crunch crunch

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
-Albert Camus

Great News Regarding Mia

Just a quick post; I received a call this afternoon letting us know that Mia Hays has been found safe and sound. Thank you for all your kind words, prayers, and good thoughts. We all appreciate them!

woohoo!!

This weekend is our annual Witkowski Family Fall weekend :) Geo's grandparents are en route to Illinois and we'll be getting together with not only them, but Geo's dad and step mom as well tomorrow! Grandma is bring her famous meatballs and we're just going to enjoy each other's company tomorrow as they are calling for a snow/rain mix in the morning and then cruddy rain for the rest of the day :( Oh well, meatballs and grandmas and grandpas are always fun...sadly the Michigan Witkowski Clan won't be joining us this time...but they'll be here in November for Geo's birthday!

Have a great weekend everyone :)

Theme Thursday: Thankfulness

A bit early this week because I work in the morning...

I'm especially thankful for feet, particularly the little itty bitty ones that started out smaller than the eye could see and now happily clomp around the house. The pitter patter of little feet is a lovely sound :D

picture of Bitsy and Gabe's feet, Bits was six weeks old, Gabe was a bit over three. This picture, almost two and a half years later is still one of my very favorites of the kids together.

Uh oh

We're in trouble here people. Gabe's in kindergarten and has friends...friends with CABLE. Friends who know what the "cool" toys are. For weeks all Gabriel has talked about is Battle Bots (or something) They are Bakugans (again, huh??) and according to Gabe (and Yahoo!) they are the coolest of the cool and he just HAS TO HAVE THEM for Christmas. *sigh* Really? Really?! Seriously? Is he already old enough to JUST HAVE TO HAVE IT?! when it comes to things?

We were out in our local sprawlWal*Mart this evening and lo and behold, what did I see? Bakugan super awesome gotta have battle bot thingees. Woo hoo. Now I know what he's talking about, and yeah, they are kind of cool. They are robots (??) battle bots (??) Weird little things that you roll and they pop open and you attack your opponents with them? I have no clue how it works and I suspect Gabriel doesn't either, BUT while Gabe and Geo were perusing the five dollar movie bin (our favorite part of Wal*Mart) I stealthily picked the coolest bakugan and stuck it in the cart. One gift down...
a picture of the most amazing, gotta have it or I will wither away and die, Christmas gift

Oops

I have been having midterm exams all week and totally breezed by Thankful Thursday...so I'll make it up today.

This week I am especially thankful for our health. After an interesting visit with a chiropractor I am thanking my lucky stars that we are all happy and healthy, I'm thankful that we have excellent (albeit pricey)insurance, and an amazing set of doctors at our beck and call. Gabe's doctors alone are worth their weight in gold.

Now if THAT'S not something to be thankful for, I don't know WHAT is ;)

Three Weeks and Counting

It's been three weeks since Mia Hays went missing; three weeks since anyone has seen or heard from her, three weeks since her sweet little Bella has been with her, and three weeks since her mom, who adores and dotes on her has seen her. It's been three weeks and yet...there's barely any headway being made on her case. After an exhausting day of dealing with the media, I managed to get a few things in the news, but that was two weeks ago. This weekend we went to the Scare Crow Festival in St. Charles and passed out missing fliers; our rough estimate is that we got out about 700 of them in a two day period. There are a few different facebook pages set up for Mia, there is a blog set up for Mia, and we, her family and friends, continue to make calls, send emails, and talk to people about her disappearance.

The most difficult part of Mia's disappearance for me is that it's leaving me with a very unsettled feeling. A month ago, I had no issue with the kids going to the arcade in the bowling alley a few feet from the lanes by themselves, now I'm so paranoid something is going to happen that I am hovering. I want them near me as much as possible, especially in public. I know that if they are WITH me, they are safe. As I've begun working more and more on finding Mia, I'm being contacted by people with missing children of all ages. Yesterday I was clipping coupons and came across a "Have you seen me" that made me full on sob. The girl in question went missing at 8 and THIRTY YEARS later she was still missing. Thirty years. I cannot even imagine the anguish that family has suffered, worried for thirty years where their little girl is. I wonder how that family has even managed to move on with their lives knowing a piece of them is gone. Awful, just awful.

I hope that everyone will continue to keep Mia and her family in their prayers, I've spent a considerable amount of time with Mia's mom and daughter in the last few weeks and know that they are hurting, they want, they need, they must HAVE this missing piece of their family back. Take a look at this picture, if you've seen Mia or even THOUGHT you've seen Mia, contact the Geneva Police at (630) 232-4736.

Thank you

Theme Thursday: Thankfulness

It's no secret that I enjoy alliteration; I absolutely adore all things alliterative :)

In the spirit of loving alliteration and following a theme for Thursdays, I'd like to introduce you to Thankful Thursday. Each Thursday I am going to post about something that I am particularly thankful for...I'll try to control my alliterations, but I can't make any promises...

Today, Thursday October 8,I am thankful for the Greatest (daughter) of all time...
so sweet, super sassy, surprisingly social SarahAnne :D

Adventures in Casting

The last time Gabe was casted, we decided to document it for posterity his classmates so they understood how Gabriel got his cast...I thought I would share a few of the pictures with all of you :)

First Gabe's PT, Brian, stretches his ankle and muscle to see exactly how much range of motion he has. He had 8 degrees of motion in this picture (18-20 is normal)


The casting process begins...a big cotton sock to protect his skin from the plaster


The plaster is put on-the worst part of this for Gabriel is that Brian (or whomever is doing the casting) has to push on his foot/ankle to get it into the proper position to stretch out that muscle. They obviously cannot measure him while he's in plaster, so they just push as much as they can and hope they get a good stretch


Now for Gabe's favorite part, the colors! The top layer of his cast is fiberglass; it's lightweight and colored. He usually chooses either orange and blue or red and black (Bears and Blackhawks-he's Geo's son for sure!!) This time, however, he got black and orange for Halloween (they were out of blue and red ha ha)





and now we're finished; I tried to get Gabe to sit next to Brian for a picture together, instead they decided to make funny faces at one another :) Mr. Brian is fabulous, we're so lucky to have him as Gabe's physical therapist!! In case anyone was wondering, Gabe ended up gaining 10 degrees of motion after three days in his cast-back to normal!!

SarahAnne loves you Julia...

SarahAnne has all of the sudden turned into Bob Dole (well, all except the ED medication advertising and the Republican leanings haha) SarahAnne speaks almost completely in third person now. Every time she needs something she says "Bitsy needs a drink" or "SarahAnne needs the potty" My favorite so far? "Bitsy loves her momma, does momma love her bitsy?" SO cute.

She's also started this running commentary in a low whisper thing. As she's playing or reading, or whatever, she runs a commentary of what she's doing. Sometimes in the car she sings her commentary which is even cuter than the talking commentary. Bits has a "Yoda" voice as Geo and I call it, that cracks us up to no end. We never know what's going to trigger the Yoda voice but we love hearing it.

So far this morning, Bits has played with a mouse (thanks Boni cat for bringing it to her *sigh*) and put the cat in time out for scratching her. Her exact words? "You need a time out in your bed, Boni cat, you are not being nice" *shakes head* oh Bitsy girl...

*a shiny nickel to anyone who can tell me where my title is from he he