Tuesday Tribute: Memorial Day Edition

Two great charities have come to my attention this week as Memorial Day was creeping around the corner, and I decided that would be perfect for a Tuesday Tribute...on Memorial Day...on a Monday.. ;)

The first is an organization called Fisher House.



Fisher House was created in 1990 to help military families in need. Because many military members must travel great distances for specialized medical care, these houses were created to keep their families close. These homes (45 currently) are built on many major medical military bases(18) and VA medical centers (15)both here and abroad. The goal of Fisher House is to keep families together during the incredibly stressful time of injury recovery, and the family never pays to stay. Each house has 8 to 21 suites and can accomodate 16 to 42 family members.

Since 1990, Fisher House has served more than 130,000 families for over 3 MILLION days and has saved families over $150 MILLION in lodging and transporation costs. They have provided 19,000 air tickets to family members and almost $7.5 MILLION in scholarships to military children. It's definitely a charity worth standing behind. Even Obama agrees--he donated $250,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize earnings to this fabulous organization!



The second charity that I just came to know about today is a charity called the Wounded Warrior Project.



WWP is a much smaller scale charity, but is fabulous in it's own right as it is just growing. The mission of WWP is to "honor and empower wounded warriors." They offer physical and mental help to those who are wounded and their families, and dispense backpacks with some essentials bedside to those wounded. These backpacks contain such things as clothing, toiletries, calling cards, and playing cards. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this charity grows!



Hope you take a moment of your day today to remember the heroic men and women who gave their lives for us, and to take a look at these great groups who are working to help the heroes who made it home.

Tuesday Tribute: Me to We

A couple weeks ago, I had the honour of meeting an amazing young man named Michel Chikwanine(chick-wah-nee-nay), and hearing him speak to a group of college students.


I've never met anyone quite like Michel. He grew up in the Republic of Congo, and at 5 years old was kidnapped and made into a child soldier. He was able to escape his captors, but only to go home where a few years later rebels broke into his home and forced him to watch at his mother and sisters were gang raped. The family managed to escape Congo and made it to a refugee camp in Uganda, and Michel and his mother eventually made it to Canada--one of his sisters and father were killed during this process.
This is definitely not the end or all of Michel's story, and the way he has handled it with such maturity is amazing to me. Especially because, at the end of his speech, a student raised his hand and asked "Is the War in Africa still going on?"
This astounded me. Sometimes I forget that not all young people have a connection to the world outside of their own--not all young people frequent CNN or watch the nightly news. But, the War in Africa, since 1994, has killed more people than WWI and WWII combined...and I feel that it is necessary for everyone to know about it.

Michel travels and shares his story with people all over the world with a group called Me to We.



Me to We offers leadership programs, volunteer trips to Kenya, India, Mexico, Educador, China and even Arizona, tour inspirational speakers to education people about particular world matters and even overcoming difficult obsticles. And they do all this while making the environmental carbon impact as low as possible. They also sell organic and donate one tee shirt (or one book, depending on what you buy) for every one tee shirt purchased.

But, the best thing about Me to We is that they donate 50% of their profits to Free the Children.

What is Free the Children, you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait for the next Tuesday Tribute :)

But, if you want to here a little bit of how Michel delivers his amazing inspiration...

Tuesday Tribute: Compassion

First, before the Tribute, please make some time to stop over to the Marsh's blog or find this lovely family here on twitter. Their baby girl, Layla Grace, lost her battle with neuroblastoma at only two and a half this morning. They can use all the good thoughts in the world right now.



This month's Tuesday Tribute is for Compassion, Int.



It took until tonight for me to pick a cause for March, because so many great causes have just come to my attention.

But I chose Compassion because Jennifer, mostly known as "MckMama," is currently in Kenya blogging for Compassion with her husband, and it seemed like a great way to get more support for them.

Compassion is a fabulous child sponsorship program. Started in 1952, Compassion now helps more than a million children in 25 countries in Asia, Africa, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, and for $38 a month per child.

Those of you who have been hanging around here for awhile know that I am not a religious person. No, I am not. But, this organization is. Although I don't consider myself religious, I do think there is a certain strength that comes with religion that can't be found elsewhere--and that strength comes out heavily in charitable organizations. Especially when many of these kids really have nothing to hope for, it gives them the opportunity to have faith in something bigger than themselves.

The best thing about Compassion, in my opinion, is that the $38 a month is not just generically used. The money is put towards the things each individual child needs the most. If it's food, they get food. If it's shoes, they get shoes. If it's an education, then it's school. Each child is considered on an individual basis, and that is great.

Compassion's services span widely. They have a Child Survival Program, which starts before birth. They have the child sponsorship program, and then they have a Leadership Development Program. And the types of children Compassion sponsors also have a wide range, from birth through 21, children with disabilities, and children living with AIDS.

