Help.

Donation list updated as of 7:00pm on Monday, November 18th, 2013.

Yesterday morning a line of horrific storms, accompanied by a number of tornadoes, terrorized the Midwest. One of these tornadoes passed through Washington, Illinois, where my little sister, Sara, lives with her husband, Jeff, and their two children; unfortunately for them, their home fell directly in the path of the tornado. Thankfully, Sara, Jeff, Lily, and Carter survived…not everyone in their city did. But when they climbed the stairs from their basement into their living room, they discovered that when the storm blew out of town, it took with it their entire house, their cars, and all of their belongings.

The tornado as it approached their neighborhood.
(They didn't take this photo - they were
safely tucked away in their basement.)

Their first car, which came to rest in their backyard.

Their neighborhood.

Their second car, which came to rest in a neighbor's backyard.

Their house, or what's left of it.

I have never been more grateful for my Red Cross training than I was yesterday morning. Thanks to years of experience responding to disasters of all shapes and sizes, I know how to transition from zero to sixty in a very short period of time and can separate "Erin, the devastated big sister" from "Erin, the Red Cross disaster responder" to allow myself to get done what needs to be done.

And here's what needs to be done.

First, if you're able to do so, please consider making a financial contribution to support Sara, Jeff, Lily, and Carter as they attempt to rebuild their lives. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would share this link with people who might be interested in donating but do not have access to the link (http://ekenafamily.wix.com/donations) via this blog or Facebook.

In the name of transparency, you should know that the donations will come to me first through my PayPal account. Once a week I will transfer the money collected - every single penny of every single donation - to Sara and Jeff.

Second, I will be collecting in-kind (physical) donations for Sara, Jeff, Lily, and Carter as well. The list below is where I'm starting today, but this list will certainly evolve in the coming days and weeks - both as items are donated and as Sara and Jeff get a better feel for what they need - and I will post updates frequently. (Please do not feel as though you need to go out and purchase these items new; instead, pass along gently-used items that members of your family have outgrown or no longer use.)

• Size 3 diapers
• Baby wipes
• Powder soy (dairy-free) baby formula
• Bottles
• Baby bowls, plates, and spoons 
• Baby blankets
• Size 12-18 month little boy clothes, pajamas, and socks
• Size 12-18 month little boy winter coat, hat, and mittens
• Size 2T/3T little girl clothes, pajamas, underwear, and socks
• Size 2T/3T little girl winter coat, snow pants, hat, and mittens
• Size 7 little girl toddler shoes, indoor boots, and outdoor boots 
• Children's books
• Small portable DVD player (I thought this might help keep Lily entertained while her baby brother is napping and her parents are on the phone with insurance companies, banks, etc.)
• Children's DVDs
• Adult and child toiletries 

If you would like to donate any of the items on this list, please email me at erin@chasingroots.com. I will return your email as soon as possible to coordinate a time for me to pick them up (if you live near me), share with you a drop-off location (if you live near my parents), or work something else out (if you don't live near me or my parents).

A third option is to donate gift cards to stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Kroger, etc. so that Sara and Jeff can purchase what they need, when they need it most. If you would like to donate a gift card, please email me at erin@chasingroots.com so that we can coordinate how to best get these resources to Sara and Jeff.

THANK YOU. For the monetary and in-kind donations, the phone calls, the texts, the email and Facebook messages, the sincere offers to help in any way. I am so tremendously humbled by the outpouring of support we have received on Sara and Jeff's behalf.

Erin

I plan to provide daily updates here on the blog, so please check back tomorrow for more information on the Ekena family. 

High Five for Friday (11.15.13)

1. For me, what happens on Monday morning often sets the tone for the remainder of the week. Wake up late? Car won't start? Grab the reigns…the week will be a wild one. But wake up before the alarm goes off? Kids dress and eat and leave for school ahead of schedule? The week will be one to high-five about.

My Monday morning began with a hilarious incident - a friend of mine taught the entire first song of our (rather large) Group Power fitness class with a panty liner wrapped around her shoe - and then stayed the course toward happiness and humor and "I can't believe that just happened but since it did I'll just laugh about it"-ness.

