Whole Hearts Needs YOUR Help!!

Pepsi is giving away $50K grants to causes. The catch? They need your votes.  Voting ends this week.  Matt Hammitt, of Sanctus Real, and his wife Sarah, have started a foundation called Whole Hearts. Their son, Bowen was born with HLHS. This foundation is geared toward helping families financially and spiritually whose children are suffering from congenital heart defects.  The statistics show that 1in100 children are born with some type of heart defect, many are undetected. Right now, my little buddy, Annabelle is back in the hospital. If you visit her mothers blog by clicking the link, you can see first hand just what a monster CHDs are.  So, help out and vote!!

There are three ways you can vote:
1. go to www.refresheverything.com/wholehearts
2. Text 107706 to 73774
or most importantly ( because you get extra votes)
3. Look under bottle caps or cartons of specially marked boxes of Pepsi for "Power Votes"  you do have to register online with Pepsi to use the power votes but if you don't wish to do that, you can email me your power vote codes and I will use them. Stephaniegfas@yahoo.com

So please take 3 seconds to vote, it could make a lifetime of difference.

One Day 40 Years Ago

My life was changed over the course of one day forty years go.  My mother was 11 years old and I ws probably only a mere idea that popped in her head every now and then when she wondered about children she may have in the future.  But this particular event involved my sister-in-law. On that October day, forty years ago, she was being born.  Her name is Tammie. She was born three months early and also had hydrocephalus.  The technology wasn't yet perfected to save her and she lived one day.  As anyone would be, they were devastated at the loss of their little girl.


But in the midst of all our pain, great as it may be, God still has a plan.  A perfect plan.  I am sure there were times that they wondered what good could possibly ever come from God taking their daughter. Those thoughts more than likely consumed them.  And as it turned out at their 6 week check up, she learned she was already expecting another baby. This in no way replaced Tammie, but it did help her heal.


Tammie's one little day of life completely changed mine.  See there is always good in a situation.  Even though at the time, I am sure she saw no good in her situation at all there was good waiting down the road. Had Tammie had lived, I wouldn't have my husband, or the children, or really even the life I have now.  My husband is my soul mate.  I love him in a way I could never love any other man.  My children are my world.  So my husband is here because she only lived one day.  And it doesn't really stop there, it will continue with my grandchildren and their children and so forth on down the line.  I honor her for the one day she was here because that one day changed so much.  My life is complete with my husband and my children all because of that tiny little life, forty years ago.