Emma and Paul are home.

They flew back as far as Chicago together. Thomas and I picked up Emma at the Omaha airport.

I loved the trip back home. Listening to the traveling stories just warmed my heart. I am so glad those four have these shared memories. They’ll always remember when……

• Kendra and Joe were so mad at a border passport stamper that they could hardly find satisfying words in Spanish to share. It sounds like their tone of voice sufficed.
• Emma and Paul took turns sleeping at night on the leaky air mattress.
• Emma and Paul were amazed watching Joe make homemade tortillas.
• All four of them loved watching the kids at school look through the books sent from friends and family in the US.
• With one sweep of the eye they could see Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina through a rainbow mist left by the amazing Iguazu Falls.

It is incredibly satisfying for this mom to hear witness of my kids enjoying time together. 

Welcome back. We’re glad you’re home, but we’re sure glad you went!

Actually, this was a very long February. I am so glad it is finally ending. Maybe spring will come and free us from the house.

Emma made it to Paraguay. I’m so pleased that our three big kids are together again. She will be staying there for a week and flying home with Paul. Joe and Kendra are 13 months into a 27 month commitment to the Peace Corps. They are nearly half-way through their commitment.

We were hoping for a trip to the state basketball tournament with the Comet boys team when Emma returns on Sunday. It wasn’t to be. The Rockets will be going instead. I’m sure they will represent the conference well, but I sure wish it was us!

I stayed home from the game with the two little girls. They played dress-up. Here are the results.

Paul is visiting Joe and Kendra in Paraguay. He joined them about 10 days ago.  Emma will be joining them this weekend.

I am a little worried about her traveling internationally by herself. She is going to have an 11 hour layover in Brazil by herself.

I keep telling myself that Emma is not a little girl anymore but I will be glad when she calls me from Paraguay where she is safely hanging out with her big brothers and sister-in-law.

She and I went on a college visit with a friend and her mom last weekend. I am hoping she chooses NWC, but she wants to do a little college shoppoing. She had a good visit and we found our way around campus and the city quite well. She has another year before she needs to make a decision.

I sure hope she doesn’t find a college she likes in Paraguay!

I saw some Peeps in the store. Yup! Yellow Peeps, those marshmallow chickies that appear only at Easter time. That must mean that Easter is coming soon. it’s hard to tell by the weather here in late February. It is 13 degrees below zero right now. That’s Fahrenheit. Brrrrr.

Recently, someone told me that their child doesn’t like Peeps and in fact is a bit creeped out by Peeps.  The poor kid just didn’t like to bite into the little chick. Creepy Peepy, I guess.

I said, "Did you give her Peeps to roast over a bonfire for S’mores." 

She had never heard of such a thing.

My parents owned a drugstore. Occasionally items would go out of season before they were purchased. That may have happened with Easter Peeps when I was a child. My mother was not one to throw things away. I would guess that when Peeps were left unsold in time for summer bonfires she decided the Peeps would make a yummy marshmallow center for a S’more.

I distinctly remember those yellow chickies growing and growing and even catching on fire just before being squished between chocolate and graham crackers.

Yummy…not creepy…PEEPS!

More about PEEPS right here….. http://www.marshmallowpeeps.com/Valentine09/about/fun_facts.pdf

Yet another snow day!

The kids were fighting a bit, so I sent the girls outside and Thomas to clean the living room. The little girls pressed their faces up against the sliding glass doors, but I insisted that they stay outside for at least as long as it took me to get them in their snow clothes.

Now the girls are in and I sent Thomas outside to clean the deck.

Steve cleaned the road to the corner with the skid loader and took the pick up out to see if there is a way to get to town. No such luck! We are definitely stuck here!

We are looking for a channel that carries the Olympics during the day. I can’t wait to catch a little luge, or curling! It will take my mind off of the battle that is bound to occur when Thomas comes in from scooping the deck to see what happened to his clean living room!

Here’s the curling schedule just in case you’re stuck at home too:  http://www.vancouver2010.com/olympic-curling/

One day Lindsey, the teacher assistant assigned to me, came in and told me that she really wanted to do something for Haiti. She had been to church and had focused on a verse that dealt with hope. She had thought about ideas and had fiddled with a t-shirt design using Powerpoint.

Lindsey is a freshman, but she is a dynamo. I encouraged her to go for it, and then quickly moved on, giving her a list of things to do for me without thinking about her project much at all.

