beautiful thang

Just about a year and a half ago, Kirby and I sat in the backyard at my parents house with one of our parish priests and his brother and talked about where they came from. Fr John Kyebasuuta and his brother, Fr Tom, were born on the island of Buvuma, in the middle of Lake Victoria, in Uganda. We learned that the village they called home was filled with people who are impoverished and hungry, we learned of the large number of orphans left in the wake of the AIDS epidemic that has ravaged the country, we learned about kids that want to go to school but don't have the resources to do so.. and we learned that we could help out.

A small group of us pulled our resources together and decided to point them towards Uganda. Since then have been able to support five children through school, we have planted an orchard on the island to help reforest the area and to provide a new source of food, shelter and work, and, most recently, we have built a new well, providing fresh, clean water for the people on the island and safety for the kids that had to walk for miles to the lake to get water for their families.

We want to do more and we want you to be involved.
Our hopes are expand our little organization so that we can do more for these people who are very much in need of our support. Your $5 will pay for a hearty meal, a great time with friends and an opportunity to learn more about this project and see how you might be able to help, too. 100% of the proceeds will go to for:Uganda.

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we are having this shindig at my parents house on the 22nd at 4:00 pm.
15156 trail view ct, sylmar, ca 91342

let me know if you can come and feel free to invite lots of friends!

inspired

"If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” - C.S. Lewis

i read this tonight and it settled my heart. there are so many things i want to fight for and against and so many losses i consider victories and so many victories that i consider losses. its easy for me to get really wrapped up in political debate and in this heavy discourse of pop political views. i go nuts sometimes.

thank you, God, for hope in what is true and for guys like cs lewis.

all hallows eve time

lately i have been trying hard to channel my sleeping artist self to become more of a domestic goddess. so, of course, the fike halloween celebrations got a pretty good dose of my martha stewart aspirations! i decorated our patio area really awesome (the pics will have come later) in a not too scary ghost-theme. our neighbor said it was "sophisticated". which is pretty much the weirdest halloween complement, but i will take it!

anyway, we started off the day with scrambled eggs and ghost toast, as show below.

when it came time for treat or treating, i stuffed hero into her homemade bumblebee costume (yes, that's right everyone. i have become that mom.) she totally hated wearing it, too, which really was a kick in the gut. i forced her into it anyway.

mary, on the other hand, most graciously wore her flower outfit almost the entire day. she was so cute i didn't care how ridiculous it was to have a felt flower collar in her face all day. it was worth it.
plus they were built in chewy things...

here we are, getting ready to venture out into halloween land. mary was so pumped!

hero needed to hold both kirby and uncle kenny's hands as we trick or treated. man, treat or treating is really different when your baby is one. we only went to four houses and she was totally spent. how cute is that?
and after house number four she needed to be carried the whole way back. not an easy feat in a puffy bee suit. kenny is such a good uncle.



here is hero enjoying the fruit of her labor. nothing like a dum-dum after a night of trick or treating. we sat in front of my parents house until we ran out of candy. hero really liked putting candy in the other kids bags. in fact, she liked it so much she ended up giving all her candy to other kids! it was so awesome... no halloween candy residue! i don't think we will be able to pull that one over her for very much longer.

after the crowds left, we cuddled up with hot chocolate and marshmallows and watching charlie browns 'the great pumpkin.' totally perfect.

on another sweet note...

the official number of reported babies who get to get born now is...520!!!
5 of which happened at our local clinic on saturday!

wow, 520 new people in the world. how awesome.
thanks to everyone who came out and supported 40 Days for Life, thanks to everyone helping out by volunteering and walking and praying.

you also helped to close one clinic completely.

there's some change for ya.

so funny!

good one, stuff white people like.

good one.