Last November and then again this past September I did a little thing called NaBloPoMo.  I posted every single day for the entire month.  It’s always a challenge to get a post written and up every single day, but it’s also fun to kind of push myself.  Some of my NaBloPoMo posts were pure crap, but I managed to get a few that I’m pretty proud to have written and that I’m glad I shared.  Posts that I probably wouldn’t have written if I hadn’t been trying to come up with something, anything to write about.

Each month I get the info on what the next month’s NaBloPoMo topic will be.

From today’s email from Eden, the NaBloPoMo goddess:

For those of you looking to take another crack at daily blogging, the theme for December is MITZVAH and it comes with a challenge: to give something, to someone, every day of the month, and then blog about it. The goal is to act with kindness, obviously — I don’t want to be responsible for people giving each other black eyes. Your gifts can be as large as volunteering or donating to charity, or as small as a kind word to someone who needs it.

Doesn’t that sound like a great idea??  31 days of full of random acts of kindness.

I’m just not committed enough to blog it everyday.

But I still want to do it…kind of.

Every day for the month of December I am going to “give something” and I’ll be posting it on Facebook and Twitter, hopefully with a #31daysofgiving hashtag(if I remember and can get it to fit).

So I did a little Google search and lo-and-behold, Glamour magazine already had that idea last year and continued it again this year.  (They have some great ideas, but there are a lot of ideas they don’t have listed and there are a lot of things that you can come up with for free!)

I’m not posting this to garner praise or attention.  I’m posting this to try to get more people to do this.  Try it: give something each day for the entire month of December.  And if you fail mid-month?  Guess what?  You haven’t failed.  Because if you give just one thing, then it’s worth it.

I set up this little website so that we can all share ideas of things to give, where to give, what you’ve given, etc.  It ain’t purty, but I think it’s functional.

Each day I’ll put up a “What did you give today?” post and you can feel free to tell us what you gave or plan to give by clicking “Reply”.

I hope some of you will take this challenge with me.  Who’s in?

Bags are packed.
Car snacks are made.
Camera batteries charged.
Prayers have been said.

And none of us can go to sleep.

(I’m taking my computer, but I’m not expecting
to have a whole lot of time to blog.
But there will be pictures.  
Oh the pictures…on my flickr stream.)

Seven months ago we put down a deposit on a trip to Walt Disney World.
Asa was still wearing 3-6 month clothes and couldn’t even roll over.
Lydia was still wearing diapers, and said “Cinnawella”.
Carter still took naps and could barely write his name.

Today?  Well, things are very different around here.
Asa is wearing 12 month clothes, and can (army)crawl faster than I can run.
Lydia is potty trained(with an occasional accident), and says “Cinderella” with perfect diction(and lots of southern drawl).
Carter busts out full sentences (written on every spare piece of paper in the house), like the one today:  “God ♥s me”.   With the heart and the s and everything.

For 10 days now, we’ve been doing a countdown.
___days until we leave for Disney.
They are excited.
I am excited.
THREE MORE DAYS!!!

I was typing out our itinerary(yes, you read that right, and no, I will not accept snarky comments about this), and making sure I had all our dinner reservation confirmation numbers in order.  The show times listed, so we make sure we see what we most want to see.  The locations for the character greetings.  All noted.  I’m looking at a weather report now, trying to plan out our wardrobe.  (I know, I know…I’m a dork.  But this is part of the fun for me!)

As I was getting all this together today, guess what I saw taunting me from the small little corner of the page?

We also recommend: Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party.

One click and I was head over heels in lurve.  I’ve never been to Disney at Christmas before.  And man, oh man…I can’t wait!

A Christmas parade with “real, live” toy soldiers and animated gingerbread cookies.

Cookies & hot cocoa(mind you, it’s supposed to be well into the 70s).

Pixie dust on the castle made of hundreds of thousands of tiny lights(which I found out today they start putting on in July so that they have time to get all of them up!)

Fireworks.

Christmas carols.  (And I die a little inside from excitement!)

And SNOW!!!   (I know it’s not real, but dooood…I’m from Georgia.  It doesn’t take much.)

Last weekend we went to the UGA vs. Tenn Tech game in Athens.  Marshall was born and raised in Athens.  Marshall and I both went to school at Georgia.  He is a die hard fan for sure!  For a few years after we graduated, we had season tickets.  When Carter was a baby we still had tickets and regularly made it to games.  Then came the decision of a lifetime: keep paying for season tickets or have another baby.  Fortunately for Lydia, we chose the baby route.  (Although there were some times during her colic-induced screaming I wondered if we’d really made a wise choice!) (Just kidding!)  (A little.)

Anyway, after we quit renewing our season tickets, our trips to Sanford Stadium got a lot less frequent.  (Neither of us are very good negotiators when trying to buy tickets from a scalper.)  Last weekend we had the opportunity to get 7 tickets; enough for us, the kids and Marshall’s parents who live nearby.

We had a fantastic time!  See?

But this post isn’t about any of that.  This post is about my sweet, smart boy.

Once we left the game, we were in the car passing all the chaos that is gameday.  My mother-in-law was in the back seat with the big kids and I heard them talking about all the things that they saw:  Lots of people wearing red.  A red tent with the “shor-sha”(georgia) G on it.  A red light.  A stop light.  A fence(they meant a road block thing). 2 police men.

We all saw the two policemen standing there…one white male, one black male.

Grandma: “Carter, do you see anything different about those two policemen?”
(I might want to point out that that question wasn’t totally out of the blue…we’d been talking about ‘same’ & ‘different’.)

Carter: Yes.  One of them has a hat.

That’s how long it’s been.
Seven months and four days.
A blink of the eye and an eternity all at once.

Two hundred eighteen days since Mike and Heather‘s world changed.
Two hundred eighteen days that I’ve prayed for them, for their family.
Two hundred eighteen days that I’ve struggled with God on the “why”.

Why Maddie?
Why Mike & Heather?
Why?

But today, on Maddie’s second birthday,
I’m setting aside the “why”
and focusing instead on the “who”.

Madeline Alice Spohr.
Beautiful, fun, intelligent daughter of Mike & Heather Spohr.
Bright eyes, animated face.
Maddie Moo.
Chicken Muffin Love Bear.
The girl who changed the blogosphere.
The girl whose story changed my life.
Inspired me to be a better mother,
A better friend,
A better person.

And today we will celebrate her life by eating cream puffs.
And today we will celebrate her life by making and delivering NICU family support packs to our local NICU.
And today we will celebrate her life by donating to the organization in her memory: Friends of Maddie.
(I hope you will, too.)

Maddie, I haven’t forgotten you.
I won’t forget you.
You changed my life.