And since it seems my Monday morning mood/attitude follows me throughout the next five days, I'm going to request that the folks at my gym keep up the antics in that first Group Power class of the week…toilet paper on the shoe, pants on backwards, completely backwards choreography, you get the picture. Speaking of, I really wish I'd taken a picture of Mary's* shoe to show you. Maybe next week!

* Names have been changed to protect the embarrassed.

2. My Christmas card photo has been taken and edited, my Christmas cards have been ordered and delivered, and by the end of the weekend my Christmas letter will be finished. If I play my (figurative, not Christmas) cards right, I'll have these babies in the mail before Thanksgiving!

3. Will takes his football to school every day so that he can play "two-hand-touch" with his friends at recess. He often carries the ball - instead of putting it in his backpack - when he leaves for the day, and he loves to chuck it at me as soon as he walks out the school door and sees me waiting for him. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes it hits me in the gut, and always I remind him that we can't play football while surrounded by tons of parents and little kids waiting for their elementary school students to emerge from the building.

On Wednesday the public schools released students early (as they do once every six weeks), which meant I picked Will up before and without Hallie. As Will and I walked home together, we played football the entire way. He ran ahead of me, and I threw him the ball over and over again - first down, second down, etc. - until he caught it and ran to the next mailbox to score a touchdown and earn a new set of downs. It was the most fun I've had playing with my boy in ages, and I can't wait to do it again, hopefully sooner than six weeks from now.

4. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, online mapmakers are helping Red Cross volunteers respond more quickly and efficiently to the devastation caused to the Philippines by Super Typhoon Haiyan. According to the article, between November 9th and 11th (the three days leading up to publication), approximately 400 volunteers made nearly 750,000 additions to a free, online map of the areas affected by the typhoon in what the author calls a worldwide crowd-sourced humanitarian effort. Though this is not the first time the Open Street Map has made an impact on relief and recovery efforts during humanitarian crises, this is the first time the Red Cross has been able to use the tool to better coordinate volunteers and provide assistance. This is a fascinating story - check it out here!

5. Parents, you must watch this video. I promise you won't regret it. So funny, and SO, SO true.

Linking up with High Five for Friday!

Thankful Thursday, Week 2

November 7th
I'm thankful that my sister, my mom, and I all arrived safely in the Midwest for our girls' weekend, and that both of my flights left on time and arrived ahead of schedule…that certainly doesn't happen every day!

November 8th
I'm thankful for my mom, who is so unbelievably generous, for my sister, who always makes me laugh,  and for the time to linger over good wine and even better conversation with these lovely ladies.

November 9th
I'm thankful my husband took the kids "camping" in the backyard - they roasted marshmallows over the grill and then spent the night cuddled up in sleeping bags in our tent - so that I wouldn't have to. (I'm kind of afraid to camp here in Texas because I'm worried the critters might attack me in the night…)

My apologies for the quality of this photo - Tom's
phone is older than Hallie and takes terrible photos.

November 10th
I'm thankful for safe travels home from a wonderful vacation, and for a husband who kept my children healthy and happy while I was away.

November 11th
On Veterans Day, I'm thankful for the men and women who have served or are currently serving our country as members of the United States Armed Forces.

"Let future generations understand the burden and the blessings of freedom. Let them say we stood where duty required us to stand."     ~ George H. W. Bush

November 12th
I'm thankful for the cooler weather (though I wish I would have dressed Hallie a little more warmly when I sent her off to school this morning), primarily because it provided me with the perfect opportunity to rock my new leather jacket!

November 13th
I'm thankful for the end of baseball season, not because I didn't enjoy it, but because my Tuesdays and Thursdays/Fridays just opened up. Bring on the family dinners, evening holiday traditions, and early bedtimes!

Falling for Fall

Preparing to go out of town takes weeks, whether we're traveling as a family or I'm traveling alone. When we go out of town as a family, the to-do list - pack everyone's suitcases, pack snacks/drinks/toys/games for the car, load the car, and on the way out the door, turn off the furnace and lock the doors - takes a while to work through but comes together pretty easily. But when I travel on my own, the pre-trip to-do list is much more complicated. I still pack my suitcase, pack snacks/drinks/books/magazines for the car or plane, and load the car, but that's where the similarities end.

