Immediately after Maddie Spohr’s death, donations poured into the March of Dimes in honor of Maddie.  I’m still amazed that folks like you and I have donated over 20 THOUSAND DOLLARS in three days.  Simply amazing.

But if you’re regular followers of Heather’s blog, then you know that she lost her job last year.  At the time, Mike had been staying home with Maddie.  Then Heather had the chance to stay with Maddie while Mike went to work as an independant contractor.  He, obviously, isn’t working right now.  So…they have no income.  And lots of bills to be paid.

{Insert seemingly random segue here. It’ll make sense in a minute, I promise.}

A few weeks ago, I posted about something called “Praying in Color”.  After I found out about Maddie’s death, I couldn’t keep myself from looking at all the pictures that Heather has posted on flickr.  And I realized that as I sat there, clicking through thousands of pictures, I was praying with each new click.  I thanked God for Maddie, her life, her smile, her beautiful eyes.  I prayed for Heather and Mike.  I prayed for Jackie!  And Gramma and Bampa.  If you were in a picture and I knew your name, I prayed for you by name.  If you were in a picture and I didn’t know your name, I still said a prayer for you.  And then I remembered a project I’d been working on and discarded because I couldn’t get it just right: a photo mosaic of our church.  So I thought “why not just try one of Maddie?”  So I stole a bunch a pictures from Heather’s photostream(I really hope you don’t mind, Heather!) and got to work.

I had no clue there’d be such a craze over the one I did of Maddie.  (Although I have to admit that I even surprised myself with how amazing it turned out.)   I also had no clue that I’d feel so helpless…a coast away from the Spohr’s…wanting to be there to give hugs, take Rigby for walks, or even wash dishes.  I hate washing dishes.  But I’d gladly do it if I were there.

But I can’t go.  And the only way that I know how to help(other than sending up more prayers) is to donate to help defray the costs of all that goes with a situation like this one.  I’ve already made a personal donation(as I’m sure many of you have, too), but I wanted to do more.

So…I’m making a limited time offer(until May 20th), with all proceeds going to Mike and Heather. I will make a personalized photo mosaics for you!

I will be offering them in three sizes:

12×18 for $40 including shipping
16×20 for $50 including shipping
20×30 for $60 including shipping

Here’s how to get your personalized mosaic photo:

1. Contact me by emailing me at queenofhaddock(at)gmail(dot)com or leave a comment here(with a valid email address).

2. Send me 20 – 500 pictures. (Obviously the fewer pictures you send, the more often they will repeat.)

You will have to either snail mail me a disc with the images on them, or you can email me a zipped folder containing all of the pictures to queenofhaddock(at)gmail(dot)com.
I will only be taking digital pictures.  Also, I will not be able to return the CD, so please do not send an original disc!

3. Let me know what size you’d like your photo mosaic to be: 12×18, 16×20 or 20×30.

4. Wait for me to email the proof to you!

Once you have approved the proof, I will have it printed and shipped to you.  I haven’t ironed out every tiny detail, so I cannot promise a specific turn-around time yet.  I will try to get your proof emailed to you within 2 business days.  I am still shopping for the best printing option, and that decision will affect shipping time.  Email me at queenofhaddock(at)gmail(dot)com for more information.

**UPDATE:

A different option…

After thinking about printing and shipping the mosaics myself, I realized that it might be easier to sell you the digital image and let you do the printing on your own.  I am still willing to have it printed for you, but I wanted to offer to do it this way, too. If you want to buy just the digital image, the price will be $30.  All of that will go straight to Mike and Heather.

Thanks to all of you for helping me do my little part to help the Spohr’s.

This is yet another post about Maddie Spohr.

Heather has taken thousands of pictures of sweet Maddie and shared them on flickr.

I took over 300 of those pictures and did a photo mosaic.

Give it just a minute to load…it’s a very big file.

Click on the photo to enlarge,

then click on the enlarged version to see the little pictures.