It's also great that Compassion allows for personal connections between the sponsored child and their sponsor. It's not a simple "send this money in and we'll send you info about what it's going towards," no. As a sponsor, you sponsor one child and you get to exchange letters and pictures with them and maybe even get the chance to visit them in their own country.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for children like these. But, you cannot understand how much your $38 a month impacts them until you are able to see first hand what their living conditions are really like.

I went to Kenya a couple years ago, and it changed the way I looked at the world completely. One day while we were there, we took the time to live the life of real Kenyans. We left our concrete-floor mudhut complete with actual cots and mosquito nets for the day, wrapped our shaws around us, and lived as a native for the entire day. We collected food to cook (kasaba) in the morning for lunch with the amazing Kenyan women, we followed the Kenyan men as they captured and killed a chicken for dinner, and then went hunting--although they scared away a DikDik and only managed to come home with a turtle, which we couldn't bring ourselves to eat so we let it go. We hiked down to the well with buckets, which we then filled with water and carried back on our heads. I had a 2-month-old baby boy strapped to my back as I helped make pine-thatching for the roof while the other women went to gather sticks for the fire, which they carried back on their heads. All the while sitting in a tiny pavilion area, next to the one-room homes that all of these amazing people made their lives in, and sleep on the floor of. A lot of times, these kids didn't even have shoes, which in Kenya is especially bad because they have these things called "jiggers" that get underneath toenails and multiple until the nail is lost. A simple pair of shoes helps these kids so much.








A lot of these things living conditions are common in all of the areas Compassion reaches. And a minimum of 80% of the money Compassion raises go directly to the kids, and that is wonderful. If you'd like to sponsor a child, check out the Sponsor a Child page at Compassion. They are doing amazing things.

Tuesday Tribute: Joyful Heart Foundation

I don't have any idea where the idea for "Tuesday Tribute" came from (if someone does...please inform me), but I love the idea. I've done it a couple times before, but still don't know where it came from.

Tuesday Tribute is a day when you make a post for someone or something greater than yourself: basically, it's a way to highlight a problem or organization (or both) and show what you stand for. I've decided to start doing these again, at least once a month.

As a disclaimer, I will tell you that I will never blog about something I don't care about. However, I care about a lot of things, so these ones are the things I care about most.

Today, my Tuesday Tribute is for A Joyful Heart Foundation.



There are other organizations like this with the same purpose, but for today it's just JHF.

This Foundation was started by Mariska Hargitay (I may or may not like SVU, but I didn't really care about who the actors were until I found this out) a few years after she started working on SVU. JHF is basically a foundation that helps all survivors of any kind of abuse: childhood, sexual, and domestic.

According to the site:

"The vision of the Joyful Heart Foundation is a community that:
1. is empowered with knowledge, courage and compassion to help survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse heal mind, body and spirit;
2. values and dedicates resources to individuals and families that have been impacted by these issues; and
3. seeks to ignite and foster an open dialogue about how to collaboratively end the cycle of violence and abuse."

They have a multitude of programs to "heal," "educate," and "empower," including week long retreats, local and urban retreats, and community events. And the site itself offers many online and phone resources for survivors.

In the US, every 2 minutes a woman is sexually assaulted, every 15 seconds a woman is battered, and everyday 4 children are killed as a result of child abuse. About 17.9% of women have or will survive a rape or attempted rape in their lifetime, that's 1 in 6 women. It's a great cause, and it's really important to people who have lived through things like this--many times it's easier to fly halfway across the world for a week retreat with total strangers than discuss things with those closest to you.

Check it out and pass it on. You can even buy things at their shop to help support--boxes of chocolates, necklaces, lotion, a really fuzzy blanket.

Plus, Joyful Heart Foundation is in the running for a funding of $250,000 from the Pepsi Refresh project. And you should go vote for it right quick here.

I love when celebrities have heart!

World AIDS Day

Today is world aids day. Today Devil U pulled off the only awareness stunt I've ever been impressed with from them. They basically had a bunch of random students in the middle of class change put duct tape on their mouths and hold signs with AIDS facts on them while frozen in motion, as if they were just walking to their next class. It was awesome.

It reminded me of this, where 200 dances nonchalantly broke out in a huge dance in the middle of a train station in Belgium:



But AIDS is more than just a stunt.

33.4 Million people currently have HIV/AIDS.
2.1 million are children.
2.7 million people were newly infected in 2008.
.48 million were children.
2 million died of AIDS in 2008.
.28 million were children.

More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.
Africa has over 14 million AIDS orphans.
At the end of 2008, women accounted for 50% of all adults living with HIV worldwide
In developing and transitional countries, 9.5 million people are in immediate need of life-saving AIDS drugs; of these, only 4 million (42%) are receiving the drugs.

HIV/AIDS is a preventable disease.

Something has to happen...

