Good to be Home

It's been near six months that we have been back in San Antonio and it's been pretty great. Great to be near family, friends, church...community. We know people here. They know us. We get to run in to them at the grocery store, have an impromptu lunch, or help out family any day of the week.

This hit us the other day-

After having lunch with some old friends passing through town, we went to another friend's store to get some new TOMS, where we ran into another family friend who was so excited to run into us! Friends x3. In one day.

The next day we went to the premiere of 58: (a brand new, must see about ending poverty)

and it just so happened our buds from church were going, too! We were sitting chatting together when another friend walked in! So fun! Good thing too, because we ended up waiting about an hour so we had some cool people to chat with! ;)

And today we got to go to Devine to just chill and eat lunch with family.

This is good stuff.

I think it happened once in Houston...some San Antonio friends were in town and we ran into them at the mall! But now we get to see their beautiful faces every Sunday! :)

It's good to be home!

Oh yeah... and we get to see these awesome people everyday...

trick-or-treating at SeaWorld! so fun!

It's been such a blessing to live with my family during our transition time! So very thankful.

World Sight Day 2011

With so many wrong things in the world that we can't always change, there is one thing that we can do now. World Sight Day is a day to recognize and share the importance of vision in day to day lives. It is a tool that we use to do our jobs, to support our families, and to enjoy God's greatest creations. Right now, 284 million people are visually impaired and it doesn't have to be this way.

Earlier this year we shared with you the movement that TOMS started- they went from being a shoe company to a one for one company. That means when you buy a product from them, they donate similar products to those in need! If you buy a pair of TOMS sunglasses another person receives eye care via prescription glasses, life-saving surgeries, or simple medication. That means they can continue living life without the help of caretakers and stay in the working force to provided food for their family.

TOMS World Sight Day page touches on just a few of the stories of lives they have changed. They also have features for you to see what visual impairment looks like firsthand.

I don't need that feature because I wake up to it everyday. :)

I am fortunate to be able to have glasses to correct my vision.

Being a designer and artist I don't know how I would manage without my sight, though I have often wondered.

Take time today and think about what your sight means to you and know that it can mean the same to so many others. We can change the way someone sees the world!

Happy World Sight Day!

Let it Shine

Today while I was eating lunch I heard this record on in the background.

I'm hooked.

Emily Riddle - Let it Shine

You can listen to the rest of her tracks here.

Fun Fact:

Emily Riddle is the cousin of one of our readers, Lexie Gager!

30 days of blogging

Hello readers!

We have been distant, not on purpose but life is really scattered right now and it's hard to finish a complete thought. We have videos that need to be edited, photos that need to be loaded, but again it is hard to find a spot to just sit down and work. So with these 30 days of blogging we hope to get back into the habit of blogging.

Some of it will be fun, other days we may just be rambling, but we think that the end result will be worth it. So stay tuned and wish us luck (this will be the longest job we have had in 6 months!)

Adventure is out there!

Taylor and Frankie

Grand Opening! "One Stop" at LAFB

Today we got to celebrate the Grand Opening of "One Stop" on Lackland AFB! This building conveniently includes the new locations for the Thrift Shop, Loan Locker, Cinderella's Closet, WIC Office, and Airman's Attic. We have been volunteering at Airman's Attic now for a few months and were excited when they moved into this much bigger space! We love helping them out weekly to serve Lackland's Airmen and their families.

Sergeant Hought gave a little bit of Lackland history and explained how before (and usually on other bases) these services are spread out all over the base. Now, in this new building, Airmen and their families can easily utilize all of these services in one location, One Stop.

Frankie and I - their "Dedicated Volunteers", Darlene and Diane - volunteer Co-Managers, and Sergeant Grice and Sergent Hought - overseers and supporters of Airman's Attic

Airman's Attic: "free" thrift store open to all US Active Duty and Families (10 items per week)

Loan Locker: household goods on loan to newly arrived families

Cinderella's Closet: formal dresses on loan

Frankie's beautifully decorated Christmas tree!

