mom and i spent yesterday afternoon picking out and sorting all sorts of great books. in combination with books bought directly for donation at the fair, Readers Hideaway donations, the hoops for hope money for purcell’s library, and the rest of the money from the small fundraisers we’ve had, we are about to donate a total of 283 books! these books will be going to the following places: purcell marian high school, seton high school, our lady of victory, delhi library, lincoln park library, childrens hospital, shriners burn hospital for children, and msj’s childcare center. all the books have ali’s label in them so all future readers will know her name.  we hope to be dropping by with these donations soon! 🙂

we’ve been talking awhile about this and we would really like to make this book donation concept to be an ongoing thing…like forever. we will have more book fairs and we are also going to have a big annual event to raise money for the cause. all proceeds will continue this legacy for ali. wouldn’t that be marvelous?? we want this to be big. like national, big. like, ellen degeneres is going to want to know more about this ali tracy nunery girl, big. we want olivia to grow up and be able to say, “ya, that’s MY mommy!”

thanks to everyone who stopped by! it was great to see everyone and their kiddies!

here’s the fam. thanks to readers hideaway for taking the pics for me. 🙂

speaking of books, ali had bought a handful of recordable books to record her voice for olivia and likely, the nieces. well in her optimistic, “i’m not gonna let this take me” approach, she wasn’t in any rush to record the story books. we have all been really bummed because we had thought she didn’t do any of them. well on valentines day, ali gave my mom a little treat. ma was cleaning up olivia’s room, helping organize her clothes for ben etc. she found a “my little princess” recordable book that wasn’t sealed. sure enough when she opened it, it played ali’s voice. :*) mom was caught off guard and obviously overwhelmed with tears of both sadness and joy. we are SO happy and thankful ali decided to do that for olivia. i haven’t seen it yet but mom said by the tremble in ali’s voice, it wasn’t easy for her to do. i bought a recordable book at the book fair for our kids. the concept of those books is just so awesome, i think everyone should do one, terminal or not. cause we all know, you never know what tomorrow brings!

hope y’all enjoyed the lovely weather today!! i’m off to get a big black ashy cross smeared on my forehead. i hope fr. takes it easy on me. sometimes i think the priest has a little too much fun with it. lol.

peace, mel.