Fundraisers for Liviana & Giovanni

I'm dusting off my blog to help a friend.   I'm not sure where to start with the Price Family's story so I'm going to pirate Amy's heading for her blog at  http://livianasjourney.blogspot.com/.    Please check out her blog for the full story.

Giovanni has been able to be part of a life saving clinical trial in Italy.   Amy, Giovanni and his baby sister will be traveling to Italy again  for follow up doctor visits.    Brad will be staying with Livi and the family's two oldest children here in the states.  As I have a "million dollar baby" of my own I know how medical expenses can weigh on a family

I recently started selling Lia Sophia Jewelry and I have decided to use this to help the family with their trip to Italy. My heart goes out to this beautiful family and I want to do all I can to help, and I hope you do too.    I'm going to run my fundraising event in a three prong attack.   First,  I will be hosting an online catalog  party were you can order at my website, www.liasophia.com/rebeccaschmelzer and I will donate 15% of the sales to the family.  Party will be from Jan 30th -Feb 8th, for delievery of jewelry before Valentines day.   The second thing I will do is anyone that books a show in February or March and states they want to help the family I will donate 15% from those shows too.    Catalog and home shows!  And the third part, which is my favorite,    I'm hosting a raffle.   I will be selling 100 tickets at $20 a piece.    The winner gets to order $1000 in Lia Sophia jewelry.  I will use random.org to choose the winner.   I'm also going to pull two more winners that will get to pick anything in the catalog that is $100 or less as their prize.   The family will get $1000.  I'm so excited to be able to host this raffle for them.    I've been thinking about the process  for the raffle. Payments can be sent through paypal as donations  (rebecca1217@msn.com ) or  you  can send checks to Rebecca Schmelzer at 6635 Evans St Omaha Ne 68104.   I will make a spreadsheet and update it with name and raffle number and post on my blog.    That way you will know your  raffle numbers and that I have received your payment.  I'm also aware that we may have more than 100 people who want to participate.  If that is the case I will open a second raffle with the same prizes.   I want to keep the odds of winning as high as I can.  

New Hat

Leo's babysitter decid
ed he need a new hat. Hope cousin Kyle doesn't steal it.

Leo's birthday fun

What do you do with your McDonald toy's?

I don't know about you but we seem to have a lot of McDonald's toys around our house. I often wonder why I keep them. However when I looked out the window a few weeks ago and saw a village of mushrooms in the yard I knew just what to do.

So Leo and I snapped a few pictures.

And I added them to facebook.

Because thats what one does with silly pictures right.

Well David didn't want to be out done so he staged his own pictures.

This is Smurf's bad day.

I think I still like my pictures better but we all had fun.

Leo first day of preschool 2011

Being Leo's Mom keeps me on my toes. You would think getting a three year old to preschool would be an easy task. Not this year. First of all our friends the Barua's moved away so I had to find a new sitter for Leo. Let me tell you it is so hard to trust someone you don't know with your child. After lots of searching we found Laurie, I think Leo will love being at her house. She has two puppies for Leo to love too. After we found Laurie I called the school to switch Leo's bus pick-up to her house. When the paper worked arrived at our house they had him riding the bus an hour before school and an hour after school.

Needless to say David and I were not happy about that at all. So I called the Head of the Early childhood program at OPS with my concerns. She was great and had Leo transfered to a different school with in two hours. However that means that today was Leo's first day at a totally new school, with a much bigger class. He's at Laura Dodge and they have a combined Early childhood and headstart program. David and I both dropped him off to meet his teachers and see the room. The teacher seems sweet and Leo was super happy to sit by a friend from Sunday school and start singing along with the music.

David will be able to take Leo to school tomorrow but Monday and Tuesday he already has teaching jobs so we have had to ask a friend to take Leo to school and pick him up. Keeping my fingers crossed that this all works out smoothly. Oh yeah the bus stopped at the sitters today to pick Leo up for his old school. Must remember to call them again tomorrow I'm sure Laurie didn't need that wake up call this morning.

Swinging Summer

Leo loves the swing set Grandma and Papa bought him. This little glider seat is his favorite so far.

The swing set is much bigger than I was expecting, I had to go over to the fence to get the whole thing in a picture.

Leo at the top of his "big slide". He loves this too but wants to hold your hand as he goes down the slide.

We had to take this for a spin before Daddy had the whole swingset put together. It was just too much fun to resist.

Leo says, "Now I just need my friends Mommy."

Clifford the big red dog!

So last Friday night Barnes and Noble had Clifford the Big Red Dog come to visit the kids and Clifford's friend read two books to the kids. MyOmahaMommies.com made this an evening event for our group and it was so much fun. Of course I forgot my camera since I got home from work five minutes before we left for this. However, Lindsey is awesome and had her camera with her. (Thanks for the pictures!)

As you can see the kids were very, very excited to see Clifford.

It was a much smaller gathering than I thought it would be. Mostly the MOM's group. Even a couple of new members that decided to make this their first playdate.

