April 25, 2011: Happy Easter Monday!

Heaveno!

First off, sorry I forgot to post on Thursday (then Fri, Sat, and Sun)!  I was in San Diego Thursday and Friday for some more internet marketing training and by the time I got home and finished my homework for Friday, I was in bed getting some shut-eye for my 5:45am alarm clock.  Just so you know, that is an unholy hour for me.  I am not a morning person, and never have been, and the fact that I currently rise at 6:30 only speaks to my desire to turn over (yet another) a new leaf of productivity before Ali rises at 7.  Anyhow, I was shooting video Friday morning and didn't want the circles under my eyes to be too big, lol.



Ali and her cousin Molly at Grandma's for Easter fun and dinner...

So, I imagine you all had as busy a family and faith-filled weekend as we did.  We are in high gear right now also with planning Bella's Birthday Bash!, which is now less than a month away (yikes!).  We have planned a really unique and fun-filled day for families, but it is extremely labor intensive to put on, so we are meeting every Friday night brainstorming and assigning the myriad tasks required to make this event worthy of Bella's birthday.  The planning meetings are a lot of fun, and the fellowship has been greatly appreciated.  We need volunteers for the event itself!  If you are local, or know anyone local, we need your/their help!  Email Angelique@puckfund.org if you would like to play with us!  Mainly, we need bodies to overlook the various crafts and  activities we have planned for the kids!



If you haven't yet, check out the tour  of the location Ali and I gave on Saturday morning by clicking HERE.

After we hit the Children's Garden, Ali and I went to Irvine Park to flyer for our event.  However, upon entering I noticed on the rules and regulations sign that no distributing printed material was allowed.  Luckily, I had two train tickets and some cash on hand, so the trip wasn't a complete loss.  Ali and I rode the train, decorated cookies, and Ali rode one of the trotting ponies (for the BIG kids!) and played in the big kid bounce house!  It was cool, they had two bounce houses, one for kids 4 and under, and one for kids 5 and up.  It was nice to see so the little kids wouldn't get mowed over by the big kids for a change.



Irvinc Park is cool also because it was the one place we couldn't take Bella, because it is dusty and dirty. This makes post-Bella trips not any more painful since she was never there in the first place.  Revisiting old haunts that Ali, Bella, and I used to hit has been particularly hard because of her obvious absence, but Irvine Park escapes that sentence, so it's like a safe zone from grief.



Tomorrow, we are really excited because a reporter from the Orange County Register is coming to our home to interview us about the Bash and Bella's story.  Believe it or not, this is our FIRST mainstream media article about Bella!  Seriously.  We have spent all our time in the blogosphere and in social media. When Bella was first born, a neighbor reached out to someone at the paper without avail, and when we came home from MN, a friend reached out as well, but nothing came of it.  So, thanks goes out to one of the moms from our local Team Bella, Lara Seto-Davidson, for bringing us an article from a reporter in the paper who is a special needs mom and writes and blogs about special needs kids for the Register.  Truthfully, I don't even think about mainstream media much because I don't watch the local news or read the local paper... I have enough grief of my own!  I wrote the reporter, whose name is Jo Ashline, and she wrote back and was extremely gracious and immediately offered to write an article about us, Bella, and the event!  Jo has her own blog and writes a column for the paper called This Modified Life:  Living with Special Needs.  We haven't met yet, but we are already indebted to her for sharing our story with our larger, yet local Orange County community.  Thanks, Jo!

Blogging tonight has given me a much needed respite from cleaning and organizing!  My back is SORE!  I've been at it since 1pm and it's 9pm now.  I think I'll sleep well tonight.  We also have friends visiting this weekend, so all those great ideas for sometime soon just got squished into this week!  Nothing like visitors to give you a deadline to get stuff done around the house, right?  Having said that, the doors on the bathroom cabinets will still be in the garage come this weekend!  I am the least handy guy on the block, so to build two wooden cube organizers for Ali's room in three days counts as a minor miracle around here.

Mommy and Julian are doing well, though allergies around here have been pretty rough this season.  Man, we carve through A LOT of tissues in this house!  LOL.  Mommy is trying to exercise as much as her body will tolerate, and generally is in great spirits (as always).  She really is amazing.  I am so lucky to be around her every day; my game is automatically upgraded just being in the same room as her.  She is a true powerhouse and born leader.  Watching her take the lead on Bella's Birthday Bash! has been awesome to watch.  She leads with clarity, but with a smile as well.  It's a joy to witness.

Last but not least, to our Minnesota friends, we're coming up to participate in CCRF's Time to Fly!  Spence, I need to put together a foursome for the Ronald McDonald House Charity Gold Tournament the following Monday the 27th... wanna play?  Get two more buddies and let's do this!  We'll be in MN roughly from Thursday June 23rd flying home Tuesday June 28.  It's Ang's last hurrah before being homebound for the last 6 weeks with Julian in the oven.  Mark, get that Beer-Butt chicken and cheap beer ready!  Logan, strike up the light rock behind the bar, Lanai, ready for an Ali fix?  Dayna and Amanda, should we just plan on meeting you at Howie and Laurie's?  I want me some COWS!  Jay, no leaves and no snow... whiffleball?  Cut out those bases!  Now just let me figure out how to put all that together into 4 days! LOL.  Hey, where there is a will to play, there is a way!  No more snow, by the way, okay?  ;-P

God night.

This was taken last Easter just before church... boy, how much can happen in a year...