So Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is having her weekly tour of homes and this week it is children's rooms and nurseries. No, I don't have children YET, but that doesn't mean that I don't have room ideas!!!
Luckily for me, Sister handed down Kate's custom bedding to me. It is gorgeous!!! So I can't wait to have a baby girl and decorate her room with the bedding. It has a gorgeous blend of yellows, greens, pink, red and white. I wish I had a picture, but I don't.
And yes, I have my baby boy room ideas too. I can't wait to decorate a little nautical themed room for our son. And yes, I have already shopped for beddings...is that bad????
This is the bedding I would choose if I had a little boy right now.
And I want to create a fabulous room...just like this one!
Well I was originally going to do yard work today, but Brant and I ran into some issues. So, I instead spent the day cleaning house, doing laundry and DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING! The more and more I work on digital scrapping, the more I love it! So I thought I would share the few pages the I completed.
A fried at work shared this story with me today, and I had to share it.
This is from the Boston Times:
It was the kind of tragedy no school should have to endure. Students - young children, really - wept in the hallways Thursday as word swept through the Warren-Prescott School in Charlestown that an eighth-grader, Soheil Turner, was dead, shot that morning as he waited for his bus.
So it felt strange and not quite right the next morning as members of the school choir boarded a bus for a statewide singing contest and a trip to an amusement park. Some of the students looked sad and uncertain.
Their music teacher, Olivia Thompson, felt unsettled, too. But she offered words of reassurance: It's OK to be sad, but it's also OK to have fun.
"The music you're making is part of what's good in the world, and it's important to keep doing that," Thompson told them.
What happened later that day stunned the students, their teacher, and the school. The fledgling choir from Charlestown, the only elementary school singing group in the competition, earned the highest point total, beating a roster of larger, better-established choruses from middle and high schools. They did it with a heartfelt rendition of "What a Wonderful World," on a day that, as sixth-grader Mary Evers later said, didn't feel wonderful at all.
Judges were left in awe, audience members in tears.
The choir's unexpected triumph brought needed emotional uplift to a small, close-knit school hit hard by a violent act. It also vividly illustrated the resiliency required to be a student in many urban schools and the sheer challenge that students and teachers often face simply to achieve a sense of normalcy.
"You can feel empathy and sympathy, but you also have to do what you've been trained to do," said principal Dominic Amara, sitting in his office yesterday. "You can put a plaque on the wall or a tree in the ground, and those are nice things, but the best way to honor Soheil is to be a good kid."
Turner, 15, was shot in Roxbury. The man who killed him has not been identified. The boy had attended Warren-Prescott since first grade, and many of the 437 students knew him well.
The school - a low, brick complex sandwiched into a dense neighborhood a few blocks from the Bunker Hill Monument - offered kindergarten through sixth grade until three years ago, when it added grades seven and eight. "We get to know the kids and want to keep them," said Amara. Pots of pansies sit by the front door; students in all grades wear uniforms, matching navy-blue polo shirts. The school motto is "Persist and Prevail."
The choir members range from kindergartners to teenagers. When the group began four years ago, anyone could join; now, students must audition. Practices are held after school on Mondays, when the 39 students cram onto risers in a small room off the auditorium.
They worked for months on two songs for the Music in the Parks competition, held at the Six Flags New England theme park in Agawam. They were especially proud of "What a Wonderful World," their finale, with two student accompanists, on piano and trumpet, and a voice solo by a third-grader.
Then, the day before the trip, came news of Turner's death. Students who knew him were devastated; younger children were scared and confused.
"I didn't feel like singing," said Evers, the 12-year-old. "I said to my friend it's not such a wonderful world."
Elizabeth Pardy, another sixth-grader, sought a way to take solace in the music.
"Watching my friends lose someone was very upsetting," she said. "But then I thought, 'I'll sing for Soheil,' and that made me feel better."
The same thought came to Brandy Giles, 13.
"It was hard to see everyone crying," she said. "But I thought we shouldn't stop, that he would want us to keep going. People were expecting to hear this beautiful sound. If we didn't put our whole heart into it, it wouldn't be as joyful."
Standing onstage that morning, they said, they felt nervous, worried by the competition, which included middle school choirs from Georgetown and Tewksbury, but ready to do Soheil proud.
Watching from the audience, parent John Strachan felt swept by emotion.
"Just to think about what they were going through and to see them walk out onstage was this amazing dichotomy," he said.
The judges recorded their critique of each choir. On the tape sent home with Warren-Prescott, one judge pauses to listen, then remarks, "This is what music should be," according to Thompson.
The Charlestown choir "demonstrated a wonderful sense of discipline, as well as a true love of music-making," the judge, Frank Ward Jr., wrote in an e-mail. "It was a very satisfying and enjoyable performance from such a young group of students."
The choir took home two trophies, for best elementary and best middle school choir, and two of its soloists, Chloe Shea and Emily Ringrose, won individual prizes. When the winners were announced, "all the girls were screaming so much it hurt my ears," said choir member Declan Coleman, 9.
