"She is very sweet"

I checked my email right before I backed out of our driveway to go pick Benaiah up from school.

When I read the short update I'd received about Lily, I hopped out of the van and ran back inside the house to tell Doug what I'd just read.

"They said, 'She is very sweet'!!!!"

I kissed Doug on the cheek, did the happy dance and said exclaimed again,

"Did you hear that?! She is very sweet!!!!"

I almost burst into tears out of sheer excitement!

It was a proud Mama moment.

They are words I use every day...

"Oh, so-and-so, is so sweet!"
"You are so sweet to do that!"
"She's the sweetest l'il thing!"

But when these are the first words you've ever heard about your little girl that actually describe something about her personality.....

about her countenance....

about her disposition....

about HER.

Not about her health problems.

Not about her physical abilities or disabilities.

But about LILY.

Let me tell ya....

It thrills a mama's soul.

These 4 little words have somehow helped me know her better.

Of course, I'd always assumed she was sweet...

But now it's confirmed :)

The little update we got about her was just that.

Little.

But the other thing we learned about her sooooo encouraging.

She has been at the medical care center for less than 2 weeks and has already gained a whole pound of weight!!!

Lily is very malnourished - She is 3 years old and only weighs 18.5lbs.

Make that 19.5lbs!!!!

Please continue to pray that the Lord will continue to move mountains on behalf of our VERY SWEET little girl!!!

Garden Party

Saturday we attended the annual Garden Party fundraiser at The Little Light House.

This is one of the school's four primary fundraisers.

Money is raised through ticket sales to the luncheon, raffle tickets for "baskets" and an auction.

All of the families at TLLH were put on teams to fill their baskets.

Ours was an "Outdoors Basket".

Doug literally spent an entire day going around to different businesses asking them to make donations to our basket.

He ended up coming home with A LOT of loot - gift certificates for deer processing and taxidermy, rifle scopes, and deer stands just to name a few things.

Our basket ended up being worth over $1000!

There were over 30 baskets being raffled.

The one we wanted to win was the "Grill Basket".

I somehow made everyone in our family believe that I'd use a grill if we had a gas grill {as opposed to our charcoal grill} Ha!

We were REALLY hopeful that someone in our family's name would be called.

Unfortunately, the "Grill Basket" was the most popular one, so we had some stiff competition.

Our name was not called.  Boooo :(

Doug says we "got hosed" - LOL

Although we didn't win the grill, we didn't walk away empty-handed.

You see - there was a Hat competition for the ladies and a Tie competition for the gentlemen.

I did NOT win the Hat competition.

You should have seen some of the hat-creations several ladies wore - a couple of them were at least 2 feet tall!

But guess who won the Overall Tie competition?!

My boys!!!

Yep! They were twinsies! :)

(I found these great daddy/son ties at www.myfavoritepal.com}

Benaiah loves it when his daddy shakes his arms up and down!

We were packed in like sardines, so getting my big camera out to take better pictures just wasn't happening. Instead, we relied on the ole iPhone camera :(

These are the best pictures we got of me and Benaiah:

Pitiful.

THANK YOU to EVERYONE who has financially contributed to The Little Light House on Benaiah's behalf.  

We have officially met our family's fundraising goal!!! YAY!!!!

Thank you!!!!