When I go out of town without my family, I spend at least a couple of days prior putting together for my husband a detailed-barely-even-begins-to-describe-it list of where and when the kids need to be dropped off, what they need to take with them to school and to each specific extra-curricular activity, where and when they need to be picked up, and details about homework and meals and bedtime and chores and, and, and… I line up friends to handle the drop-offs and pick-ups that conflict with Tom's work schedule, and to be "on call" to watch one or both kids should Tom get called in to the office unexpectedly. I lay out clothes for school and clothes for baseball and dance and label them. I make lunches and snacks and dinners and fill the cookie jar. I pay the bills and do the laundry and clean the house. Preparing to travel on my own is A LOT of work.

Because going out of town on my own is at least twice as complicated and time-consuming as going out of town as a family, I only do so once a year. It's worth it though, all that extra planning and preparation, because it means spending three days with my mom and sister at home in the Midwest during the most beautiful season of the year.

Now would be a great time to post pictures of fall in the Midwest, right? Well that's exactly what I'd do...if I'd taken any pictures of fall in the Midwest. Oops.

Midway through our second day together, my sister and I realized that over the course of our 10+ years of girls' weekends, we've taken exactly zero pictures. No pictures of the city lights at night, no pictures of the brightly colored leaves falling from the trees, no pictures of each other or ourselves as a trio. No pictures at all. How is that possible, especially considering the fact that we've all owned smart phones for at least the last three years?! (And those smart phones are usually glued to our hands so that we don't miss "emergency" calls from husbands asking about little girl dresses or teachers requesting new pants for little boys who lose their pants snaps in the bathroom. Yes, I received both of those calls this year. Those calls are better, however, than calls to tell me that the entire family has the Norovirus, which I've also received while traveling.) So right then we took a picture of the three of us in front of the closet organization systems in The Container Store, and it remains the only picture we've ever taken on one of our trips.

It's no secret that I love fall. The chill in the air, waking up with the sun, watching the leaves change and twirl to the ground, football, tailgating, pumpkins, apples, new television shows, Halloween, Thanksgiving, my birthday, and Christmas festivities all warm my heart and lift my spirit. And now that I think about it, I take fewer pictures in the fall than I do during any other season…maybe because there's so much to love and appreciate that I can't be bothered to pull myself away from the beauty of fall long enough to find my camera and duck behind the lens.

So I'll leave you with this, the one and only picture I've ever taken on this annual trip. Perhaps one of the reasons I love fall so much is that for me, it looks like this.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

After spending Thursday, Friday, and Saturday on vacation in the Midwest, I arrived home on Sunday afternoon to a tired husband, two energized kiddos, a slightly disheveled and dirty house (Tom makes a valiant effort to tidy and clean prior to my return home, but there are plenty of details he just doesn't know need to be taken care of), a mountain of laundry, and a lengthy to-do list. I took the kids to the park as soon as I arrived home to give Tom a break, but an hour after our walk I'd transitioned from "relaxed and refreshed daughter and sister" to "overwhelmed mother running a mile a minute". I finally slowed down - long enough for my people to surround me with hugs and smother me with kisses - later in the evening though, at then all seemed right with the world.

Me and my boy on our way home from the park.

And me and my girl. Well, mostly my girl. You can
just barely see me in the background of her selfie.

I had high hopes of cranking out a thoughtful, in-depth post about my adventures on the road, as well as my love for "real" fall, but this morning I find myself unable to fit that kind of writing into my "catch-up" day. I promise such a post on Wednesday, and in the meantime, here are links to a few of my posts - some new and some that you may or may not have read here previously - that have recently gone up on the Red Cross blog or MomsEveryday.

Red Cross: Working Toward 100%, a glimpse into yet another failed fire drill in the Ferris household, along with tips on how to prevent such a circumstance from happening at your house.

MomsEveryday: It's Time, the background behind my decision to stop - or at least attempt to stop - overextending myself and what it meant for Chasing Roots.

MomsEveryday: The Burning House, an exercise in balancing practicality against sentiment when faced with a catastrophic event.