Yesterday, the buzz about the choir was still spreading through the school. Students passing the main office between classes bent low to brush the shiny trophies with their fingers, peering closely at a photo of the beaming choir members.
Parents plan to pitch in to fix up the school's display case for the new prizes.
"It's phenomenal what they did, and it's something special about kids," Amara said. "If you had adults in this kind of trauma, I doubt they could perform as well."
I'm terribly sorry it has taken me so long to post. Brant and I have been staying with my MeMe this week and she doesn't have Internet or I would have posted much sooner.
First all, thank you for the several of you who emailed and asked about Brant''s grandfather. We have felt you prayers, and although it has been a difficult week, the Lord has been very near and present every step of the way.
However, on Tuesday morning, Grandaddy began his "party with Jesus", as Brant called it. An MRI on Monday showed that he had broken his neck and spinal cord, as well as crushed the C3, 4, and 5 discs on the spine. These are the discs that control your diaphram, and it told us that he would never be able to breath on his own again. We also found out that Grandaddy was paralyzed.
Grandaddy had a very strong desire to not have any heroic measures to keep him living. Ever since the day I met him, I have known about his desire to be in heaven with the love of his life, Irene and his Father. Every person at his bedside knew that he would never want to continue on living in a vegetative and paralytic state. After a very rough night on Monday, his heart rate and blood pressure could not be maintained and were dipping very low. So the decision was made to let him go be with the two people he loved most: his savior and his beautiful bride.
We gathered by his bedside, prayed and sang of him as we watched him leave this earth. It was heartbreaking and one of the hardest things I have ever done in all my life. But as sad as the day was, I can tell you that there was joy and an incredible peace in his hospital room. We knew that he was dancing with his wife and singing praises to his Lord.
Tomorrow, we will lay Tommie Bonner Stretch to rest. I can honestly say that I have never heard so many people describe someone as "a very special, Godly man." I have heard stories about a man that I wish I could have known longer. For the past 4 years he has treated me as one of his own grandchildren and I have loved him dearly. Pray for Brant's family tomorrow as they say one last "good-bye" to a father, a grandfather, a friend, and a mentor. This has been such a difficult journey, and we know that it is not over. There will be many more tears and days of sorrow, but we know that we will see him again.
Brant just received a phone call that his Grandaddy was just in a very serious car accident. Kristi, Brant's sister, said that all we know right now is that his car flipped over on the way home from church and that he has severe head and neck injuries. They are CareFlight'ing him to LSU Medical Center (he lives in a small town called Mendon, LA).
Grandaddy has been an incredible mentor and role model from Brant. Of all people my husband knows, no person has changed his life like his grandfather. The picture above, if you couldn't tell, is Brant, his mother and Grandaddy on the day of our wedding.
Please pray for that the Lord's will is done. Although we want Grandaddy to make a full recovery and life many more years, we also know that the situation if very serious. Pray for our family and that decisions can be make with the love and understanding.
Brant is currently writing one of his last papers in the exhausting adventure to receiving a Master's Degree. Trust me, we will be having quite the shindig in August to celebrate, but as for now, we are writing. And yes, I say "we" because any wife that has had a husband getting a Master's degree knows that the degree is truly half hers!
But yes, I have been helping Brant research his paper and helping me find the ten million sources he needs. Now I have never been a C.S. Lewis fan, but I have to say that I am becoming one. Today in helping Brant gather some material for his paper, I was reading Mere Christianity, Chapter 4: Good Infection.
And I read a very profound, and interesting statement that has me in quite a bit of thought.
I said...that God is a being which contains three Persons while remaining one Being...But as soon as I begin trying to explain how these Persons are connected I hate to use words which make it sound as if one of them was there before the other. The First Person is called Father and the Second is the Son. We say that the First begets or produces the second; we call it "begetting" no "making", because what He produces is of the same kind as Himself. In that way the word Father is theonly word to use. But unfortunately it suggests that He is there first - just as a human father exists before his son. But that is not so. There is no before and after about it. And that is why I think it important to make clear how one thing can be the source, or cause, or origin, of another without being there before it.
Now for me, here was the kicker...
The Son exists because the Father exists; but there never was a time before the Father produced the Son.
Ok - so maybe you think this pointless, or complete nonsense, but to me, this is profound. I have always believed in the Trinity....God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit...all in one Being, but to think that there has NEVER been a time when there was one without the other. Yes, one exists because of the other, but one never created the other - they just ARE.
For me, this profound thought simply resonates this:
I SERVE AN AMAZING GOD!
Yes, there are plenty of things about God that I do not understand, but I do know this...He is Almighty...one that non can fully comprehend.
So Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is having her weekly tour of homes and this week it is children's rooms and nurseries. No, I don't have children YET, but that doesn't mean that I don't have room ideas!!!
