Devour Giant Cupcake!  Done.

And her are 2 pictures from Jodi's birthday dinner at Lime

Checking Off 2 TO-DOs

Working on checking a few items off of my ever changing, constantly wavering life lesson TO-DO LIST! Working on 2 simultaneously, training for a marathon and a Prison Ministry. In all reality I’m running a ½ marathon, but it sounds more monumental if you leave the “half” off, and so I do! Another item to be addressed on the TO-DO LIST is that I want to be involved in several ministries throughout my lifetime, constantly trying to be used as a light to others while being sharpened and shaped as God would have. And so the opportunity presented itself to get involved in the Prison Ministry, it tugged on my heartstrings a little, so here I am.


Other items on the horizon are this side business of mine, really wanting to make it take off! Few orders here and there but nothing substantial yet, we shall see what’s in store. And then on to the subject of friendships. Inspiration of my dear friend Bethany, I want to be intentional in all of my friendships. When I’m at the end of my life I want to be able to say that I truly knew my friends. That I knew their hearts desires, their goals, struggles, fears, dreams, scars and that I loved them completely and free of judgment.

And all of these aspirations I have would never happen if I didn’t have a beyond extraordinary husband. A husband, who comes home from working an umpteen hr day and takes out the trash, then lets out the dog, then picks up our sweet baby so I can go on a run (if its too hot out for her to join) or go to prison ministry or work on my sewing orders, to ultimately check something of my life’s TO-DO LIST. But because it’s important to me, it’s important to him, regardless of what it is. Now that is an amazing man!  Now that is love!

Me and Wyn on a run!  Her keeping me poor company by sleeping on me, again... Must be my phenomenal speed that lulled her to sleep ha!

Time & Love

How is it that time is going so fast? Wyndham started crawling this week! So exciting, but at the same time I don’t know how she can be 7 months old and crawling when I only had her last week?? She is growing up so fast and time is literally FLYING BY! I swear time never went this fast before we had her…Every week, every day she is doing something new. It’s so exciting to watch her face when she accomplishes something new, the grin and the radiance on her face because she’s so proud of what she just learned or accomplished. And I love when she learns to complete a task herself, it teaches her confidence and to have good self-esteem~ although she’s probably not thinking that right now, as I am ~the over-thinker that I am.


And the love that I have for this little person is such a crazy crazy love. A love that is so deep and consistent, patient, selfless, unwavering and un-expecting of anything in return. A love I didn’t understand until I held her in my arms. Even when she was in my womb I loved her so deeply, but the immediate love I had for her the moment I held her was such a all-consuming love. Ryan and I ask ourselves all the time, “What did we do before we had her?”. She is just so fun and so much of our life revolves around her. And our love for her has made our love for one another deepen that much more. It is almost as if another chamber of your heart just opens up the moment you have a child, truly the craziest thing. I would cut off my own arm to make her stop hurting, or jump in front of a train, whatever it took~~ that why I say a crazy crazy love. There is nothing that Ryan and I would not do for her. We still have our list of priorities and things we like to do and enjoy and we take times for ourselves and have date night (they just happen a lot less often ha!), it’s just that everything on our list of priorities just moved down one notch to make room at the very top for this very tiny person.

Having this love for my child gives me a whole new view on what it must have been like for God to give Christ to us knowing that he would die on the cross for our sins. Oh my goodness, I can barely wrap my head around that….

Just some food for thought and some pictures for smiles :)

Little Miss Sunshine

Just got a new blog background and am sooo excited about it!  1- because of its name, B- my favorite color is yellow and 3) Because it reminds me of florida and I am really missing her today!