Today I dropped off the kids for their final Friday of this year's school year. Crazy how quickly the year has gone. And that got me thinking, I best get moving and get this post shared.
This year for Noah's Kindness Project, one of the activities we are going to do is a used marker collection. How many of you have a box like this (or will soon have as your kids empty out their backpacks for the last time of the year)?
We do and I'm guessing many of you might also. Many of those markers have seen better days, are dried up, used up and need to be tossed out. But before you do that, I encourage you to instead box them or bag them up and help us!
According to The University of Southern Indiana, 1.6 billion pens wind up in landfills each year. Think about how many schools nationwide, how many classrooms per school and how many kids per class have markers they've been using all year. And what will happen to so many of those markers that are done? Tossed in the trash right? Well here's where we are asking for your help. As a part of Noah's Kindness Project, and in collaboration of our wonderful home school, we want to divert as many of those markers out of the landfill and back to be recycled as possible. Help us do our part to try to minimize the impact on our landfills... 1.6 billion pens is a very staggering number.
Thanks to my mother-in-law for sharing this idea with us!
So here is how it works? Did you know that Crayola has a program called ColorCycle that helps to collect used markers to be recycled? No, well me either. Here's a litle bit about it! Crayola ColorCycle will accept all brands of plastic markers, not just Crayola markers. That includes dry erase markers & highlighters. If you collect the dead markers, in collaboration with your local school, they’ll send you a free shipping label & you can ship them back to Crayola to be recycled! For more information about this program: http://www.crayola.com/colorcycle.aspx This program is currently in the US & parts of Canada, check website & www.crayola.com/colorcycle/frequently-asked-questions.aspx - FAQ's. So here is our plan... as the school year end we ask you to please sort and save any used markers that can we can collect to recycle. You can also save markers at home over the summer and even as the school year begins and you buy new ones. Please save the markers at home or get in contact with us and we will gladly pick them up and store them til fall for you. For those family and friends who attend our local elementary school with Isabelle, she will be taking collection boxes to school next week to collect them in the final days of the year. So toss them in the collection box at school! For friends out of state, primarily in Iowa, please sort, save and collect markers to be recycled too. We will be working with our friends back there to find places to collect and store too. I'll post an update about this in the coming weeks. Thank you VERY much for your support! A few years ago when we collected crayons to be recycled, we were able to send a huge pallet full of boxes to be made into new crayons. We hope to be able to do the same this year! Thank you! Angie Imagine what we could divert from landfills during the whole school year at every school!
I'm feeling quite embarrassed that NKP was over a month ago and I still didn't get this post finished until now!
Wow, what an incredible day yesterday was. I think I'm still walking among the clouds.
From the moment we woke up to the moment we crashed last night, everything was so much fun and incredible to see all the ways you helped us honor Noah and spread kindness. There are so many acts of kindness you did that I loved, I'm not sure where to start. I"m grateful for Facebook's posts that allow you to go back in time and reread old posts, I think I'll be going back and rereading what you shared with us for months to come.
While Noah's Kindness Project is technically the first Saturday in October, the reality is that it starts many months before and has grown to be something we find so much happiness and joy in all year round.
Actually right after NKP ends the year before, we start planning for next year. We order supplies, save money to be able to do the acts of kindness and figure out what of the many deserving community service efforts we'd like to try to implement.
This year we purchased coolers with our NKP name on them to give to families in the NICU and Antepartum. We fill the coolers with lots of goodies and care package items that the families might need while they are in the hospital. Campbell's Crew Cares helped us to purchase supplies to put in the cooler and they were able to even provide a gift card to each family for meals while they are in the hospital. The kids like to help stuff the bags.
Another thing we did this year was change our plans for our normal balloon release. For the last three years we've done a balloon release where we write messages to Noah and release them into the air. This year as I was thinking about how bad the balloon release is for the environment, I decided to change the release up a bit and instead we purchased Mylar balloons and tied gift bags to the bottom of them as weights and then we instead delivered 49 of them to the kids at Cardon's Chidren's Hospital.
Here's Isabelle barely able to be seen in the car with the 50 balloons!
And the treats we used to pack into baggies at the bottom of the balloon!
We also take lunch and snacks to the staff in Antepartum and the NICU
Another activity we did was decorate USPS boxes for the troops who are deployed and serving our country. These boxes will be shipped overseas at Christmas.
Here are some of the balloons we shared.
We also made these rainbow crafts and then took them along with some fall pictures to a local nursing home to share with the residents.
And another fun activity was the kindness stones. We are grateful for those who came to our house to decorate them and share them around our community!
