If you are the praying type

Some good friends and our community could use your prayers right now. Mark Cosens, our high school principal, high school baseball coach, good friend is fighting for his life right now. A fun-loving, vivacious guy, he was diagnosed in May of 2007 with a malignant brain tumor. It's getting the best of him right now. His family, our community, could use the power of prayer and well wishes. Please keep Mark, Darcy, Cory, Chad and Bo in your thoughts.

You can read his story and read about his journey here: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/markcosens

His strength and determination have been such an inspiration, especially to the kids on our community.

Break OVER......

Yes, winter break has come to an end. Tomorrow it's back to school, back to the routine of the working life..... no more bumming around in my frumpies all day long. So, what have I been doing for the last few weeks (note absence of blog postings)

• The kids have been home. That's been the best part of the holidays for me. I just really like having them home and knowing when I lay my head down on my pillow at night to go to sleep they too are under my roof and I know they are safe and sound. Maybe someday I'll start believing they are growing up, but not today. See, they are still my babies, they can't be old enough to be in college can they?

I took this picture of the kids today. It's been kind of a bittersweet day and I've been a bit teary-eyed all day. Michael left to go back to school today. He starts classes tomorrow. I really hate that he is gone. I miss our nightly conversations. Hopefully we'll see him in a few weeks.

• My mom spent the last couple of weeks on quite an adventure. One of her older sisters passed away the week before Christmas. Mom & Uncle Frank left for Utah that same day since Fritzie was a widow and needing to take care of her estate. It was one thing after another while they were gone from sorting thru her belongings to the hassle of getting the death certificate. The trip originally planned to last just a few days ended up taking 2 wks! I could tell the time away was wearing on Mom so it was a relief when she finally got home Friday afternoon. We got to spend Friday night with her, celebrating Christmas, albiet a few days late, but together none the less.


• Celebrating and getting together with family proved to be a little difficult this year. We shook up the Nardini Family gathering this year by planning to go to church as a family followed by going out for brunch on the Sunday before Christmas instead of hosting the gathering here at the house - the family is just getting too large and Toby too grumpy for little kids. Mother Nature intervened in our initial plans blasting us with temps and wind chills of -25 that morning! Needless to say we postponed. We were able to reschedule the gathering for the following week. I was able to get these most adorable shots of the kids (if you'll notice, Michael has since gotten a haircut but that scruffy stuff on his chin still remains...)

• Other than that, I've been bumming around the house, enjoying the time with the kids and doing some scrapbooking (I know, no big surprise there). Scrappin' Sports and More will be debuting a couple of new lines of paper along with their samples of their custom papers at CHA in February. I can't wait to show you the projects I've been working on with that stuff - fun!fun!fun! I've been working on lo's and submitting them to a few magazines so keep your fingers crossed and help me hope for a publication this year!