Dang Gina!

Check out these sweet giveaways for headbands and earrings at Dang Gina! They're super fun and I hope I win them! Enter and you can maybe win them too! Wait.....don't enter cuz that'll lower my chances of winning! Just Kidding! Go and enter anyway....I won't hate on you if you win. I'll just expect that you send me at least one of them for my birthday! ; )

First Concert Recap

Chad, in his gift giving awesomeness (seriously....he is waaay better than me at giving the perfect gift!) gave me tickets to a Safety Suit concert for Christmas. I was sooo excited. Ever since I discovered them this last summer, I have loved pretty much every one of their songs. And the fact that they began as just this group of friends who in college decided last minute to sign up for a Battle of the Bands and ended up winning to having their song "Stay" hit number one on the VH1 top 20 list this last summer is pretty awesome to me. Needless to say, I like the bunch:)

Sadly enough though, I'd never even been to a concert besides once at our county fair. Oh and there was that other time when us hopeless romantics traveled like groupies cross country (well to Utah) to over excitedly catch up with Colors when they played at the Farmington County Fair. Goooood times, but not necessarily true blue concert attendance. So I was even extra excited that my first real concert would be to someone like Safety Suit.

Regardless of my butterflies....which came from a mixture of rushing to get down to Utah, worrying that Brinley might cry for Chad's mom the entire time we were gone, and all the anticipation of my first concert, we had so much fun.

It was actually a pretty small concert which I loved. And we found the best spot, this raised metal countertop thingymajig that we hopped up on to sit and watch. There wasn't seating, and we realized after standing through the first opening band that we, or our backs, weren't going to last through the next four hours, so Chad scoped out the spot and we took it. I kept waiting for someone to come tell us we had to get down, but it never happened. In fact a little girl about 8 or 9 who was super excited about one of the local bands ended up sitting by us through their performance so she could actually see.

In my concert newbness I figured they wouldn't let us bring cameras in. Sheesh was I wrong, even the band members were whipping out their Flips and filming the crowd. So no pictures. Totally regretting that, but it is what it is: )

We even found a new band that tickled our fancies....they were the opening band that Safety Suit brought with them on tour called "The Rouge". Honestly, I probably wouldn't have liked their music as much had I not seen them perform it, but they were soo entertaining and soo talented. Two thumbs up for "The Rouge".

We returned home, well to Chad's mom's house, to two sleeping girls who had done amazingly well without us. Who needs parents anyway, right: )

And I fell asleep to the sound of ringing in my ears....and didn't even mind. First concert. Victory.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!

I always do this...I get a little behind on my blogging and then things I want to write about start piling up and I get overwhelmed with the thought of writing them all out and so I end up writing nothing! Calm down, vandi. Babysteps, child: )

But first and foremost I wanted to express a big Thank You! to everyone who helped with our Christmas Box House Project! Seriously....so many people were willing to give something and it was amazing to see. People are so awesome: ) I knew that before, but this just reiterated it for us.

We got around $850 worth of donations, maybe even more. There were shampoo and conditioners, board games, soaps, hand sanitizers, headphones, toys, mp3 players, dvd players, printer paper, diapers, wii games, books, clothes, lot's of craft stuff, a $300 craft basket (via Chad's mom with Stamp in Up!), food, toothbrush sanitizers, lotions, a nice winter coat, and more. I said I'd get lots of pictures, but due to the battery life span of our camera equaling about 30 seconds! and other interfering events I was only able to snap a couple pictures.

*Man looking at those pictures it doesn't do it justice! Seriously guys there was a lot of stuff. Literally the entire back half of our van was chuck full: )

The other bummer deal was that we weren't able to get a tour like I initially thought we would. In my emails with the volunteer staff they mentioned being able to have a tour, but I should have followed through with it. We never ended up being able to go in or see the kids which would have been really neat. So learn from my mistake and ask about a tour if you ever volunteer for these guys. I'm sure it would be awesome!