Leo had such a good time we can't wait for Curious George to come in Feb.

I wish he would sit this still during church every Sunday!

Not sure what Leo is thinking in this picture. Probably "Mom give the camera back to Lindsey and leave me alone"

This is my favorite picture look at the grin on Leo's face! And Jackson is very very excited too, He couldn't stay in his seat.

My favorite photo's of the season.

This is from our ward Christmas party. I love that they did family pictures for everyone. Too bad I already have our Christmas cards done.

These two are from my Mom's group Christmas party. We decorated cards for the troops and then Santa came and read the kids a couple of books. Leo was so excited to see Santa. Thankfully there was a few awesome Mom's with shy kids that didn't mind Leo slipping past them to get to Santa. He even asked Santa for drums, which is a good thing since Santa dropped them off early and left them in our basement since they were too big for the sleigh.

Happy Halloween! Here are the three cutest kids out that night, Spider Harris, Dragon Ethan, and Cowboy Leo. Leo did not want a costume with a mask or anything too spooky this year. So we opted for the cowboy; he loves his hat and guns and wore them for weeks on end.

And this little ham is celebrating Thanksgiving at our church. Heather planned an activity of decorating cookies like Turkeys. Leo saw Jessica with the camera and turned on the charm, he can be such a silly turkey himself when he wants. And he decorated his cookie all by himself. Having learned awesome techique from Grandma Sue while decorating his gingerbread house. (sorry no pictures that day I forgot the camera).

Happy Holidays Everyone!

The Tree is up!

I'm super excited about Christmas this year. Its the first year that Leo is aware of what is going on. He's loved all the lights and trees in the stores we took the evening last night and set up our tree. Leo helped by putting all the penguin bulbs on the tree so they are all on the bottom branches. I'm kind of a crazy parent and decide to keep Leo up late on Thanksgiving so we could hit walmart at midnight.(okay Leo decided he didn't want to go to bed so we went as a family) Can't say it was the most fun I've ever had but Leo was so cute. I had him on my shoulders trying to make our way through the crowds all off the sudden I'm hearing him sing Jingle Bells. It was the sweets thing I've ever heard. So now I'm crying as we walk through Walmart. Silly thing is I only found two things I wanted and after looking at the lines. We put it back and left. I can't wait to take Leo to see Santa this year and Christmas morning is going to be so wonderful watching the wonder in Leo's eyes. So bring on the holidays!

Christmas cards!

I bet you’re all surprised to see a new blog post from me. It’s been a while sorry about that. I friend told me about this awesome Christmas card give away for bloggers. http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/. And I thought wow, what a great motivation to update my blog and have awesome Christmas cards to share with my family and friends this year.

So here goes.................. The last few years at Christmas time I have looked for a great Christmas card to send to out. This is so important to me, because Leo was so small his first Christmas. We had so many friends and family praying for him. I wanted an easy way to share pictures of him with everyone; that didn’t take a ton of time away from me being in the NICU with him. Shutterfly has awesome cards that you can order online. http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-cards/t_blank. These cards are awesome you write your message inside attach the picture you want and you can even add your Christmas letter mailing list and they will mail them for you. Talk about making it super easy to stay in touch with family and friends. And the cards are super cute too. Check out this one.

Finding the perfect card to show how Leo has changed over the year has become a favorite holiday activity to me. I love the photo cards that allow you to show off more than one picture of your family. Shutterfly has hundreds to pick from. http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards/t_blanks-photo-cards/t_blank. This allows you to show family and friends all the highlights of the year. It’s so hard when you take pictures all year long to pick that one perfect picture that allows you to share your year with family and friends. Cards like this one give you the option to allow your families true personalities to shine through.

Last year on top of great Christmas cards I made photo books and calenders as gifts. It’s super easy with shutterfly. http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars/t_blank I love having my calender having family pictures instead of the free one that the bank hands out with pictures of random animials or houses. And it was cool to see how much Leo has changed from Halloween last year to this year. I can’t wait to make my Christmas cards and calenders this year. I’m leaning towards this card. I love the Christmas Letter right on the front with the pictures. But with so many to choose from you will just have to wait to open your mailbox to see if it’s the one that both David and I agree on.

Thanksgiving

Here's Leo in his Thanksgiving outfit. Again this awesome shirt is from Jessica's Little Dude Duds Etsy shop. I made his silly Pilgrim pants. Stay tuned for the Feb. addition of The Schmelzer family Christmas.

Halloween

Leo and I with our silly pumpkins. He loved to shut off the lights and watch the candles send shadows of the faces cross the room. I love this smile.

Leo with his pumpkin that he decorated at Uncle Darin's on Halloween.

Leo's first Trick-or -Treating, He loved keeping up his cousins. He never learned how to say Trick or Treat but he did ask for MnM's at every house.

Here's a picture of our little Tigger, Black eye and all. Leo took a nice fall into a bookcase at Daycare right before his birthday/Halloween.

Here's Tigger at his daycare party before the fall. He wasn't amused that I wanted a picture of him with Pooh Bear.