Lindsey came back in a couple of days and said that she just didn’t know what to do. There seemed to be several obstacles in her path. 1) The college has an approval process for all fundraisers on campus. As a freshman, she was trying to negotiate that winding path without a committee or other allies. 2) She didn’t know what price to set for the t-shirts. The price point that she could get the t-shirts for was different depending on the quantity sold. She didn’t know how many she could sell. 3) She hadn’t decided on a charity to support.

Here she is, just a freshman, with no group or committee members, trying to do a good thing. Without much thought at all, I said, "OK. I will find people to donate 100 t-shirts so you can get the price point you want. You just keep pushing through the paperwork." 

I went to my class, where I  mentioned her project to my students. Several of them got excited and wanted to help. We had ourselves a committee!

It wasn’t until a bit later when I thought about asking my friends and family for $500 for t-shirts to help out a yet unknown charity in Haiti. YIKES! My request was met with grace and generousity. I am humbled and blessed by the lovely people that I know best that donated money toward this cause.

The little committee solicited ideas for organizations to bless and I asked people for t-shirts. One of my former students told me about Promise for Haiti via facebook. (Thanks Tara!) The kids loved the idea of supporting something with local connections.

We had a little ad hoc meeting after class on Thursday, promised to meet after campus Praise and Worship on Sunday night at 10. By Sunday night, we had enough donations to buy 320 t-shirts. We decided to spend it all and hope we could sell them all. Drew, Hillary and Jamie decided to run an event at a basketball game and solicited donations for that. Heather and Lindsey decided how many of each size to buy and how best to sell them. 

Lindsey ordered the t-shirts on Monday and they arrived on Thursday. The kids sold shirts door to door in the dorms and set up shop at the cafeteria and in the education office (thanks Jodi!) The t-shirts sold out in two days.

One of the teachers at Boyden-Hull called me and suggested that the high school might want to be involved too. Emma is part of the student council and she and Hailey quickly got together and sent home t-shirt order blanks the next day. They ended up with orders for 304 shirts.

The t-shirts arrived on Monday afternoon needing to be sent home that day in order for students to wear them for Tuesday’s game day. I asked a couple of moms to come in and help the student council get the shirts packaged and ready to go. Whew! Thank goodness for Kristy and Paula. I had no idea what kind of work it takes to sort and package 300 shirts in an hour. The kids and I would not have gotten that done in an hour. Thanks super moms!

We ordered about 80 extra shirts. We sold shirts at both games. At the end of the second Hope for Haiti black-out there were five shirts left. Mr. Pottebaum, the principal, took the shirts and quietly gave them to kids whose parents hadn’t ordered one.

We are still counting, but believe that over $5,000 was raised in our little three-week project.

Lindsey, the freshman with an idea, has learned and stretched in ways she never thought she would have in this first year. At one point during the process, we had a chapel speaker who suggested that like Bartimaeus, the blind man in the bible (Mark 10) we need to get uncomfortable. Bartimaeus, while he was still blind, threw his coat in the ditch to follow Jesus. Lindsey looked at me and said, "I’m uncomfortable!"  I laughed and said, "Me too!"

I learned and stretched too. I learned that people want to give and that others just need to ask. I learned to trust kids with an idea.

Most of all, I learned that God blesses the efforts of the "fools that rush in" when they rush in with trust and an open hand.

Thanks all!

……..is done!

Thanks Lindsey, Drew, Emma and all who helped. You raised over $5,000 for Haiti. Amazing!

One more event!

The Hope For Haiti Black Out is TONIGHT at Boyden-Hull!

Romans 12:12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

The black out event at NWC is TONIGHT!

T-shirt sales are through the roof! SOOOOO COOL!

Here’s the e-mail that my awesome Teacher Assistant received from Tim Poppen, who is heavily involved with the organization. It explains what the money will be doing in Haiti:

Hi Lindsey,
Thanks for everything you’re doing for Haiti. Their need is so great right now and to have the awareness and the support of people here in the USA is what is needed right now.