On the morning of NKP we got up bright and early and headed downtown to the Phoenix Children's Hospital 5K run/walk. Madelyn was unsure why we were up so early!
When we got downtown we met up with the others who kindly joined our team.
The boys were excited to start off at the front of the running pack.
Most of our Noah's Kindness Project team!
Soon enough the race was off!
All done!
Happy to be done!
I think we were all excited to be finished!
Post-race festivities
Thankful for all who came down to particpate and be a part of the fun that was the PCH event!
Another exciting thing that happened at the race was that Isabelle got to hang with the beautiful ladies who represent the state of Arizona for their different pageant awards.
Isabelle got to take her picture with the girls.
Madelyn wasn't quite sure about why the princess wasn't named Elsa.
After the race we went back to our house where we worked on the crafts!
After crafts and lunch we went to the place where it all started. Banner Desert Medical Center.
Here Melanie and Brandi two of Noah's nurses came along to join us as we donated a cuddle cot to the NICU. This was the gift I was most excited about as I prayed it would be able to help a family, like us, who experienced great loss, and that the cuddle cot could give comfort and more time for family with their baby.
Campbell Faulkner, is an incredible little boy whose faced many medical challenges in his life, and at the age of 12 started his own charity to help give hope. Campbell and his family have been very supportive of our family and thanks to Campbell and his fundraising efforts, they helped us to be able to purchase this gift.
When we got to the NICU the room was filled with our crew of family and friends and the news media, who wanted to hear our story and why we wanted to share the gift.
The stories the news media ran about our donation are below.
And then after we shared our gifts with the NICU we went to the pediatric floors of Cardons to share the gifts with other children and their families going through harder times.
When I talked to the Faulkner family about the Cuddle Cot they became our biggest supporters to help make it happened and they brought together another wonder family, the Colten Cowell Foundation to contribute as well. The family of Colten Cowell is incredible and started the foundation in memory of their young son who passed away. They are now the driving force behind the Batcave that grants wishes to children facing life-challenging medical conditions and they give them an evening of fun to forget about all their worries.
For more information about the Colten Cowell Foundation please visit: https://coltencowellfoundation.org/
And the fun did not end there, after the hospital, we went back to one of our favorite Feed My Starving Children community service events . We had a great job packing food for starving children and families and always enjoy having such a large group representing NKP.
Thank you to all of you who joined us!
This baby is just one of the children who receive the nutrients packaged by volunteers at the FMSC centers. This baby was found thrown in an outhouse bathroom because he was too weak and they didn't think he would make it because he had been starving too long.
They said when they found him, he was within hours or a day of death
The people who rescued him were able to give him some this food that saved his life.
Thank you to everyone who came to join us and to be a part of the NKP team. Seeing images of our group makes my heart grow with gratitude and love. We are so thankful for you!
And finally before we wrapped up the very busy and meaningful day, we joined back up with Campbells Crew Cares to donate several vehicles full of gifts to share with CASS (Central Arizona Shelter Services), specifically their short term housing apartments for many women and children.
We were honored to get to help collect food and personal items to donate.
Thanks to the many who donated and Campbell's Crew Cares support, we were able to fill their supply shed.
When we finally got home after a day filled with so much joy, love and especially kindness, we walked around almost in shock about how moving that day had been.
As the sun got ready to set, we took our one balloon outside that we had signed with our message to Noah and as our family we released his balloon up into the sky to celebrate and say thank you for all that his life has inspired and created.
When Noah was born so early and we prayed harder than we ever had in our lives that he would survive and overcome the mountainous obstacles in front of him, we felt crushed, like our prayers were unheard and unsure how how to move. It was because of the great love, the thoughtfulness and especially the kindness by so many of you, that we were carried in those hard hard days.
Today I look back on Noah's life and his passing with a completely different perspective than I did in those early days. I still wish he was here instead, but I know that will never be. I now look at his life and I give great thanks. I give thanks for the 12 days we had and that his life while short here, can still be carried on. In each of us, in all of you who support Noah's Kindness Project and in all those who benefit from the acts of kindness you share.
As a mother who carries her child in her heart instead of her arms, one of the most healing and loving acts anyone can do to support her grief is to remember, to honor and to celebrate her missing child along with her living ones.
.
To so many of you who help us share kindness in Noah's memory... thank you. We are forever grateful.
Finally, I share one of my favorite pictures that you shared with us. This is a picture of my nephew's pre-school class picture who helped participate in Noah's Kindness Project this year. I love this picture for so many reasons. These are the hands that will shape our future. They will be the ones who lead our country. To see the lessons of kindness imparted to them, I hope, it will be something that stays with them for their entire life.