Tuesday Goods

First I would like to say:

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, scroll down to my other recent posts and visit my links to the Whitt family. =]


This is pretty much going to be boring and an informative update from here on out, just a warning!


Onto the Neurosurgeon visit:

Last year, after my mom was diagnosed with cancer, they did a full body scan to determine how advanced it was. This includes the head. They first questioned the tumor on her pituitary gland, but ruled that as non-cancer due to the fact that it's been there for 9 years and is genetic. But there were some random spots found on the base of her skull. They couldn't do a biopsy on these because it was too risky, so they were just going to burn them with some radiation. Translation: they have no idea if they were cancer or not. Only a week went by before she had her day-before-scan, and they called that afternoon and canceled the procedure for the following day because the spots were mysteriously gone. If they were cancer, there is a chance that the chemo got them in that week, if they weren't, the chemo probably still got them but the chance of them coming back is high.

Well, we went this morning to get the results of the 3monthslater scans and there is still nothing. Which is amazing! :D Couldn't have been better! She'll go back again in three months, and if still nothing, every six months for a few years. Sweet!

On the Abby Custody Front:

Because I suddenly realize I didn't have this blog then, I'll do a mini-background on this. TJ and Steph were killed on September 14th last year in the hurricane here in Ohio while on a charity motorcycle ride. We've been friends with their family forever and TJ's stepmom is one of my mom's best friends. It just so happened that we were at their house that day throwing a big surprise party for my mom when the call came in.

They left behind their baby girl, Abby, who was six months old at the time. This morning was the "official custody hearing," which turned out not to be very official. But, it actually worked out quite well, to be honest, and I will describe this here mostly because I think if I don't write it down I'm going to forget it haha. You can pretty much ignore this if you want, it's going to be boring.

In October the guardianship hearing was held, where they appointed 3 guardians (...I don't honestly know why) of her maternal grandmother, maternal great aunt and paternal great aunt. The hearing today was to settle single guardianship and set a date for the adoption hearing. However, the results of today changed nothing and there are still three guardians for her, the same three as before. Apparently by doing this, the adoption hearing could be pushed up several months. I'm not really sure why this is, but it is. Before the hearing would have been at the end of the summer, now it's in the middle of April.

There are three people who have applied for adoption and as far as we know, there will only be three: her maternal grandmother, her maternal grandfather, and her paternal uncle and aunt. The lowdown is basically this: the maternal grandmother is nuts and should not be left alone with kids, the maternal grandfather is a really great guy, but he's very aged, so basically the best choice if the aunt and uncle: J&L. They are the most logical choice and the best one, the only problem is this: They live in New Jersey. All of Abby's family is here or in Michigan besides them, and that's the only real hold up. But it's basically like this: as soon as J&L found out about TJ and Steph, they immediately said they wanted Abby. They lived in a one bedroom flat in NYC, and within one week had moved out of the city into a townhouse, taking an $18,000 hit. They've set up her nursery, everything is ready to go, they got married (had planned on doing so next summer, but just did a little ceremony early figuring they could sacrifice that), and they are here every other week spending as much time with Abby as they can and I can't even begin to imagine how much that is costing them but they are doing it because it's what's best for her. They have no other children, they are both lawyers. They want her, and it's the best place for her.

But right now she still has three guardians, with which she is spending one week each with. Which is really disconcerting for me because that means she has no consistency and kids really need consistency, but it's better that it gets resolved quicker I suppose. The adoption hearing will be in April, and after that the magistrate has 60 days to make a decision. Yes, that does mean it could be mid-June until she decides. And then people have 2 weeks to make an objection to her decision and if that happens, then they have to set up a court date with a different judge to present their case as to why the decision was not the right one--this part is what will take the longest, we think, because it's getting in to see this particular judge that is really impossible to do quickly. But, if no one objects in those two weeks, then he just has to sign off on it and Abby will officially be adopted. The part that sucks about this is that she'll be almost one and a half before it's final. And if the maternal grandmother doesn't get custody, there is a large chance she will object, just because.

The good thing about this? When the magistrate was talking today she said "when she goes to New Jersey" and then doubled back and corrected herself. There is certainly hope there!

Okay, done being boring now :) I'm just excited!

Goodreads.com Anyone?

I've noticed that some of you have some seriously awesome taste in books, and I've heeded some of your what-to-read advice. Have you heard of Goodreads.com? It's really quite cool. It's like an electronic bookshelf. You can search for and add books you've read, books you're currently reading, and books you want to read to your profile. You can rate each book with 1-5 stars, and even write reviews. There are book "clubs" that talk about certain books, and it's really quite cool. Plus it's free, which is the real attraction.

Translation: You should join so that I can get more book ideas from you. =]

If you do join, add me up: Via

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The folks over at Who Says 8 Is Enough? are promoting a fundraiser for Tuesday. The Etsy company has created a pendant in her honor and is donating 10% of all sales to the Whitt family. They are very darling, and quite affordable at $7.95. Check it out and see for yourself!