The organization is Promise for Haiti. That is a blanket name for many projects. Everything hubs out of the Hospital de Bienfaisance (hospital of benevolence). The hospital and it’s clinics normally serve and area of 160,000 people. Now with the earthquake they are one of the few untouched and operational hospitals. They are dealing with some of the most serious casualties right now because they have one of the best operating rooms in the country and right now we have 3 surgical teams from the US there and they are operating around the clock. Money will go for some medical supplies as well as fuel for the electric generators to keep the operating rooms functional.
Refugees are coming to the area and they have no food, no clothes and no shelter. Part of the money will go to providing food and other necessities for these people.
Those are the 2 major needs at the moment because they are putting a huge strain on the system.
We also have 7 elementary schools with over 2100 students. Fortunately these are funded by different churches and so they are able to continue operation so the children will get their education and a hot meal everyday.
We are not involved directly with activities in Port-au-Prince with the exception that trucks from the area go to Port and return with new refugees daily. There is a tremendous amount of aid generated in that area by the Red Cross and other international circles, but our area (75 miles north) does not receive any of the aid since they were not directly affected by the earthquake. That is why we are working very hard to keep the money flowing to the village we serve so they can best minster to those in need.
Sorry this message is so long. Here’s a summary:
Money will go to Promise for Haiti, located in the village of Pignon, Haiti, about 75 miles north of the earthquake area.
Money will be used for Medical supplies, fuel for generators and food, clothing and shelter for the thousands of refugees in the area.

It was Megan’s fourth birthday last Sunday. She had a wonderful birthday. Her special day started on Saturday when she was invited to attend another child’s birthday party. Her friend, and birthday twin, Lilly invited Megan to go to her party in OC. It was Megan’s first play date and she couldn’t wait.

She loved it and did a great job with the transition both to and from the party. I was afraid there would be tears on both sides, but she did great. I guess she is four now. That’s practically grown up!

On Sunday, we had a birthday party here. Megan loved being the star of her own party. She loved her Princess Tiana cake at her party here and the leftovers at school on Monday.

Stay tuned to this spot for pictures of the beautiful four year old Megan.

The Heits crew has definitely caught a case of ridiculitis. We have been ridiculously busy doing ridiculous things!

I will admit, I’m doing most of the ridiculous things. First, I decided to dance in the "dancing with the profs" competition on campus. A very sweet education major asked if I would dance with him. I said, "absolutely not", once or twice. Eventually, I was dancing!

We practiced around ten times over the past few weeks. The competition was last night. Unfortunately, we have been passing around a bad case of stomach flu in the family. Thomas had it on Wed and missed a day of school.  Emma started in on Thursday night and threw up until Friday morning. I got it at Emma’s game on Friday.

I threw up all night Friday night and into the morning on Saturday. Rehearsals began at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday. Yikes! I kept telling myself that Emma had played an entire basketball game the day after her night in the bathroom. Certainly I could dance for 3 minutes.

Anyway, the short story is, I made it through the day and the dance. Kory and I didn’t win, but we did have a good time. I am very sore from using muscles that hadn’t been used for a very long time. As ridiculous as it sounds, I was more nervous to step out and dance in front of that crowd than I have been for anything in recent memory. There were probably around 900 people there. The place was packed! I was wearing a dirty old altered wedding dress over black tights. It was truly a scary thing!

Here are the competitors! The winner was a kinesiology professor and his partner who did an amazing salsa! Ridiculous, but fun!

Lindsey, my teacher assistant at NWC came up with the idea to sell t-shirts for Haiti. She designed a t-shirt with the idea of selling a few and giving the profit to an organization working in Haiti.

Another student, Drew heard about it. He was eager to help. The project grew! Now we are planning a "Hope for Haiti" black-out night.

I’m not sure how it will work, but we are hoping to sell around 300 shirts. We’re hoping to find sponsors who will buy the inventory so all of the money will go to Haiti.

So far, I’ve found 4 sponsors who are each planning to buy 20 shirts for us to sell. We’re selling them for $10.

I’ll post more about the organization we are serving when I can figure out how to post a short video.

If you are interested in helping us out, you can buy a shirt or two, or sponsor us by buying inventory for us to sell.

Inventory costs $50 for 10 shirts. (We will send you one, and we’ll sell the others.)

$90 will buy 20 shirts for us to sell. (We’ll send you two shirts as a thank you.)

If you would just like to buy one shirt without the extra donation, that will set you back (and Haiti forward) just $10.

Checks can be made out to NWC Education Club.

E-mail me at laura    @    NWCIOWA.  edu (without the spaces)

Here’s the shirt!