And finally, in this picture I think of Noah. He would have been about this same age had his lived longer. I wish his hand was in this picture. But then I looked at the picture again and realized he is in this picture. His spirit lives on in all those beautiful little hands that help to share kindness in his memory. We are deeply touched.
Three years ago tonight was Noah's due date and it was a date I would hope I remembered because of the surplus of happiness and joy it was supposed to have given us when he was born. I know he could have come on a different date, but from the moment we found out we were expecting and what his due date was, October 3 immediately became a symbol for what was to come.
Anticipation. Hope. Love. That's what October 3, 2015 was supposed to be.
Never could I have dreamed of what twists and turns were waiting for us and as I sit and think back to three years ago tonight, I remember feeling the following way.
Anticipation. Hope. Love.
While I was not holding my son in my arms on October 3, 2015, I was holding an immeasurable amount of love, hope, anticipation and yes kindness in my heart.
Thanks to the many who turned out and participated in Noah's Kindness Project that first year, we were able to take a date that could have been filled with hurt and so much sadness, and instead fill it with the feelings we longed for when we first learned Noah was with us.
These last several weeks I've been thinking over and over about why we do Noah's Kindness Project. We do it to help other people. We do it as a way to try to pay back others for all the love and kindness that was shared with us in our hardest days. We do it because it honestly makes us feel good too. We do it because we have been blessed and feel it is our turn to share blessings with others. We do it all, we do it all... because of him.
Noah.
This boy.
This precious baby who fit in the palm of his daddy's hands when he was weighed but created a place so big in our hearts it is forever etched with love for him.
My life has been permanently changed because of a tiny tiny baby that grew in my stomach for only 24 weeks and lived in our world for only 12 days. A tiny baby that never got to experience so much of what life has to offer, and yet was able to teach me more in his life than I perhaps have learned from anyone else.
The lessons of unending love. The lesson of grief. The belief in what happens beyond this world. The lesson that hurt and sadness can be eased by giving more of yourself, when honestly you don't feel like you have anything worthy of giving. The lesson in hope. In finding hope in the darkest of days, the kind of hope you can't see, feel or hardly believe exists but know you must trust it is there and do your best to keep going. These are just a few of the many lessons I have learned in the time I have lived with and without my son here.
Not a day goes by that I don't think of him, or wish he was here. But also in the three years we've been separated, I've come to accept the truth that I don't get to raise him. I will never see him grow. I will only get to have the memories of 12 days, that those 12 days have to last my lifetime. I have no doubt they will.
And even though I do not like that he is not here, I do like all that has come from his life and find great joy in what is accomplished on one day each year when we celebrate Noah's Kindness Project. I love that a group of people from all different corners of this world come together to share kindness, spread joy, give hope and love. When I think of the legacy our tiny boy who lived only 12 days has, I am proud, oh so proud to be his momma.
So on this day that reminds me of how different life is, than what I expected it to be, I still try to smile. I smile, after I took a moment to feel sad and honor just how hard grief can be in losing a baby. But I smile, I breathe soaking up the clean air that fills my lungs, and I press forward. Because that's what we need to do. Noah can't be here to live out his life, so I will do my best, in the days I am given to live for him, and for me, and I live for my other children and Jarrett. I guess I live for you too. Friend or family or stranger or not... we are all here to try to make this world a better place, to care for others by giving of ourselves.
On this October 3, 2018, I feel many things, but mostly I feel
Anticipation. Hope. Love.
Thanks to all of you who make Noah's Kindness Project as special as it. We honor our son, but we have unending gratitude to you.
12:30-1:45
pm Arrive
at Banner Desert Medical Center-
·Cuddle
Cot Donation
NICU and
Antepartum donations –
·Heavenly
Sleepers, Scent Cloths,
·Cooler
Gifts
1:45 pm Check in at Feed My
Starving Children
2:00-4:00 pm Volunteer
at Feed My Starving Children- Mesa Location
4:30-6:30 pm Deliver
donations to Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS) with Campbell’s Crew Cares
For more information and how to participate
visit: https://noahskindnessproject.blogspot.com/ Please let us know if you'd like to join us for any of the activities! We'd love to have you! Until next time, Angie
One of the most difficult days of my life was June 25, 2015. It was the day that our precious Noah's heart stopped beating and was a day I wished I could go along with him. It's hard to put into words the horrific sadness and pain a person feels when their child dies. If you can imagine everything you thought, wanted or wished the world to be, sucked out from beneath you, the air from your lungs incapable of giving you the sustenance you need to live and then realizing that while you suffocate in sadness and hurt, your heart beats on, when theirs doesn't. I believe it the worst pain one can endure. Perhaps I'm wrong but my heart tells me I'm right.