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We're apparently back to the not-having-any-idea-where-we're-living page. I love B a lot, but he has this disease called Makingupmymindaphobia. Whenever we go out to dinner or a movie or something little, he chooses. I'm okay with this, because I hate making trivial decisions because it really just doesn't matter where we eat or what movie we see. But, when it comes to big decisions B is...not good at them. I don't enjoy making them, but once I have made one then I tend not to change my mind; it's pretty final. B, however, is hardheaded and pretty much won't do anything unless he thinks he's the one who made the decision. I imagine his rememberence of the apartment conversation going like this:

B: "I think we should live right there on the top of ABC Rd. It's close to everything.
V: "Oh?"
B: "Yea. And doesn't your sister live there? Isn't it cheap?"
V: "Yes. We can look at it."
Two hours later...
V: "Okay. We can live there. I'm okay with that."
B: "Just kidding!"

To be honest, that is really not my first choice anyway. My first choice is somewhere around B's second to last choice. Personally, I like this:


Yes, it's only a one bedroom. Yes, it's a bit...crowded? But, it's also 150sqft bigger than the other one, it has a washer and dryer in every apartment, and the heat is paid for. That's right, the heat is paid for. Which would most likely make it cheaper than the other place, anyway.

What does B have against this, you ask? It's right next to the apartment complex that has the most crime in our area. It is not that complex, but it's next to it. However, we know people that live over there and have heard nothing of crime in that complex. However, my sister called me in the middle of the night last year from the other apartment complex (the one B likes, or did, or...whatever he wants) because someone had broken into her apartment. Of course, this came with a lot of screeching and exaggerations, and suddenly the trespasser went from no one saw him to a Sasquatch-type, giant hairy burglar with a massive gun of some sort. When I got over there at 3 in the morning, I believe our conversation went like this:

Sister: "Someone broke in through the balcony!"
V: "That's ridiculous. You live on the second floor. No one can get up there. R(her husband) probably just left the door open."
Sister: "There are footsteps in the bushes underneath the balcony!"
V: "It was probably just a cat. Are you missing anything?"
Sister: "No."
V: "It was probably just a cat."

My sister does a lot of overreacting. A lot. If I get a phone call in the middle of the night, it's about a 50/50 shot that it's her freaking out about something. Ethan coughed, or she swears she heard a gunshot, or the power went out 5 seconds earlier and she's imagining them all freezing to death. She calls me so I can tell her she's retarded so she'll stop freaking out.

The problem with this?

There really were footsteps in the bushes. Big, obvious footsteps. And although my brother-in-law did manage to run himself over with his own truck last year, he's just not stupid enough to leave a sliding door wide-open in his own living room in the middle of the night. But, since I didn't have to live there, I could say it never happened. Now that it's a possibility, it's a bit frightening for sure.

I still say washer+dryer+heat=winner.

Tuesday Tribute

Some of you may have seen my post on Saturday about 2 year old Tuesday who lost her battle with cancer on Friday. Cancer is something that's really important to me and my family, especially childhood cancers. I can't even begin to imagine what the Whitt family is going through right now, and research efforts are trying to make it so no one else will have to, either.

How to Help the Whitt Family:

Shop here. There is an array of Tuesday shirts for adults and children, bags, magnets, mugs, and various other things that are darling. I've already got my tee! All profits go to Tuesday's family.


You can also click here to offer your thoughts and condolences.

How to Help With a Cure:

Jay over at Halftime Lessons will be raising money until March 21st and shaving his head to support funding for Childhood Cancer Research. It is part of St. Baldrick's National Organization that raised over $17 Million Dollars last year for research! Visit his blog to support him, join him, or make a direct donation to the cause.

Of course, if you'd like to just simply donate time, there are always options for that, as well. There are special places like The Center For Courageous Kids that have children affected with terminal illnesses and their families stay for a weekend (during the school year) or a week (during the summer) and gives them a chance to spend some time feeling like a normal kid! I love this place, and spend my weekends there when I can. I'm sure there is a place like this close to where you live if you are interested, just google it up!

But, there are always volunteer programs as Children's Hospitals as well, so check with your local branch!

Chemo and radiation and surgeries, etc. is no picnic for anyone. But kids, especially, have a hard time understanding it. But, with every dollar donated, scientists are getting closer to a cure.

My friend, Chance, just turned 9 years old after going through his second round of full-on treatment in three years. The goal is to have 100% happy stories like his...


While never forgetting those like Tuesday, who brought joy to the world in just the short time she had...

When Cancer Strikes

No Friday Favorites post this week.

The Whitt family just lost their baby girl, Tuesday, to cancer last night. Click here to offer condolences.