Happy Birthdays!

Today is a very exciting day in the Wenke household.
My sweet Erin turns 11 years old today!
No one on this planet makes me smile more than her.
She is unlike any other child I have ever known.
Her heart is filled with such a pure spirit,
but it has seen so much ugliness in the past couple of years.
School for one thing has been a challenge for her.
As you all know, kids in general can be cruel.
She isn't very athletic and is shunned for it.
She has a less-than perfect smile and is teased because of it.
She has a mind of her own and because she doesn't
"follow the pack" is ostracized because of it.
I have wiped away so many tears from her
and have cried twice as many for her.



I wish for her, a year of happiness and a growing confidence in herself.
I also wish that she realize that she is not the sum
of what other children think of her.
She is my angel, full of sweetness and light.
Happy Birthday Erin!



This weekend we also quietly celebrated the 50th anniversary
of the birth of my of my husband.
He doesn't like the sound of 50.
So I bring it up as much as possible. lol
He just wanted to spend it with our little family.
We made him cards and gave him many gifts.
I tried to buy him 50 gifts,
but ran out of ideas around gift #27.
I printed out photos of him
over various years and added his age to the photo,
cut them out and taped them to each gift:



It is true that cute little boys grow up to be cute big boys ;)
I also got my craft on...
I bought a jar and filled it with 50 Hershey kisses
added some American Craft Thickers and ribbon
and typed out 50 reasons why I love you
and stuck them in each kiss.



They ranged from the bittersweet:
"...you are not sad that you don't have a son."
to the tragic
"...you love me even though I am not a size 0."
to the romantic
"...you kiss me goodbye every morning while I sleep."
to the above and beyond
"...you clean up vomit when the girls are sick."
to the truth:



He loved it and said it was his favorite gift.
Gotta love a man who likes a homemade gift!
Stop back tomorrow for the page I made for the June gallery
over at Write.Click.Scrapbook!
It's gonna be a great month :)
-Jody

Fluke

Hi-
Last night I went to straighten out my scraproom,
and while pushing things around,
a layout was actually created.
In record time too!
I had found a grid of photos of #2 I printed out
that I had made in Picasa (free online editing software)
probably over a year ago.
It's not rocket science,
just a very simple page
that I seem to recreate again and again,
black cardstock, rounded corners and one line of journaling.
It may have been a fluke,
but it's still a page, right?
Maybe there is hope for me ;)



Have a great day!
-Jody

Struggling

Hi-
It's been a little while
and I hate that is so long between blog posts.
But I am struggling.
I once again have this block
that comes and wipes out any creative energy I may have.
I have tried numerous times
putting photos to paper,
and absolutely nothing happens.
May is a notoriously busy month for me,
5 family birthdays (including my husband's 50th!),
trying to get back in the groove of working again,
leaving for a school trip with #2 for Boston next week
as a chaperone for Megan and 3 friends
(Do they know who I am? I am the one in need of a chaperone. lol),
and a fun trip to New Jersey for Scrapbook Expo this Friday!
Any blog readers going to be there?
I know I will be dropping major coinage
and I am hoping some new product is just what I need
to get me back in the game.

My computer issues have finally been resolved.
I did lose almost 2,000 photos
(1,500 of my two youngest's middle school play of "Seussical",
but more importantly, just the everyday shots that I took
of my dog, of my whole family on Easter, etc...)
but luckily, I had uploaded some of my favorite Easter shots
to Facebook before they were lost,
so I didn't go into a full depression.
Here is one of the girls in the Easter finery,
I remember when they used to be in Easter bonnets
and matching outfits.
Now in no time #3 will be as tall as her sisters:



Rememer the great V-Day post where Erin met her teen crush,
Kendall from Big Time Rush?
She asked permission if she could have a Twitter account
because he has one, so I let her.
(I monitor everything she writes and sees)
She tweeted him about the Vans and hat she received on Easter,
(He wears Vans all the time,
and when he met her wore the same newsboy cap)
and I took a photo of her wearing them
and he tweeted back to her.
Now that is pretty amazing because
he has over 100,000 followers
but he managed to see hers.
Again, she was on top of the world because of him :)
This was the photo:



Mother's Day was lovely,
I celebrated with my family,
my parents and my sister and her family.
I took a crazy amount of photos and here is my favorite,
it is of my nephew, the furry one:



And here are my favorites of the girls:
#1, fresh off of getting her braces removed:



#2, still smirking because of her braces:



And lastly #3, about to get braces any day now,
hence her sweet, little closed-mouth pose:



That's all folks.
Hope you are all well
and I hope to be back soon with something scrappy!
-Jody

Happy Mother's Day!

Three years ago on this very day,
we learned that our then 14 year old daughter
had a malignant tumor in her knee.
Our lives have forever been changed
by that moment in time because
I have never been more terrified
and I have never cried more as a mother.
But I am happy to say at this moment in time,
she is healthy and happy
(right now laughing it up with her
2 crazy sisters in the next room as I type this)
I had hoped that I could teach many life lessons
to them, but instead these incredible girls that
I have been blessed to have given birth to
have taught me so much more.
Kindness, compassion,
patience (okay, this one still needs a little work. lol)
and unconditional love.
Thank you for loving me, faults and all.
And a huge thank you to my Mom.
On my best days, I still cannot hold a candle
to the mother you were and still are to me.
I am so very blessed. <3



Happy Mother's Day to all the
strong, invincible women out there!
Love,
Jody

Scanxiety

Hello-
Just a quick post to let you all know
that we finally got word
that all of Ryan's 3 month post-cancer scans
have come back clean!
:::huge sigh:::
I am not going to lie, this was a tough one.
Usually you wait 1, maybe 2 days
for results but this dragged on for
6 of the most excruciating, drawn-out days.
Your mind starts to go off into dark places
that you can usually stay out of.
If you have never had a loved one
who has battled cancer before,
there is a word made for the anxiety
that comes with having to wait for scan result.
The word is...scanxiety.
I found this definition of the word online:
The mix of dread and hope and fear in the days leading up to a follow-up scan to see what the cancer may or may not be doing. Has it grown? Has it come back? Has it shown up somewhere else? Scanxiety is just one of the long list of ways cancer’s impact continues in the days, months, and years after a diagnosis.
But I am thrilled to say that Ryan
can now gear up for the next phases of her senior year.
Senior Prom, after prom Jersey Shore weekend,
getting a summer job and then getting ready for college!



And speaking of the "Jersey Shore",
I happened to wait on Nicole (Snooki)
at the restaurant I work at the other night.
She was very quiet, almost to the point of shy
and very kindly signed an autograph for Ryan,
as the marathons of the show got Ryan through
some of her long stays in the hospital.
And she looked great too,
I had read she was working out before the new season
about to film in Italy...I can't wait!
Thursdays just are not the same without
my favorite fist-pumpers! :)

Have a great day!
-Jody

Everyday

Hi-
Just a quick post to let you know
the May gallery is up over at
http://www.writeclickscrapbook.com/
The theme this month was "A Day in the Life".
I thought about doing a day in my life,
but quite honestly, a day full of
cooking, cleaning and folding laundry
is exciting as watching water boil.
So I took a bunch of photos of #3
the other day and used 8 of which
told a story about a day in her life,
which I titled, "Everyday":



Unbelievably, we are still waiting
for the news of Ryan's scans taken last Thursday.
My husband and I have discussed that
being made to wait to hear results
about the future of your child's health
is nothing short of cruel and inhuman torture.
So until we hear anything, thank you for all of your prayers.
-Jody