OUR GRACIE'S ROOM FUNDRAISER

WAS A HUGE

SUCCESS!!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO DONATED!!

WE HANDED OUT FREE TEA SAMPLES (donated by Adam at Classic Touch) AND TONS OF COOKIES, BROWNIES AND GINGER CAKE...(all baked by me!)

FROM 12 TO 5PM ..

WE RAISED $500.00

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO CAME BY TO SAY HELLO, SHOW SUPPORT AND MAKE DONATIONS!

(oh,and yes, i took the older girls out of school for the afternoon to help me! shhhh)

On this Friday (September 17th), from 12 to 5pm, I am having a fundraiser at Classic Touch in Kings Place Mall in support of The Gracie's Room First Hugs Program in XinXiang Henan.

This is an amazing program, providing one on one care to special needs orphans, and as director I see the benefits of this program for these disadvantaged children.

The goal of the Gracies Room program is to create a time and place when babies get *all* of their needs met. Babies in Gracies Room receive more individualized care and have the chance to develop a significant attachment to a primary caregiver. They spend time on the floor exploring their world and developing their muscles. In short, the babies get the chance to play, laugh, receive physical affection from their special nanny, and feel loved and valued.

The nannies work six days a week, Monday to Saturday, 8 hours daily. Each nanny is assigned three to five babies. She works with these same babies every day from the time they enter the program until they are adopted, enter foster care, or age out of the program.

Please come by and enjoy some Chinese Tea, home baked cookies and experience the spirit of the Chinese Tea Ceremony while listening to traditional Chinese musical instruments being played.

25% of all tea sales will be donated to Gracies Room.

I've hope to see you there!

I've uploaded more Gracies Room information to the Files Section.

Thanks

Krista Dolan

Director Gracie's Room First Hugs Program

www.dianjiangkids.org

Sponsor a child in our Gracie's Room program

YOU can make a difference in the life of a child!!

Summer with cousins

are the best summers ever!

While I was away in PEI.. Frank decided he was "bored" and thought it was a grand idea to renovate our mudroom. Renovate to Frank means "rip apart a room and hope to heck Krista won't notice the missing floor when she comes home"!

Well.. I noticed!!

Actually, he has been meaning to get to this reno for the last 2 years. Our house is old.. real old.. about 130years old.. and we've always lost a lot of heat from this room. The floor had no insulation! It was always so cold in there!

So we've (well he) insulated the floor, adding extra boards etc.. for more support..but the fun news is that:

I GET TO DESIGN A NEW MUDROOM!!

I've decided to make 6 "cubbies" along the back room, floor to ceiling, each one 2 feet wide. Sort of like this except instead of hooks for jackets and coats, we'll have hangers. There is NO way my kids only have 3 coats each no matter what season we're in, and I'll have another shelf for shoes. (There are 4 girls and we do love our shoes!)

So that will take up the full length of the back wall.

Now for the rest of the room. I had a pantry there before, and I used it quite a bit, so I know I still want one, but I also need more kitchen space. So I thought of a "baking centre"!

I can take all my baking supplies, cookie sheets, rolling pins.etc.. and move it into this room.

Something like this:

So I'll have 1.5 walls with cupboards and counter space! We've picked out the hardwood floor for this section and the tile for the area by the door and where the cubbies will be.

There will even be enough space for an island!

We're moving the door and installing 2 new windows that are nice and long! I'll finally be able to see out to the back yard.

We are doing this all ourselves, so this is going to be one looong job.. especially with Frank working out of town everyday! But we'll chip away at it little by little..

Here are some more pics:

Abigail found some newspapers from 1972.. had a good laugh at that! We put the front page of the paper under the floor too. It was all about Hurricane Earl! lol

Hanlin was just dying to help daddy, but we wouldn't let him off this little island. Too many old rusty nails sticking out everywhere! Instead we gave him boards to bang on there.
At least there was some insulation in the some of the walls!!

Ohhh.... gotta love the first day of school!!!

What a bunch of darlings!

The kids made out ok! Abigail didn't have school till yesterday but the 3 others did, and today Lily doesn't go but the other 3 do... sigh... I had to make a flow chart to get all of this straight. Not only did they start on different days, I had meeting with teachers and classes at the same time at different schools on the same day! Lots of running around yesterday!

Today the bus this morning was close to 30mins late and this afternoon it was 45 mins arriving home!

It will all be figured out by Monday I'm sure.