This was kind of a neat little thing that happened. My good friend Rochelle sent me $15.00 for us to buy some donations with. I decided that I'd try to buy some clothes with it since there weren't very many donated. I ran into Target and was looking around for some warm winter clothes. I really wanted to be able to get the most for my money and found some cute sweat shirts and sweat pants that were $3 each. I picked out two sweaters for a girl and a pair of sweat pants and ventured over to the boys section to see if they had anything that cheap too. The boys sweats and sweat shirts were closer to $5 (weird) so I'd only be able to get one sweater or one pair of pants. Now you might be asking yourself, "Vandi, why didn't you just buy more than $15.00?" I would have loved to. I would have loved to buy all the kids new clothes if I could, but at that moment, I literally had no extra money to spend, so I was mixing and matching and sorting through the clothes trying to get as close to $15 as I could I came across a little boys sweat shirt that had a small red clearance sticker on it that read $.99. What?! I looked through all the other boys sweaters, even ones that were exactly the same as that one and found no clearance sticker on them. "Hmm...this is probably not an accurate price, but if it is I can get an entire outfit shirt and pants for a boy." So I excitedly grabbed a pair of sweats to go with it and carried all of the clothes up to the front. I honestly was expecting them to say the clearance price was wrong. Especially when as the cashier had trouble ringing up the sweater. He hesitated after the first ring up, looked things over, punched in some number or code, and looked up at me and said, "Nice deal." I enthusiastically replied, "I know!" as he rang the remaining clothes. And upon the last beep of the register I anxiously awaited the total......$15.33! Sweet!

Who knows, maybe some little boy at the Christmas Box House really needed new pants and a sweat shirt this year. I'd like to think that little red price tag was God's simple way of making sure that happened: ) Thanks for the $15 Roch! You're awesome: )

Also, I'm sorry for anyone that I was never able to meet up with. You're awesome and you know who you are and thanks for the thought anyway.

I hope we were able to make a difference for those kids this year: ) Thanks again everyone!

Mothering Style....did you know you had one?

I'm sorry....I have been so technologically out of touch since the holiday break, so sorry for the long pause in posting. I have a lot to share about the whole Christmas Box experience which I totally plan on posting tomorrow, but just to throw this out real quick, my friend Mel posted this the other day and I thought it was pretty interesting, so I wanted to share it.

Which Mothering Style are you?

On the sweet-n-condensed version of the test I was an ENFJ (Extravert, Intuitive, Feeling Judging). But I think the most interesting thing would be to see how that affects my "mothering style."

So, I'm going to find the book Mother Styles at the library and see if I can't better understand my mother self: ) I almost wish there were some kind of personality test out there for our kids so we could better understand them and their perspectives and needs. There probably is something like that out there. Anybody know? Heck, maybe I'll Google it and let you know: )

So We Have This Idea....

So we have this idea.........And this totally awesome idea starts here.......

but we need your help: )

(I know this post is huge, but bear with me and follow it through. You could be part of something BIG!) : )

When I was in high school our young women's group had a really neat project in which we collected new jammies and made teddy bears to take to a place called Christmas Box International (CBI). There are three different Christmas Box Houses that are a part of the CBI and our young women were able to go to the House in Salt Lake City. This Christmas Box House is a "half way" safe house where kids who need to be quickly removed from a violent, abusive, or neglectful situation are able to go while they are waiting to be placed into better circumstances.

I remember the whole experience vividly. As soon as I walked through the doors with the other girls I knew it was a special place. It just had that feeling; that peaceful, loving, happy feeling that comes when you know a big difference is being made. We watched as the children excitedly chose their own jammies and teddy bears out of the overflowing boxes that we brought. I loved seeing that. After some of the staff talked to us about what the Christmas Box House was all about, we were each able to read a child a bed time story before they went to sleep. As I watched and listened and got to be a part of it all, I wondered where these kids had come from, what they had seen, what they had gone without, what they had endured. The feelings that accompanied that night were some of the first moments of many that lead me to go into Social Work.

So needless to say, the Christmas Box House is awesome! And as Chad and I were brainstorming on something neat we could do for someone else this year, this memory pressed itself forward and I started to get all sorts of excited: ) So I looked up CBI's website and found this little beauty...

The Christmas Box House Wishlist (A list of items that CBI is in need of)

(I'd post the entire list here, but it end up making my post enormous, so I'll let you click the link to check it out) : )

It was from here this whole idea started taking shape. It started with us thinking we could find some of these items and donate them ourselves. Then our picture started expanding and our eyes widened as we imagined what it would be like if we could enlist the help of friends and family and classmates and coworkers, even strangers!