When a child or baby dies too soon, there are very few things that can bring comfort. There are no words, no explanations to justify the loss and no amount of "I"m sorry's" that can help. In that moment of pure devastation and hurt, I think there is only one thing I found myself asking for and that was that I wanted more time. Time.... I wanted more time with my baby, more memories to create, more times to tell him how much I love him, and more moments to try to find a way to say goodbye.
After Noah's heart stopped beating here on this Earth, Jarrett and I invited our parents to join us as they escorted us down the long hall to a section of the NICU that wasn't used. Unlike the lucky ones who get to graduate to the "feeders and growers" side of the bay were transitioned to the dark end of the hall, where fewer people come by, where the lights are dimmed and the extra isolettes are stored. It is what it is but in those moments of feeling like my feet were carrying my numb body, I knew one thing... I didn't want to let his body leave me.
For approximately an hour, our parents, Jarrett and I got to hold Noah, got to tell him we loved him and we tried to find a way to celebrate what should have been his entire life. I remember holding him in front of me, no wires, no beeping machines, just him wrapped in a tiny blanket. He was at peace. I remember looking down at him and without saying a word I tried to tell him everything I could ever have wanted to tell him in his life. From talking about who he looked like, to telling him about how we would have loved to celebrate his birthdays, how much joy it would have brought me to take him to kindergarten on his first day. I could picture him wearing a red shirt with denim shorts and having a blue backpack way too big for his back weighing him down from behind. I smiled as I held him, and talked to him about our life together. I cried as I held him and long to be back in Pod D with those constant noises coming from all his machines. Instead I looked around the room and then passed our precious baby around for his grandparents to hold him. Their one and only time. I wondered how they must have felt. How robbed they must have felt to only have gotten to hold their grandson after his breath had stopped. It was all so unfair and the entire time, we knew we only had a few more moments together.
......
I was sitting at our kitchen table eating breakfast, another morning after my life changed forever. I had come out of the valley that is grief in losing a baby but still found my heart permanently marked with a wound barely scabbed over. The Today show played in the background and I listened as the kids rummaged around in their rooms getting ready for the day. A preview for the next segment came on and I remember putting my spoon to my cereal down, getting up from the table and walking over to the couch. The preview of what to come made my entire surrounding world disappear and the noise of our house become mute. I sat through the commercials not recalling what they were but taken immediately back to that afternoon hour of June 25, 2015 and I thought to myself, "if only we had had this that day." I waited with anticipation hoping the tease of the story was going to be as promising as it looked. A few minutes later I sat and watched the story of a family who lost their baby and had heard about a source of comfort for parents available for mothers and fathers after their child's passing and that gift was called a Cuddle Cot.
Here is the link to the story that stopped me in my tracks.
A Cuddle Cot is a specially designed bed for babies that have passed away that can preserve the body and give the families more time to say goodbye. Without going into too many details it is a bedside cooling device that prolongs the final moments and gives grieving parents the time to begin, even in the smallest of ways, the time they need to find away to say that final goodbye. Families can have many hours, even up to a few days to be able to spend with their baby. I wish so much to have been able to have that time. I'm very confident I am not alone in that wish, if one were to ask other grieving parents.
For the family in the story, they had heard about the Cuddle Cot and raised money to be able to donate one to their local hospital. As the story ended and the program went to commercial, I got up from the couch, walked over to my computer, sat down and opened up my email and started typing away. Less than 5 minutes later I hit send on an email to one of my nurse friends at the NICU and asked her if they had one of the Cuddle Cots and if not, if we could give them one. I then called Jarrett and said, "I know what we have to do for Noah's Kindness Project next year. We are going to donate a Cuddle Cot."
...
I started talking about the Cuddle Cot to all of my family and I sent a message to them asking them to consider helping us raise money. The Cuddle Cots are not cheap, over a few thousand dollars just for one. But I felt no hesitation in my determination that we had to find a way to gift one, even if it took us a few years to raise the money.
Our family supported as they always do but know many of them were balancing tight budgets as well. One night Jarrett and I were talking about the project and how we spread our budget out to make all the projects we want to do work, when I said, "Well if it takes us a few years that's okay, I just know we have to do this."
The very next day, at church our friends Carrie and Shane Faulkner and their beautiful kids greeted us after the service and Carrie and I got talking about Noah's Kindness Project. Their amazing, and I do mean AMAZING son Campbell started Campbell's Crew Cares, a non-profit charity whose mission is to GIVE HOPE. While Campbell has faced more challenges and health obstacles that most of us combined ever will, Campbell wanted to start a charity to share love and kindness with others. I encourage all of you to visit his website https://www.campbellscrew.com/ and read about the truly awe-inspiring kid that he is.
