Month: August 2008

Last week was the 5th annual Girls Inc “Strong, Smart and Bold” Luncheon. I took my Grammie since we still had houseguests. The luncheon has gotten better every year and the speaker was Liz Murray. She had a Lifetime movie made about her called “From Homeless to Harvard” and I thought she was the perfect speaker for a fundraiser for at risk teenage girls. Her story was heartbreaking, but amazing. The thing that stuck with me the most was that she said, “I wish my story was unique and that there weren’t other kids going through this and worse.” The MC ended the luncheon by saying that the state of Texas now bases their future jail cell needs on the reading abilities and failure rate of 3rd graders. And from KIDS HOPE I know that other states have been doing this for years. Below is a photo of the speaker and the centerpieces from the tables featuring the photos Mike took of the girls back in April.

When Nadia handed me this tonight, all I could think was “My sweet girl.” The frilly Little People girl riding in the back of the HULK dump truck. AWESOME!

And here is the book holder with some padding in the base so that Nadia can make her selections 🙂

Eddie, Kim and the kids headed for home today after a last dose of Mexican food. They did a lot this week and we joined in as much as Nadia’s sleep schedule would allow. We ate Mexican food, went to the Stockyards, the zoo, the Kimball Art museum, ate some more Mexican food and did a whole lot of catching up and laughing. They also hit NRH2O, a Ranger Game, visited with family members and more. In the midst of that we had a new patio poured and stamped and it looks awesome!! I will put the before and after photos up in a different post. It was finished at 1 pm on Thursday and we were able to use it for the party that night.

Here we are this morning enjoying the fresh air before it got blazing hot this afternoon.

Nadia tried salsa for the first time today. Here she is before…

and after….not her favorite as you can tell.

Nadia and her buddy Julie at lunch.

And we picked this COOL thing up tonight at Toys R Us for the living room. It’s an effort to tame the toy fest and I think it’s really cute and just the right height for Nadia. It has 3 pockets for books and 6 bins for toys. I am thinking of putting some packing paper in the bottom of the book holders so that all her little books will stick up too, but I am going to see what Nadia thinks of it when she wakes up in the morning.