
** UPDATE!
Meet the newest addition to our family! His name is Bacha (
Baa-sha) and he joined our family today. Bacha was named after the wonderful Dr. Emile Bacha who performed Erin's open heart surgery of course!! He is VERY small but gentle. He also has a cute little beard and mustache! Erin loves the newest member of our family!
The week of Valentine's day we started our collection for our 2nd (but 1st year with a name!) Pennies for Patients loose change drive. The flyer went home the week before and on Monday 2/8/09 we were ready to go. Hearts went up on the office door and when someone donated, they wrote their name on a smaller heart and stuck it on of the bigger hearts.



It was slow going at first but by Friday I was lugging change out of the school in two Stop and Shop canvas bags. Greg had to help me load the bags into the car that night to take to Coinstar!! Last year my kids and I, with the help of Greg over the weekend, rolled almost all of our coins and it turned out to be a bigger pain than just coinstar-ing it! So this year we opted not to roll our coins and with the help of 4 of my favorite girls we practiced sorting, and grouping while getting a lesson in the value of money and kindness (
Thanks, Kassidy, Desiree, Hayley and Tessa!)


Any-who...
After taking the coins to the Coinstar machine and adding them to our cash and checks...the total was $308! Yay!! Again, I was blown away by the kindness of our parents and staff at the school. I will be forever grateful to all those who donated. Whether it be 25 cents of 25 dollars! It truly was the thought that counted!
With Greg feeling under the weather on Valentine's day and my list in hand, I headed out to Michaels and various other stores to purchase items on the resource room's "wish list".
Here's what I came up with...


I wish the pictures truly showed our overflow of love!
(Added thanks to my mother in law Deb, sister Denise and sister in law Katie, for their donation to our goodie basket!)We were supposed to be taking a trip up to Boston to hand deliver our goodies to the wonderful Caroline Obert in honor of Erin, the surgeons who performed Erin's successful surgery, all the doctors, nurses and aides who took care of our precious gift from God, and the families and children who face the odds every day.
Caroline is the woman behind the ever expanding Marsha Freed resource room and a support to cardiac families and patients on the 8th floor of Children's Hospital Boston. Unfortunately, a horrible stomach virus is "plaguing" the cardiac wing and all it's "guests" and we are unable to visit until March 14th.
Instead, I am posting our story and awaiting breakfast with my little hero. We are also hoping to take a ride on the carousel horses at Warwick mall and maybe...if daddy says yes, buy a fish!
What a difference 2 years makes!


