Happies & Crappies: Valentine's Day Edition

Happy Valentine's Day!! 

I'm linking up again with Steph at The Vintage Modern Wife and Amber at Brunch with Amber for Happies & Crappies this week...

Happies: 

1. Last week the wonderful and sweet Jacin from Lovely Little Details  shared her idea of the Valentine fairies on her social media pages. The idea was to send Valentines to kids who needed to know someone out there loved them. Such a sweet and thoughtful idea, it makes my heart happy to know there are people out there like her! So she sent me the address of Paige from The Birthday Party Project, which is an amazing organization who helps homeless and underprivileged children celebrate birthdays who might not otherwise because their parents have no money. So, why not send them love all year round with beautiful, handmade Valentine's Day cards?! The crafty side of me was so thrilled to finally turn on my Cricut machine after it had been sitting idle for a year or so! 

2. My oldest step-daughter had realized that going to college for music therapy really wasn't where she wanted to be for the rest of her life. She still has a passion for singing and she loves helping people, but she just didn't love the program at school. You have to do what you love, so we fully supported her decision to finish the semester and take a year off to figure things out. Well, my husband just so happened to be reading about a Red Cross CNA program at a local nursing home that she had been a volunteer at since the age 12! So, here we are a month later, she has graduated the CNA program with honors receiving the highest grade in class and already has a job lined up at the nursing home! How amazing is she, such an inspiration. We're so proud that she never gave up on herself and believed that there was something else out there for her! 

Crappies

1. This crappy didn't happen this week, but it makes me sad that this is my mom's first Valentine's Day without her Valentine. I still have a post in draft that has been sitting there for a month because I just couldn't get through talking about what happened. Well here goes, right before Christmas, on December 10th my step-dad passed away after quickly deteriorating from stage four lung cancer that spread all over his body and to his brain. We didn't even know anything this serious was going on. On Thanksgiving Day he didn't look well and he looked like he had lost weight since I last saw him during a Halloween party, only a month before that. My mom kept telling him to go to the doctor's but he said he was fine, clearly he wasn't. He went into the hospital only about a week or so before he passed, it had gotten so bad that he couldn't get up, so my mom called an ambulance. He knew he was sick and dying, but I believe he didn't want us to have to deal with it, plus I think the tumor in his brain was making he act the way he was. There were masses all over his lungs and a big tumor in his brain. He was a smoker for 40 some years, and was only 60 years old when he passed.  

I think about him all the time and think about my mom and how she is now in an empty house, though we visit as often as we can and she has her dog. It just breaks my heart. He was a good man, a good step-dad who put up with my mom's three daughters (my two sisters and I), drove me to college, stood with my mom at our wedding, and loved my mom with all his heart. Mike, you will always be loved and will always be missed. 

I love this picture of the two of them at our wedding! 

WE LOVE YOU MIKE, REST IN PEACE.