It's serious cleaning when Momma comes home! :) Jason had a great time with the kids this morning for Spring Break while I went to work a shift at Sorenson this morning.  I came back and they had even done a LION craft because I had mentioned last night that this week's letter was L!!  It was A-DOR-A-BLE!!  Kaylena also wrote her name too!  For a while she was just writing the letter "H"- then two weeks ago we took a "Review Week" after the letter J to work on spelling her name- which she was able to do by the end of the week.  Then, this past week was the letter K, which of course prompted writing her name.  Alas, she would just write "K K K K K K L E N A" anytime I would help her.  So to come home today and see that she had actually written "KAYLENA" by herself I was shocked!! Jason was like, "Oh, I thought she could do that already!"  It was so neat.  The house was an absolute mess, but that's the way I like it- come home to happy kids.  I'm so grateful he didn't stress about the cleaning stuff and just had a good time.

After work I did a few stops to pick up supplies for our Service Friday that we're having this week, and it has just been amazing the miracles that have been happening with this!  It was kind of a long-term desire to do something, but short-term decision to do it so soon.  Our friends who used to be in our ward, moved and then moved again.  Well, in the lapse of time, many things happened including the birth of their fourth child, first daughter exactly one week after Joseph was born.  About a week shy of her 3 month birthday she died in her sleep.  In a letter that they emailed out, they said that "While her time on earth was short, she continues to influence our family daily."  Because of that bond and commitment, they determined to do a monthly family service and in the last month before her birthday, they would donate items to the Children's Hospital.  Well, they extented the invitation to anyone who wanted to participate and since November, it's been something I just keep thinking about.  We got together with another family to assemble some craft-kits, but everything else seemed unsuccessful.  I knew that many people in our ward were touched by this family and would long to be a part of this service for them, so while our Boy Scouts are having their garage sale this weekend, I thought it would be a good time to set up an area to do some crafts, cards, blanket-tying, and a toy/baby item donation box. 

So the blessings of ease have just kept coming.  The one sister that our families got together before is super-duper practical crafty, so she voluntereed to head up the craft section, another sister who just had triplets volunteered card-making supplies, Sister Stephenson had already been decided to be the delivery person to the hospital, and so the fleece blankets/ coordination was the only thing that was left.  I was half-way wanting to ask someone to help me with those, as my sewing skills and knowledge are limited, but just couldn't settle on anyone.  Well, after work, I made some stops and had debated all morning about whether or not I should go to Hancock Fabrics right after work or later when we could go as a family.  I nearly turned right to go home, but decided to go ahead and go now.  So, I did and ran into another sister from our ward who is also Kaylena's dance teacher.  We talked for a while about Spring Break and different things, and more about the service day and how wonderful this family is and how she loved serving with her in Primary when they lived here. 

So then I headed over to the fleece section, we were still kind of talking about blankets and the process, and I'm pretty sure that my questions and comments led her to her question, "Do you sew a lot?" hahahhahaha...so I told her about my limited but growing knowledge of sewing and such- so she jumped right on board to help out as far as how much fabric to get to make the blankets I had in mind.  We found some great deals and some absolutely darling designs for the Hospital with very soothing colors.  She helped out a great deal with that and even offered to take them home and get the fabric cut and ready for us to just tie!  It was just so neat, and she said so too, how the Lord just put her there at Hancock at just the right time.  She was very eager to put her skirt pattern back and use this week to get the fleece ready for the Service Friday.  Just such a blessing.  She told me about her morning and how it was kind-of the same, just debating where to go and how she had really not known why she decided to pop into the fabric store, but that since she was there- had initally went ahead and gotten a pattern and was looking for fabric when I came in and we started talking.  Isn't that just awesome!??

I'm just so glad that this project will give our ward the chance to come together and support our friends in their year of service to remember their daughter, but also to provide encouragement to our local Children's hospital and those that are there.