Linens and Household

Civilian Clothing

Media Room

Media Room

Active Duty wear

Active Duty wear

And my favoritist, most polished room... the baby room! :)

Toddler Clothes

Baby Clothes

Baby and Kid Stuff

We enjoyed getting it all ready this morning and then hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, and sweets afterwards! What a fun, little nice, big building for such great services!

Sunny Saturday: Antique Shopping

Taylor has class Saturday mornings now so I have to find things to keep myself busy.  This weekend my Mom and I headed to Warrenton, Texas to a huge Antique market that they hold twice a year.  I packed the camera to take a few picture but when I turned it on the memory card was full and the battery was dead... :/  Here are a few that I snapped with my phone.  

I went looking for one thing and I found it!  But I will share it some other time... 

Hope you had a Sunny Saturday too!  

Pretty Chita

We have been away for a few weeks and it is with sadness that we write this post. As some of you may know, each year around this time we start gearing up to raise awareness and funds for our Tia Chita and the ALS Association through an annual benefit and a 5K walk. Well, this year we did the same but the tone was very different.

Early Saturday morning, September 3rd, our Tia Chita passed away after battling ALS for 6 and 1/2 years. She was at home with her husband and her mom, but the house was soon filled with family and friends for hours, days, and even weeks. She was a deeply loved women who inspired so many people with her life and her love for Christ and others. And per her last wishes we tried to show her just how much we loved her by giving her a "funeral to die for".

I guess to understand her request you must know a little about our Tia Chita. She loved having fun, being around family and friends, and dancing. She loved dressing up and going to parties. Even after her diagnosis she would love it when we would gather at her house for meals and celebrating birthdays. On her last night she had her family and her ACTS brothers and sisters gathered with her at the house singing and dancing and worshiping together. We weren't there but from what we heard she had a blast, tapping her foot and having our cousin raising her arm higher and higher into the air. What a great last night she was blessed with! After that night, she had told Juan, like she had said a few times before, that she was ready to go home (when the time came).  It's never easy to lose the ones you love, but knowing this gave us a little more peace.

After she passed she told our family, via a letter left to us, that she wanted us to make sure she was the talk of the town for a few days! Well, we didn't really have to try hard to make that happen. Like I said, she was an inspiration to a lot of people. We had family come in from a lot of different places and friends from all over town. Along with the services that we were planning, our 5th annual benefit for Chita was set to happen the day after the funeral. And the day after she passed the Jerry Louis Telethon was airing on TV and we found out they were going to air an interview that they did with her the year before due to it's success last year. So like I said we didn't have to do much to get people talking!

That week was hard but we made it through as a family and we all cried till we buried her - just as she had asked in her letter. But there was still a lot of work to do in order to pull the benefit together, which was changed a bit in order to be more of a celebration of her life.  People quickly gathered tons of smiling, family pictures and a beautiful slideshow was put together with some of Chita's favorite songs to honor her that night.

As our part of the benefit we had said that we would print the shirts for the family. At the time we were only talking about 75 shirts or so, but with all the extra family that was now coming in we ended up printing close to 200 shirts! A blessing in disguise because there would have been no way we could have ordered those extra shirts from a printer to have ready over the next few days.

Everyone did their part and we pulled off a very successful event! We met our goal plus a little extra, all in memory of Chita.

Now it has been two weeks and life is starting to get back to some kind of normal for us. She will always be missed in our hearts but we know we will see her again, and that she is looking down on us when she's not too busy dancing. ;)

We are still raising money to find a cure for ALS because there are still people that need our help and that is why Chita wanted to start having the benefit in the first place.  The money that we have raised for research has proven to be really helpful as they have recently found a common cause of the three types of ALS and now know what to look for when testing medication.

If you would like to be a part of finding a cure, please visit Taylor's Walk to Defeat ALS page or any "Chita Angels" member page. All funds go to the the South Texas Chapter of the ALS Association.   

Juan, Frankie, Chita, and Taylor at the CHF Banquet 2010

Thanks you all for the support that you have given us through texts, emails, and cards. It has meant a lot to us.

We love you Chita, Always!