As Carrie and I were talking, she said, "We want to support you in Noah's Kindness Project. Let me know what ideas you have." I smiled and while the idea was already swimming around in my mind, I needed to have a few moments to put my thoughts together before spurting it all out. I told her I'd email. I couldn't wait to get home to draft my ideas into an email.
I shared these same words I share with you today about what it feels like to lose a child and how finding anything that can give comfort feels like an army of love has helped you to find an unimaginable battle. I knew Carrie and her family could understand. I sent the email and hoped they'd think my ask was as valuable of a wish as I did.
It wasn't more than an hour after I sent my email and I'm sure only a few minutes after the Faulkner's read the email that I got a text saying they completely supported the idea and wanted to help us make it happen. It was for me, a sign that we were meant to make this happen.
Campbell and his family are truly some of the most generous, giving and loving families I've ever met. Campbell took this cause under his wing and while I was setting a goal of fundraising over the next few years to make it a reality, Campbell had a different idea. Over the next few months at the different events Campbell spoke at he talked about his activities of giving hope and included in that was the hope to give through a gift of a Cuddle Cot.
I'll never forget the phone call when Carrie called and with tears on her end of the phone she said, "We've raised the money, you got your Cuddle Cot." I broke down. I couldn't find the words. It was incredible. All I could say was wow and thank you. While I pray there are never anymore families that go through what so much already have, I knew that reality was not to be and I cried tears thinking perhaps we can give some peace and take away some of the hurt by giving this gift. We cried together on the phone and in that moment our heart strings grew closer together. Carrie always says, "You have my heart." and in that moment I knew truly what she meant. She too, they all, had mine.
...
So it is with great heart-giving hope that we share with you one of our biggest announcements of Noah's Kindness Project. This coming October 6th, thanks to Campbell's Crew Cares and his generous donors, we will be donating the first Cuddle Cot to Banner Desert's NICU. We will present it to the hospital on Noah's Kindness Project day.
This is an effort so close to my heart because I know how crumbled a mother's and father's heart is after the loss of her child. I pray that comfort can be found through this gift and that healing can begin even earlier because more time was given to be able to say goodbye.
Campbell's Crew Cares has made it a goal along with our help of Noah's Kindness Project to raise the funds to be able to give another Cuddle Cot for the next 5 years. This is where we ask for your help. We ask you to consider giving to Campbell's Crew Cares, an amazing non-profit charity, all started by the wishes of 12-year-old Chief Inspiration Officer Campbell, to give more hope in this sometimes hope-strained world. Campbell uses the funds raised to spread hope in many different ways. I encourage you to visit his website to see https://www.campbellscrew.com/. Including in the way of supporting Noah's Kindness Project and our desire to give Cuddle Cots.
To donate to Campbell's Crew Cares and our Cuddle Cot mission, please visit his website and click the donate link. You can specifically request that the funds go toward the Cuddle Cot.
...
In the quiet few minutes we got to spend with Noah saying our goodbyes, I wishing for his heart to beat, his lungs to breath and his body to have had the strength to keep fighting for more time. Time. The time we so often take for granted, the years that fly by, the decades we blink and are gone. It is time we never got but so longed to have.
For families enduring the hardest loss, the gift of time is priceless. The gift of saying a true goodbye and creating final memories cannot hold a price tag. I speak from my deepest moments of grief when I say, without them, it is impossible to be able to carry on. Thank you for considering your support of this important gift and for helping us give hope, give love, give kindness and give time.
This year we are again planning to take gifts to the hospital, the place where our journey with Noah began. Last year we purchased coolers and filled them with goodies to share with the families in the NICU for the long haul. From bottled water, to snacks, toothbrushes, gift cards and a note of encouragement. It was our hope the mom's could use the coolers as a way to bring milk back to the hospital for her baby(ies).
Someone had given us a cooler when we were there and I remember thinking it was so nice and thoughtful to not have one more thing to worry about, when your mind could only worry about one thing and that was your precious baby fighting for life.
We had heard the families appreciated it last year so we decided to expand upon it this year. This year we decided to get Noah's Kindness Project coolers to share with the NICU. We partnered with our great friends and special Baby Knox's family as they have a business in promotional items (highly recommend them).
Here are how the coolers turned out. We will be donating a bunch of these this year and every year for the next several to the NICU families. I hope this gift can give the family the ease of mind in having a few essential items provided for them.
It's been such a busy month and it's hard to believe we are less than a month from Noah's Kindness Project. Here's just one other activity we are excited to share.