So here's our big idea.

We have a goal to enlist the help from you and as many people as we can to collect as many of these needed items possible from whoever can lend a helping hand so that we can personally deliver them to the SLC Christmas Box House on December 29th!

So what do you think? You want in? There is so much power in numbers! Together we can make a BIG difference. That concept is incredible and exciting and powerful. If we are on our own we could only donate a few items, but think of how much could be donated if 20 people gave a few items or 50 or 100! Awesome huh! : )

So all you need to do, if you're able and interested, is.....

1. Ask yourself, "Do I live in SV, Rexburg, or Salt Lake/Ogden area?" : ) If the answer is Yes, then you're set! : ) Chad and I plan on coming to pick up these items from you and even though we'd love to come see you in Texas (pmb) or Minnesota (Brit) or North Carolina (Mel) I don't think we'll be able to stop by : ) You could always ship something, but that'd probably cost you an arm and a leg. So, yeah... : )

2. Next Look over the list. See if there is something you could afford to give right now or something you already have that you no longer use and could give. Some of the things are really cheap; a box of fruit snacks, pudding snacks, applesauce, printer paper, wrapping paper, bows & ribbon, stools, suave shampoo and conditioner, etc. A lot of these things can even be found at the dollar store.

3. So if you want to be a part and find something you want to give all you have to do next is Write me a comment telling me just what you plan on giving and what day you'll have it by. After you leave a comment I'll be in touch with you and set up a time and means we can stop by and get it from you. (facebookers can comment to me through fb if they'd like: )

4. Then the next time you're out shopping for groceries or at Walmart, pick up one or two of these extra items and we'll come get it from you: ).

5. And this is the step where the real magic can happen! You can post about this on your own blogs or through facebook and get your family and friends and neighbors, etc. to also pick up a few items on their next shopping trip that you can collect from them that in turn I will collect from you! Can you see the magic! Honestly this could end up being such a HUGE AWESOME thing with just a few simple steps: ) I can't help but get excited!

*So if you decide to also post this and see if you can round up donations from friends, leave me a little message in your comment telling me how you plan on spreading the word along with what you plan on donating yourself: )

Here are some other simple ideas about how to get the word out.

*Chad is going to print off some copies of the "Wishlist" and take them to a couple of his classes, get permission from his teachers to take a minute to share the idea, and see if anyone is interested in brining him some donations the next time they meet for class.

*I'm going to ask the Social Work department on campus if they don't mind me leaving a box in their office with a copy of the "Wishlist" attached to see if we could get donations that way. I know our department often sends out mass emails to all that are in the program, so I'm going to ask Karri, the secretary, if she would send out an email for me explaining the idea and the box in the office.

*If your work allows it you could also mention it to coworkers and see if anyone would want to bring you some donations that way.

So I know this post is huge. Sorry. Hopefully there are a few of you that actually followed me to the end! : ) But I'm just excited and think it'll be neat to see what happens when people come together. Hopefully we can make this difficult Christmas for these kids a little more exciting and peaceful! I love you all and thank you for your help! You're awesome!

love, vandi

p.s. if you have any questions feel free to leave a comment and I'll try and answer it for you: )

One Last Hooray for Thanksgiving: )

Chad and I watched this last night. It was really good and a great way to end a month of thankfulness: )

And just so you know.......

I'm thankful for the opportunity of my life and all that I've experienced the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the simple and the complicated, the funny and the awkward, all of it. I'm thankful that I get to share this experience of life with all of you, that we get to do this together. And I'm thankful to know that I am never alone, that I have a Heavenly Father and Savior who are right there to teach and guide and love me. Life is an incredible experience and I want to make the most of every moment I get to live in it.

In the Spirit of Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had an awesome thanksgiving and stuffed themselves full of good food and good company: )

Cute huh?

Today I am thankful for......

Giveaways at Dang Gina!

The giveaway that is up for this week is a pair of cute shoes at Wee Squeak. They're are so many fun little shoes on their site. My favorite would have to be the Brown Tennis shoes with pink trim and the Taylor Brown Baby Shoes pictured up top. If you're chosen for the giveaway, you get to choose a pair of shoes for free from their regular line. How fun is that! So go check it out: ) Just hit the button on the side!