Saturday, January 31, 2009

Pictures along the way

Today, my mother in law, Laura and I decided to go check out the trails in the Hard Labor Creek State park close to home. It was a gorgeous day for a walk. We walked both the Beaver Pond Trail and the Brantley trail and captured a few pictures along the way. I thought today I would share our walk in pictures.

























Sunday, January 25, 2009

My Friend Keely

I have a friend, her name is Keely, she has lupus. She's 10 years old and was diagnosed in March of 2008. I have not known Keely that long but I have an attachment to her already. I helped her grandmother with a project for Christmas and Keely was there several days while we worked on things. The day we finished the project Keely had been working on her Christmas cards for family and friends and she made a point of giving me a card. She overheard her grandmother and I talking about the project being done and asked me if we were still going to be friends. I am guessing she thought because we were done with the project she wouldn't see me anymore. I told her she would see me again and that I would always be her friend. I went home, which is just up the road from her grandmothers, and picked one of my home made cards with a quilled snowflake I had made and carried back to her. I think that sealed our friendship.

Keely, the last few weeks, has really been sick with her lupus and been in the hospital with a really bad flare up that had prevented her from being able to eat. The doctors have tried her on many medications trying to find that one that would put her lupus in remission to no avail. This last flare up has caused the doctors to resort to chemotherapy and it may be several weeks before her doctors will know if this is going to help. She is doing better and did get to come home this week. I don't know a lot about lupus but am learning more every time I talk to her grandmother and mom. Her grandmother told me that this is a disease you don't hear a lot about like other diseases and I told her that I wanted to help people learn more about this terrible disease.

Keely's mom and grandmother are working on getting together a team to walk in the Walk for Lupus Now campaign to raise awareness and funding to help patients and families and national research efforts. I have joined their team, Keely's gang. If you would like to make a donation to help Keely and others with this terrible disease, please follow this link. https://www.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=292575&lis=0&kntae292575=1C8FE988E81749E294773210792B2740 Event information from the Georgia Lupus Foundation of America's website: The Georgia Chapter’s Walk for Lupus Now is a 1.5 mile walk, beginning at the Meadow at the 10th Street entrance to Piedmont Park, opposite Grady High School.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Crafty Salutations: Mushrooms!

Crafty Salutations: Mushrooms!

In the meantime....Mushrooms





I am working on a few different post, believe it or not. In the meantime, while trying to finish those up Crafty Salutations inspired me to post a few of my mushroom pictures.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Goals of 2009

I have really been drawing a blank as to what I wanted to post about next on my blog, until reading a blog of note this morning. It is a great blog that you should check out http://lifesfreetreats.blogspot.com/ . Her post on Letters really inspired me and got me thinking about my goals for this year.


If you have read any of my previous post, you can tell family is very important to me and this is where my first goal of the year begins. This year, I plan on spending as much time with my family as I can, taking lots of family pictures, and making as many special memories as possible. I just put together a family slide show of events that happened with my husband I and my entire family that started with photo's I had taken from January - December. I included pictures that didn't always include people pictures but pictures of places we had been and things we were working on like family headstone pictures for our family genealogy and pictures of the lunar eclipse. The major part of the slide show was about family events...kid's birthday parties, school plays, family vacations, family gatherings during a loss of a family member, and just random snapshots of all my family. It included happy times and sad times. It was 2008 in pictures. I tried to remember our loved ones that passed as well as the new loved one that were born (3 babies this year) I plan on making it to more family events and making my slide show better next year. I think this will be a major part of my genealogy from now on as well. Which brings me to my second goal of the year.



My second goal of the year...get my genealogy information organized. I have heard from yet another long lost family member through ancestry (http://www.ancestry.com/) and now I am faced with sharing information. Time to get organized. I have created myself a project box of information that I need to get into my Family Tree Maker program. My goal is to try to spend at least 1 hour a week getting this information where it needs to go to make it a little easier to share with family.



Number three goal, inspired by lifesfreetreats blog ...is writing letters. I have never been very good at writing letters because I have grown up with the conveniences of email and cell phones but can appreciate the timelessness of a letter. How priceless it would be to me now to have letters that my grandparents had written or even my parents. I personally can not remember ever receiving a letter in the mail. I have received a couple of post cards and have received numerous cards from family but to receive a hand written letter... that would be special. As much as I am into photography, scrapbooking and my family genealogy, I think that adding letter writing would be a natural thing to add as one of my hobbies. How awesome would it be to actually have some family write a letter back and add it to my genealogy and scrapbooking pages.

There are many websites out there now that talk about how to construct a proper letter that are quite interesting. I plan on checking some of these out and honing my skills in letter writing. So..that next big event in your life that you would love to share with family....put it in a letter so your words and your memories can be enjoyed, saved, remembered and maybe added to your family history.