Want a photo mosaic of your own?  Want to help raise more money for Mike and Heather?  Click here!

Today, with all the sadness surrounding little Maddie Sphor’s death, I’ve been amazed at the power of the web.

People all over the world have posted about Maddie today.

Plans are being made to remember Maddie.

People have given money to help with Maddie’s funeral costs.  (If you’d like to give to that, go to paypal.com, click Send Money.  Enter the email address formaddie@hotmomreviews.com and the amount you’d like to give.)

At one point today, Maddie’s March of Dimes fundraiser site was getting an average of one $20 donation every 30 seconds! It’s now reached over $13,000.

Hell, we even got Jimmy Fallon to tweet @mamaspohr (Heather).

All of this made me start to think about the definition of friends.  Dictionary.com defines a friend as “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard”.  I think it’s obvious from the outpouring today that there are feelings of affection for Maddie, Mike and Heather.

Maggie said it better, but no matter how many people look at me like I’m crazy when I talk about my “bloggy friends” or “Tweeties”…I will no longer apologize for talking about the friends I’ve met online.  I will not let myself feel self-concious for asking you to pray for them.  (I wouldn’t if I was asking for a friend I know in real life!)  These people are real, and they’re real friends.  Just think of Twitter as the watercooler for my stay-at-home job.  But unlike most people, I get to chose my co-workers.  I bet you wish you could do that, huh?  🙂

The kids and I went shopping today, and they begged for me to stop and get hotdogs.  So I figured if I stopped at Sonic, I could get a drink with “hospital ice”.  I love hospital ice!  You know the little cylindrical pieces that are just crunchy enough, but not hard?  The ice that’s totally awesome? So awesome that I simply cannot let it go to waste.  I refuse to throw out hospital ice, and I try my darnedest to eat it before it melts.

So I place our order, requesting a “large diet coke” with my meal. I was a bit surprised when my “large” drink arrived.  She must have the wrong car.  Surely that absurdly large gallon of coke wasn’t meant for me!

When she handed it to me, I nearly dropped it.  I couldn’t even put my hands all the way around the stupid thing! I definitely couldn’t hold it while I was driving.

So while I was driving(and not drinking my diet coke…boo-hoo), I thought about the fact that the cup beside me held 44 ounces of fluid.   And I thought about the fact that that’s about what Asa eats in 3 days!  Holy aspartame, Batman, that’s a lot of diet coke!

But I’m happy to report that eventhough it took me all day long, I finished the blasted thing-ice and all.  Now I have to go pee.

(I wrote this post a while back and scrapped it because I sound like a crazy person um school girl gushing about her latest crush reasonable, mature adult.  Yep, that’s me; reasonable and mature.  But I pulled it back out of the trash because Chris listed me in his FollowFriday list on Twitter, so I figured I’d share the love.)   

I’m a music snob. I admit it. I don’t usually listen to a lot pop music. (I don’t even know what’s poplular, to be honest.)  I don’t watch American Idol(gasp!).  My ipod is full of broadway and classical and opera.  But there is one thing that I’ll always fall for: a good, smooth sound.

A few weeks ago 5 Minutes for Mom had their 2009 Ultimate Blog Party and they had several parties with live video so that folks could join in the fun from home.  Chris Mann, a new recording artist with an album coming out this fall, performed a few of his songs at the shin-dig at Heather Spohr’s house.  I didn’t get to watch it live because we were on the road, but I did watch it later on thissite.  The sound isn’t perfect, but you can definitely tell that he has an amazing voice (AND he’s a Southerner AND he can sing opera!).  Oh, and, yeah…he’s fun to look at, too! 🙂

If you want to hear a more polished version of some of his songs(my fave is “On a Night Like This”), check out www.chrismannmusic.com or his Facebook Fan Page.  He also twitters and blogs.  He’s pretty funny.  You should check him out.  He’s gonna be big, folks!  And if you don’t click one of the million links I gave you in this post, then one day you’re gonna be sorry you didn’t listen to me.