Kids Against Cancer

Every year I participate in a Relay for Life event for a friend who sells Tastefully Simple. This year I went with my "pink ribbon" headbands and my "other" business (my night job), and Katherine went with me. She was very helpful!

It was during this event, listening to my friend Rhonda talking about Relay that Katherine decided she wanted to start her own Relay team. We talked about it and the team has officially registered! We now have 9 people on our team. Granted, 6 of them are my family, and 3 are my brother-in-law, my mother-in-law and her husband, but it's a start! :-) Our team goal is $1500 and our team name, decided by Katherine and me is Kids Against Cancer. We will be setting up several fundraisers over the next 125 days. Our event is on Aug. 3. If you are interested in joining our team, you can do so here, or give a donation.

Just as a little background, my brother-in-law Brandon was diagnosed with testicular cancer back in 2005 and is currently in remission.

Katherine's motivation was based on her just naturally being kind-hearted and compassionate, as well as in honor of a boy that died of leukemia from her second grade class 3 years ago.  I am so proud of her for stepping up at eleven years of age and wanting to be a part of this.

All four kids are signed up and each have their own goals.  Kaleb set his for $30, Katherine and Abbey for $50 and Olivia (age 6) declared that she would raise $90.  This was after talking her down from one million and then one hundred.  I tried to get her to choose between $25 and $50 but she was insistent, so $90 it is!  If you are interested in donating to one of the children's goals, please let me know and I will get you to the right place.  The link above is for our team page in general.  The picture featured is my brother-in-law with my kids. We felt it was a fitting picture for the team!

At the fundraising event today, I met an eleven year old girl who also has been gathering a team with her friends at school.  She bought one of my pink ribbon headbands for herself and wants to do a fundraiser with them as well!  Pretty exciting for me, and they're all going to look SO cute with their matching headbands!

Movies

I have been sick since Friday evening.  In the middle of a live viewing of America's Got Talent auditions (which I will write about SOON.  I hope.)  So I spent all of Saturday afternoon and evening (after Kaleb's last basketball game) laying in bed watching movies.  And I pretty much did the same thing on Sunday.

Thus far, the movies that I can remember watching (in no particular order and some with Kris/kids, some alone):

Sliding Doors
GREAT movie.  I think I am starting to believe that I really like Gwyneth Paltrow as an actress and I loved her in Country Strong. 

Griffin & Phoenix
I really liked this movie, though the ending did not satisfy me.

Thor
GOOD movie, I really enjoyed it.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Kris and I had already seen this but we let the kids watch it for movie night last night.  And of course, I liked it, because I'm cool like that.

Riding in Cars with Boys

I love this movie.  I do NOT remember crying that much the first time I watched that movie, but Kris insists I did.

Benny and Joon

I can't tell you how many times I have seen this movie but I love it so much!  I really like Mary Stuart Masterson's performance and I love Johnny Depp's character in this movie almost as much as his role as Captain Jack Sparrow.

End of the Spear

AWESOME MOVIE!  I have loved Jim Eliott and am fascinated over and over again by his "story" ever since a truly wonderful woman named Debbie Cooper taught me about him in Sunday School, a very LONG time ago.  I cried A LOT at the end of this movie too.  Go here to see the trailer for this movie.  If you've never heard of it or seen it, give it a try.  Even if you don't care about missionaries, God, etc...it is an excellent movie.

Beyond the Gates of Splendor

A great documentary (which I usually hate-primarily because I've never seen any), which "documents" what happened to missionaries Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian in 1956, beside a river in Ecuador.  It also goes into detail about the wives/children and what they went through, how the missionaries all came together and took the journey that ended up in death (AND ultimately LIFE) for them.  It also shows several of the Auca (Huaorani) Indians, and their versions of what happened that day and in the days and years following.  AMAZING story.  I wrote what was supposed to be a ten page paper in college on Jim Eliott, and I think it wound up being at least 20+ pages.  Shocking, I know...

But in the midst of all of this, I found myself saying twice this weekend that unless people died in movies, I didn't like them.  Or rather, that I like movies where someone dies.  Does that make me crazy?  Don't answer that.  I already know the answer.  Two of the movies that I watched over the weekend had me wishing one (or more) of the characters had died.  I won't say which ones, because I don't want to provide any spoilers for any you haven't already seen.  But I really felt like I should break out My Girl and Bridge to Terabithia to get my "good guy/girl dies" fix.

If you end up watching End of the Spear and/or Beyond the Gates of Splendor, or have already seen them, please email me (or just leave a comment) and let me know your thoughts.  I'd love to hear your reactions to the movie(s) and the story.

What is that?

So tonight, Kris (who will henceforth be called my boyfriend-since I'm starting over, we decided we would "date" again, so don't be confused if you hear/"see" me refer to him that way) went to pick up a prescription for me (because he's awesome like that), only to find out that the Walgreens I sent it to was already closed.  But he brought home my favorite tea (the ultimate gift of love-aside from Jesus of course).  He handed me a turtle (chocolate and caramel, not water/land-dwelling), and a red-wrapped chocolate something.  He said he didn't know what it was, so in case I didn't like it, he handed me a green wrapped candy, the size of a truffle that was actually a Junior Mint (though I don't think you can call it Junior).  So I decided to investigate to see what this mystery candy was.  As soon as I opened it and spotted the clear-ish liquid seeping from the chocolate exterior, I knew it was a chocolate covered cherry.  Since he was in the other room I said loudly "This is a chocolate covered cherry."  I hate chocolate covered cherries.  I further surmised that this one didn't even have the white creamy goodness that is the only redeeming part of a chocolate covered cherry and I relayed this to him as well.  But I wasn't going to let a cherry stand in my way.  I bit the chocolate in half, capturing the side with the cherry.  I removed the cherry from my mouth and put it in the wrapper, and declared victory (out loud for Kris to hear) over the cherry and consumed just the chocolate and liquid whateverthatis.

That's when Olivia, who should have been asleep an hour ago, decides to chime in quite adorably (manipulative little girl) "Don't judge it by its cover."  I had to ask Kris to repeat it because I couldn't hear her.  So he did and when he told me, she added "Or how it looks."  It was quite amusing.  She is ALWAYS doing stuff like that.  She reminds me so much of Abbey in how she does things like that.  You know, that cute way that a kid sounds or the look on their face as they say something completely adorable when they know full well they are supposed to be ASLEEP?  Yeah...that.

By the way...life HAD been somewhat turbulent for a few weeks (which I mentioned briefly in my last update last month), thus the lack of writing on my part.  Things are starting to settle back into a somewhat normal-ish something or other, and as I was going to quickly just shorten this story so I could quote Livvy in my Facebook status, I decided I would just go ahead and post it to my blog.  I'm sure that my Facebook friends who don't really care at all what I say but haven't bothered to hide me from their feeds would appreciate that.  You're welcome.

So, I'd like to say "I'm back...to writing regularly...again...for real this time..." (this sounds a lot like my battle with food/weight loss) but I'm taking life one day at a time now.  Some days it's hours and minutes at a time.  I hope to document my journey, very vaguely of course because some things are just TOO personal (YES THERE IS SUCH A THING AS TOO PERSONAL FOR EVEN ME TO WRITE ABOUT), but I have to just see how the next day goes, after it gets here.

I know I went a little overboard with the parentheses but since I love them so much, it seemed only fitting to include so many in this post.   In reality, I gave it no thought at all until I read back through this and saw them all.  Then I realized that it isn't just in my writing.  (I'm pretty sure that I THINK in parentheses.)  ;-)