Grab the Kleenex, I'm going to make you bawl...

Greetings All,

Things have been really, really quiet around here on the Amelie news front, so we haven't posted much.

Amelie is beyond fragile right now, for some reason.  But she's just wanting cuddling, which is what we've been giving her in buckets (and buckets and buckets....right Grammie?)

However, good stuff has just been POURING in from other fronts.

The donation from the Bayou Grill was the first of these, last weekend.

On Monday, a woman walked into my school 5th hour, and handed off a gift bag to another teacher at the school.  Inside the bag were lots of things.  There was an amazingly well made bag from the person (my wife was in awe of the sewing machine she used to make it, as she immediately knew it had the ability to do really great embroidery) with a ton of personal touches that really meant a lot to her.  Inside was a generous donation, a book, and a picture of the family having cut off their long, lustrous hair to donate to kids with cancer.  Wow.

(We're not sharing their names because we don't think they wanted it to be public.  But be assured, we're floored.)

Now, this is amazing enough....except when we realize this is from someone we've never met.  They have no idea who we are except through a friend of a friend who had recommended she read the blog.

That's not to say that we aren't touched when y'all who we've known for months/years/decades reach out and do something awesome...we do.  We love it.  But in an age when things happen in such unimaginably horrible ways like what transpired in CT last week....  it somehow means more.

We got a call from our Dentists who did a fundraiser for us, and they tell us to swing by to pick up the envelope.

When I walk into the office (Drs. Fuhst-Wylie and Kahn in Howell) I see this AMAZING banner that they've made, and I'm immediately crying and laughing simultaneously...and I haven't even made it to the front desk yet.

I was quickly ushered into the back office, and see all these handmade Christmas cards to our family, and Amelie specifically.  There's a lot of them that have cat stickers on it.  They're all over their walls...its just overwhelming in its kindness that these people who barely know her (she doesn't get regular dental care yet), and only know us from our sporadic visits have done all this for her and us.  We are speechless.

Then we go to the mail, and there's a bunch more checks from people....and cards, and pictures that kids have drawn, and stickers for the kids.

Then we get a visit from Shelley's (now former, unfortunately) co-worker Sarah (the chica who set me up on my blind date with Shelley...another story for those of you who are interested), and she hands us another envelope for the potluck that they did for her.

Have I mentioned how amazing it is to be surrounded by kind, considerate people who look out for you in your time of need?  Oh, my lord.

So that sets me up for heading into school today, where I've planned myself a nice little rest of week.

I get to my planning period, and heat up my lunch (Penny's Mac and Cheese.  Thanks, Penny!) and start reading annarbor.com where I find this article.  I read it for a second, and see that there's a video accompanying it.  So I start that.

(spend the 4 minutes to watch this video please.  Totally worth it)

By this point, I'm sobbing in my room, and I'm a complete mess.  It takes me about 20 minutes to pull myself together.

I show the video to Shelley tonight, and we're both crying again.  She clicks through to another video, and we get to this one:

It's not as shattering, but it does feel like a home.  Not as much as a home as our home, but man...this place does just about everything we could hope to make us feel like we're part of the solution, and that things are going to work out.

Anyway.  Tons of good people out there are showering us with love and adoration and generosity and just overall amazing stuff.  We wanted to let you know that we're so thankful for all of this, and that without all of you, we'd be in pieces.

Thank you, from all of us.