MomsEveryday: I Can't Take Them Anywhere, just one more story about how my children embarrass me in public.

See you on Wednesday!

High Five for Friday (11.8.13)

1. I'm on vacation! Many years ago, back when I was a junior in college, my mom, sister, and I began an annual girls weekend tradition. Every late October or early November, we leave the boys and the babies behind and spend two-and-a-half days shopping, sight-seeing, theater-going, eating, drinking, and just catching up. It's mahhhhvelous. (If you know my husband or my sister's husband, perhaps you could check in on them this weekend? You know, to make sure the kids haven't taken over or driven their daddies mad? Thanks!)

The four little rugrats we left behind. They couldn't possibly drive anyone crazy, right?
(For the record, I have absolutely no idea how I created this photo montage.)

2. My husband, who holds down the fort and keeps the children alive, makes it possible for me to go on vacation every year. And my friends, who pick up my kids from school, take them to their dance lessons and baseball games, invite them over for playmates, and agree to be "on call" should Tom need help or have to go into the office unexpectedly, make me feel considerably less guilty about leaving my family for three-and-a-half days. Y'all rock, and I'm so very grateful for your love and support.

3. I think I may be in the minority here, but the departure of Daylight Savings Time excites me. I wake feeling more rested, thanks to the lightening sky on weekdays and the sunlight streaming through my windows on the weekends. The kids go to bed earlier and without complaining have fewer complaints because it's actually dark outside at bedtime, and when the kids go to bed earlier, I go to bed earlier. And we spend more evenings at home, together as a family, preparing for the holidays. I love it.

Oh, and there's something special about evening baseball games under the lights. Last week Will caught a fly-ball to tally the third out of the inning and end the game, and thanks to the spotlight that happened to illuminate him in that moment, I could see the look of amazement and then joy - pure joy - that spread across his face in the seconds after he made the play. Best night ever.

4. Middle school students and the adjectives "inclusive", "selfless", and "kind" don't always find their way into the same sentences. But these middle schoolers, all members of their school's football team, deserve every positive word being said and written about them. I hope my kids show such tremendous heart and humility when they reach the middle school battlefield.

5. I know I talked about Catching Fire last week, but I'll probably talk about it every week until the movie opens on November 21st. And I'll probably talk about it for a couple of weeks after the movie opens on November 21st as well. Then you'll get a break, until November 2014, when we start counting down to the release of Mockingjay Part 1.

So today, I'll leave you with the newest Catching Fire television spot featuring Christina Aguilera's "We Remain". All of the television and movie promos I've seen thus far have been fantastic, but this one is even better - we're talking chills, goosebumps, and tears, all in the span of one minute - thanks to the incredible musical accompaniment. 13 days!

Linking up with High Five for Friday!

Thankful Thursday, Week 1

I enjoy writing my own and reading others' messages of thanks throughout the month of November; for me, taking a moment out of each day to reflect on and preserve in writing a special moment, person, or experience is a simple but meaningful way to prepare for Thanksgiving.

I tend to focus on the little things though, so lest you think I'm not thankful for the big things, let's begin by saying that above all, I'm thankful for my loving husband and healthy, spirited children. I'm thankful for my supportive parents, the best little sister a girl could ask for, and my niece, nephew, in-laws, SILs, and BILs. My family rocks.

November 1st
I'm thankful for an unexpected opportunity to enjoy a delicious cup of coffee and an hour of nearly-uninterupted conversation with a sweet friend.

November 2nd
I'm thankful for the beautiful fall weather, and the advent of a new Ferris family fall tradition.

November 3rd
I'm thankful that time changes no longer mess with my children's sleep schedules, and that as a result, I enjoyed an extra hour of sleep this morning.

November 4th
I'm thankful that neither child complained about a single thing placed on their plates at dinner this evening.

November 5th
I'm thankful for the rain, as its presence lifts my spirits the way sun improves most people's moods, and that, at least for the time being, my little one feels the same way.

November 6th
I'm thankful for the opportunity to spend time with my children, but just as thankful for the opportunity to spend time away from them. Knowing that I won't see them again until Sunday afternoon made this evening's cuddles on the couch that much sweeter.