Project Life 2013, Week 19

Well hello there and Happy Memorial Day Weekend! What a week. First of all, if you are one of the 14,000 people who shared my plea earlier in the week on Facebook asking for help locating my Grandfather after the terrible tornado in Oklahoma on Monday - THANK YOU. I was absolutely blown away by the overwhelming kindness shown by so many (seriously. 14,000!! people shared my post). Most of you have probably heard about the Moore tornado. It was awful. So many people were less fortunate than my family. I live in Hawaii now, but I am originally from Oklahoma and my Grandpa and his wife live in Moore. They live just 2 blocks from the school where all those sweet children lost their lives on Monday. Their house only suffered minor damage. They rode out the storm in their closet and are very VERY lucky. Just a few houses down from them there is complete destruction for miles and miles. Monday afternoon for us was a very stressful time being 3500 miles away, watching news reports broadcast from my grandpa's street, saying it was "the hardest hit street" and seeing that there was literally nothing left but rubble. We were expecting the worst.  After getting nowhere for several hours and unsure of anything else to do, I posted a plea for help on Facebook - I simply gave my grandpa's name, age, address and asked that if there was anyone in the area if they could please check to see if he was OK. I have about 200 Facebook friends. Many of my friends shared my post, and their friends shared it and it spread. Over 14,000 times. By Monday evening, I started getting messages from complete strangers who had walked more than 2 miles across rubble in dangerous conditions to see if my Grandpa was OK, if he needed help, if he was even alive. And the news was better than I ever expected - he was just fine! And his house was still standing!! It was surrounded on nearly all sides by devastation, but he was OK. And over the next several days, several more people - some of them friends, some of them strangers, continued to walk into the restricted area where my grandpa lived (he refuses to leave his home even though he still doesn't have water or electricity) to check on him and take him food and water, even toilet paper! I am so very thankful not just that he is OK, but that there really are so many good people in this world. So, there was my rambling post about the tornado. Please keep this tight-knit community in your thoughts.

Moving on...Week 19. If you remember from my Week 18 post, we had lost our sweet kitty Hoku during Week 18. During Week 19, Dean decided his heart would only be mended if he got a new kitten. I did some research to see if this was a good idea or not, and it turns out that at that age (6), it's fine to replace a lost pet with a new one pretty quickly if the child wants one. So, off to the humane society we went.

Here's a look at the entire 2-page Layout for Week 19:

As you can see, we ended up getting not one - but TWO kittens from the Humane Society!! That makes us a FOUR cat household!! But they had a "Buy one, Get one FREE" special and these two were litter mates that had never been separated, so...how could we resist!? Dean got naming duties. So, meet Cookie and Tulip....

As for the products used this week. More of my usuals. Seafoam. Studio Calico Project Life kit. Studio Calico printables. And a few lovely things from Emily Merritt. Specifically, on the left side of the page I used Tiny Quotes (on the "Hi" 3x4 card) and Dotted: Love Edition (the red "love" circle on the 4x6 card with the photo of Cookie and Tulip.

Staff Appreciation Week at Dean's school was during Week 19. I am on the Staff Appreciation Committee and was in charge of designing the invitations to the staff luncheon. I used an old Cindy Schneider template (Sweet Shoppe) and a couple of different school-themed kits by Jady Day Studio (Sweet Shoppe) to design the invite, then we just ordered 100 of them (enough for all of the teachers and staff) printed as photos. We attached them to a reusable shopping bag with a little gift inside and put them in the staff mailboxes before school on Monday. The luncheon was Wednesday and was a huge success!! Much of the right side of the layout is devoted to Staff Appreciation goings-on.

On the right side of the page, I included one of the luncheon invites and used a few different 3x4 cards from the Studio Calico Project Life kit. I also used a journal card from the Wow Mom kit by Emily Merritt as well as her Thumbs Way Up kit and more of the Dotted: Love Edition and Tiny Quotes on this side of the layout as well.

And that wraps up Week 19!!

Dean had his last day of school last Friday and is officially on Summer Break. I'm hoping we have a nice, lazy summer around here with 2 months of trips to the beach, family hikes, and lots of relaxing around the house. I'm hoping to get into a more regular blog posting schedule as well. We'll see how that goes...