"How Lucky I Am To Have Something That Makes Saying Goodbye So Hard"

It's here! The last day of this blog and fundraising event. Our You Caring site will be coming down tomorrow and we made it $3,770! This is a bittersweet day for us as we have enjoyed sharing our life events with you, have felt so much love from you, and have gotten a little bit closer to making one of our dreams a reality.

We want to say THANK YOU to everyone who has shared our posts to help get our crazy idea out there. THANK YOU to everyone who shared your dollars with us to help us make our dream of owning a home come true. We aren't there yet... but we promise you, we will be there sooner because of you! Of course, we are still holding true to our word that the highest donation will be receiving a freshly brewed gift, and Aaron will be in touch with you :) Whether you donated or not, you're ALWAYS welcome to our house for a beer, a baked good, or just good-old-fashioned banter (with an old fashioned if you like, I'm pretty good at making those).

So, here we are. In just over one year we have been through early deliveries, NICU's, emergency rooms, totaled cars, excessed jobs, urgent cares, dead teeth, 3 moves, and the unexpected loss of my mom and Aaron's grandpa. We have learned to handle these things (as we know more will be coming- such as the email from my school district yesterday that I was overpaid for summer school and owe them money... seriously? Let me tell you how much work I do OUTSIDE of work and then we'll see who owes who) with a sense of humor, a few tears, and the support of our friends and family when we find out-of-the-ordinary ways to cope. Thank you for helping us make it through.


Sending out all of our love and gratitude,

Aaron, Diana, LiliElla, Emmilyn, and Katherine

3

Three days left to meet our YouCaring goal. We haven't moved forward in a few days, but we still have hope. I think... yup, we still have hope.

THREE DAYS.

Today was the first day back to school and I. am. beat. My brain feels fried and I feel I have nothing crafty or creative to post. I apologize folks. All I can think about is lesson planning and having copies ready for the kids Thursday! #teacherlife

What I do have is a funny story about a note Lili wrote to me while driving in the car yesterday. It went:

Dear Mom, (obviously she used a comma in this letter because she's my kid- and obviously she knows how to write letters because she is 3)

Please do not get hurt. I will be very mad. I do not want to clean up your blood. I love you super duper.

Love,
Lili Joan Young.

I guess we know she won't be in the medical field if she doesn't want to clean up blood ;)

Lili just told me she wanted to share this video with you all. She is doing Irish dance to funk music- because that's how we roll.

Happy Monday. Oxymoron, I know.

4

Back to school tomorrow. Today was a day of denial- spent at the beach, in the yard, cleaning, and now... revising syllabi and lesson planning before bed. Does it make me a bad parent that I intentionally played the kids hard and with no naps today so I could have an hour to prepare for school? Meh- maybe a crap parent but a rock star teacher?

Our YouCaring site has had no love these last two days, but that's okay- because there are 3 more to go and I will not surrender! Yet. Well, actually that's not true. I'm surrendering now. I wasn't even going to post tonight but I felt obligated.

Really- this is how I'm feeling.

And with that, I'm out. Please say an extra prayer for all the teachers returning to work tomorrow... and if you don't pray, well, drop off a bottle of some good booze at your favorite teacher's house.

5

5 days to go to reach our $150,000 goal on You Caring. Can it be done? Well, I'm not a quitter... except at Words With Friends in which "Za" is a playable word. Come. on.

We have 2 days left of summer "vacation" and I've started the usual tossing and turning all night whilst lesson planning and mentally taking note of all the things that need to get done before summer is over... and then suddenly it's 4am! As usual, I don't have a lot of time to blog today, but I did do something to make up for last night's obnoxious video..

I gave them harmonicas!!! This is much more peaceful and who knows, we might have a future family harmonica band now! You're welcome future neighbors ;)

I tried to get Aaron, but he was very busy recipe planning and was not entertained by my morning shenanigans. So, here's a picture of recipe planning and graham cracker eating.

Thank you all for your support and sharing this crazy blog! Happy Saturday :) 

6

Good news guys! We sold enough at our Yard Sale so that we can afford groceries for the next week- wooohoo :) Super thanks to Tony for stopping by and taking so much of our stuff! I also have a lot of clothes left to donate to my students, so I feel good about it all around.

Bad news, 7 was not -our lucky number. On the 7th day of the countdown we held steady on our You Caring site; I am NOT complaining. Every day I tell Lili how lucky we are to have so many people who care about us and want to help our family. We love you all!

So, I'm exhausted. I'll leave you with a video of our crazy children playing their favorite game: scream and run, run and scream. Please disregard the messy basement- we are in a constant state of hot mess around here. Whenever we finally get into that dream house, we'll make sure we have a big back yard to exhaust the children. Maybe we will even chip in for the neighbors to get the same kind of sound-proofed windows people who live near airports have.

Stay tuned tomorrow for when I try to get Aaron on video.

Lucky #7

Hola Amigos!

Whew. Today was one of those days that goes by so fast you don't even realize you forgot to put on ___________. Feel free to fill in the blank with whatever it is you forget when you're busy. For me it was mascara AND deodorant- sorry public.

We have 7 days left and thanks to the generosity of a complete stranger we are up to $3,770!!! We are going to have a flash yard sale tomorrow to sell off some of the baby stuff we don't need any more and hopefully be able to put a little more toward our house fund. I'm struggling a little with this as I normally give all of my baby stuff to expecting students- but I just saw this on Facebook and then I decided I shouldn't feel guilty about selling things... especially since the leftovers will still go to my students anyway. So if you're in the area and in need of baby toys or 18 mo girl clothes, come on over!

As usual, I don't have much time to post. Aaron needed a break from the chaos today and is out fishing (hopefully catching some so we have something to eat for the next two weeks before payday- ooooooooh teaching, you kill me) and I did my best to throw something together for your entertainment.

If you have ever watched SNL and seen the skits in which the characters try to guess what the other is saying and talk at the same time, you'll understand why I think this is hysterical. LiliElla has been doing this since she started using more than 4 words per sentence- and this wasn't planned. Obviously. Nothing is ever planned when children are around.

What I didn't get the chance to say in the video is THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF OUR HEARTS. And also- HI ELLEN!!! We had to end a bit early as you can see Emmi was trying to rip out Lili's hair for giving her a hug ;) Kids <3

8

Woohoo! Lili paid me $1.00 to help her learn ballet via YouTube this morning so we are up to $3,720!!! Good thing my kid has learned to stash change all throughout her room; bad thing Katherine has learned to find it and try to eat it.

Today has been busy- Aaron had a voluntary training at his new school (yeah, that whole "voluntary" thing is just another reason summers off from teaching actually truly kind of suck) and the kids also found a stash of candy in Lili's room, so it's been off the wall around here. I've gotta head out to bartend shortly, so this is also going to be a short post. But don't worry, I still emailed Ellen ;)

As promised, here is a word from Katherine who is apparently learning how to talk from Chewbacca.