Because I don’t take enough pictures

I am joining Ree and Georgia for their February Photo Challenge!
One picture a day, every day in February. Everyone is welcome to participate.
As always, all you non-bloggers can send me your pictures and I will post them here.

Walk with Mommas of Moonbeams

**LORAIN COUNTY HEART WALK**

**SATURDAY, MAY 12, 2012 AT AVON COMMONS**

Opening Ceremony/Walk begins at 9:00 am.

We are participating in the American Heart Association’s Start! Heart Walk in memory of our son, Gabriel. He was born with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, a rare and serious congenital heart defect. He was four months old when he died on New Year’s Eve from complications after his second open heart surgery.

In the US alone, about 36,000 children are born with a heart defect each year. That’s roughly four babies every hour of every day. Sadly, approximately 4,000 of those children don’t live to see their first birthday, just like Gabriel.

The Legacy of Life is the American Heart Association’s Endowment Fund for congenital heart defect research. It provides a perpetual funding source for Congenital Heart Defect (CHD) research.  Please help us support this cause by making a donation to the AHA’s “Legacy of Life”.

You are invited to join our team, Mommas Of Moonbeams, as we participate in this year’s Lorain County Heart Walk on May 12 at Avon Commons.
You don’t have to be a Momma to walk with us! Everyone is welcome!

A Cuddles from the Heart change

While I was doing some much-needed House-work over the holidays, I discovered that the Cuddles from the Heart blog had been taken down. I went over to Stefanie’s and didn’t see any mention of CftH at all, so I emailed her. All is well, it was just a matter of time and energy and too many people saying they wanted to be involved and never following through. Stefanie and her family are going to continue doing CftH donations. She encouraged me to continue and said that I could use the “Cuddles from the Heart” name.
As these emails took place over a few days, I started thinking of an alternate strategy just in case the CftH name was no longer available to me. I was going through some pictures and came across this one:

It was captioned “Gabriel’s Touch, as named by Loraine“

I knew I had found exactly what I needed. I got to work creating, and pestered Chuck and anyone who would respond to my emails about whether they liked #3 or #5 or #6 or #1 and so on, until Grammy said I sounded like the eye doctor.

Ladies and gentlemen, our Cuddles from the Heart project now has a new name and logo.
I’d like to introduce Gabriel’s Touch:

We are still collecting NEW store bought or handmade blankets in all sizes and colors, plus NEW clothing in sizes newborn to 4T and NEW toys in the newborn to 3 age range. Basically, anything NEW that you want to donate for the little ones, we will gratefully accept it. In addition to NCH Columbus and EMH, Blessing House now benefits from your generosity. We will continue to honor the beginning and end of his life with a donation in August and another in December. Contact us via email: busters.house{at}gmail.com

As Seen In Lorain: The Mayor of Municpal Pier

Where former mayors go to launch the public?
This sign is a shameful mess.

M U N I C P A L?? WTF?? Really??
Buy a vowel and try M U N I C I P A L on the new sign.
Or come up with a new name for the pier.

Drop Rule #3 and change the title in red to “Watercraft Launching Rules”

Rule #4 – “on or about ramp”?? WTF??
“On or near ramp” or “in the immediate vicinity of ramp” sounds better.

I only have to remove my trailer immediately after I load it but not after I unload it?
(I know I should know that if I have a trailer, but some people need everything spelled out for them.)

Come on guys, you can do better than this.

“You could have healed Gabriel if you had faith.”

So sayeth one of our co-workers: a saved, born-again, holier-than-thou, bible totin’, scripture quotin’ Christian.

Let’s talk a little about “faith”, shall we?

Here’s the definition, courtesy of Dictionary.com:

Some of you might remember this post:

No matter how you define it, WE HAD FAITH.

Thanks to the few crumbs of hope that were tossed our way by the doctors and surgeons in Columbus, we had faith that our son was in the best possible hands. We had faith that these educated, trained, skilled professionals would do their very best to ensure that our son would have as normal a life as one can have with half a heart. We had faith that we would be bringing him home alive after each of his procedures and surgeries. We had faith that we would get to see Gabriel grow up. We had faith that the variety of “good vibes” being sent his way would prove beneficial. We had faith that we were making the best possible decisions for Gabriel with the knowledge and information we had at the time.
WE HAD FAITH.

Thanks to our Catholic upbringings, we had faith that Gabriel had been given to us for a reason. We had faith that God knew what He was doing by blessing us with a child, albeit a terminally ill child, so late in our lives. We had faith that God would do everything in His power to save this precious life that He had created. We had faith that God was on our side.
WE HAD FAITH.

We had to have faith in order to be able to fight for Gabriel’s life.
Everybody and everything that I had placed my faith in failed to save our son’s life.

Any kind of faith that I had, especially in myself, died along with Gabriel.

My belief in God died along with Gabriel.

HAVING FAITH was NEVER enough to heal Gabriel’s broken heart.

As Seen In Lorain: What was in that yard?

The house on Indiana Avenue
“not even halfway done” in November

Complete in December

I tried to sew these together and make a nice panorama for you, but that didn’t work.
You can see the stuff better this way anyhow:

The downtown restoration/revitalization group (pick a name, any name – they’ve had many) used to have a Christmas light contest many many many years ago. Given the sparse decorations downtown this year, maybe they should reconsider having another contest among the residents. There were a lot of beautiful and uniquely decorated homes this year. I hope that trend continues next year.

Last chance for Christmas lights

Indiana Avenue completed

An interesting combination

Delaware Avenue

My favorite decoration: Santa Pig, the Christmas Ham

Nielsen’s Jewelers

Webber Law Offices

Slutzker’s QuickPrint

[The businesses pictured are adjacent to the Lorain Arts Council. I was there for the Georgia O'Keeffe event in December and stepped out to take pictures because it had snowed. Not playing favorites! Nothing received in exchange for the mention!]