Celebrate good times, come on!!!

I love a good celebration.  Any kind of celebration, really. Elaborate, silly, important, insignificant, impromptu, quaint, gigantic.... it just doesn't matter as long as it's a celebration!  If you pay attention, there are a ton of things around you begging to be celebrated.  For instance, today, the weather is actually fall-like and you better believe I am celebrating.  Celebrating with a pumpkin spice latte, a cute scarf and quick but very sincere thank you to the real Jesus, not the taco.

This week I've had the extremely good fortune of being able to take part in some fantastic celebrations. 

The first was a birthday celebration for my fabulous friend, Toya.  Toya is incredibly kind, incredibly beautiful, incredibly intelligent and an all-around incredible friend.  Toya is the kind of person that deserves to be celebrated year-round, not just on her birthday.  Here's to you and your fabulousness, friend!

I also celebrated Halloween last night by helping my sister throw a party for my nephews and their friends.  It was fun! It was wild! It was perfect!

We celebrated by dressing up:

We celebrated by decorating creeeeeepy Halloween cupcakes:

We celebrated by bobbing for apples:

 Of course, we celebrated with lots and lots of candy:

In addition to all these fun things, we also celebrated with a dance party in the living room, a much too loud game of red rover in the dark, and tons of laughter.  It was a divine Halloween celebration fit for the most wonderful boys, er, villians....Chucky and Freddy Krueger to be exact.

Celebrate something today!  It doesn't have to be a birthday or a holiday to celebrate.  Celebrate life - say thank you, give a big ol' fist pump, do a cartwheel or the cabbage patch, it doesn't matter....just CELEBRATE!!

thankful thursday

At present, I have an over abundance of thankfulness swelling in my heart for the following:

#1 Sweet, encouraging, beautiful (inside & out) and wonderfully generous friends.

#2 Pumpkin Spice Lattes.  The weather may still be warm in Louisiana but fall has most definitley arrived at Starbucks!

#3 The opportunity to work with some pretty fantastic kids.

#4 Good, effective, motivated, life-changing teachers.

#5 Precious memories of my sweet Grandmommie.

#6 My freshly booked plane ticket to NYC to celebrate Thanksgiving with my brother.



cupcake cuteness

The best $20 you'll ever spend.....Guaranteed!

Dear Readers,

Please meet Willie the White Tiger......

Cute, right? :)

Let me explain how You and Willie can help Woodlawn Leadership Academy students and other children in the community:

I have partnered with AVON extraordinaire, my mom, to do a fundraiser for the Positive Behavior Incentives and Supports program at the high school that I work at, Woodlawn Leadership Academy.

The Positive Behavior Incentives and Supports program:

• Is a collaborative, assessment-based approach to developing effective interventions for problem behaviors
• Emphasizes the use of proactive, educative and reinforcement-based strategies to achieve meaningful  and durable behavior and lifestyle
• Aims to build effective environments in which positive behavior is more effective than problem behavior

You can purchase Willie the White Tiger for $20 and the profits made will go directly to the PBIS program. However, that's not all!  When you purchase Willie, you have the option to keep him for yourself OR you can donate him.  For the tigers that are donated, my students will be partnering with the American Humanics group at LSUS to develop a service project to donate the tigers to a worthy local organization.

So, your purchase of the tiger will help in four ways:

1. The money raised will help to fund the PBIS program at Woodlawn
2. Woodlawn students will have the opportunity for service learning through the community service project created to distribute the tigers.
3. Through the service learning project, Woodlawn students will be exposed to a college campus, college students and college professors.
4. An organization (more specifically, children in that organization) in the community will benefit from receiving the tigers. 

Amazing, right?  For $20 you can help in multiple ways!  It doesn't get much better than that!

If you'd like to purchase a tiger (or 12 :) ) you can leave a comment here, e-mail me at diannap3@aol.com or call me at 318.560.0871

Thank you for your support!!!

Sincerely,

Dianna

P.S. I'll provide you all with updates and pictures on how the money raised is benefiting students through the PBIS program as well as the progress of the service project!!  Thanks again!!

PUPPUCCINO?!?

What! Say what?  A puppuccino??

Sophie and I went on a quick walk yesterday followed by a quick trip to starbucks so that I could feed my addiction for pumpkin spice lattes.  The baristas were oooooing and ahhhhhing over the little rat that is my dog when one of the ladies asked if Sophie would like a puppuccino.  For a moment, I must've looked at the lady like she had three heads because she very quickly explained that it's just a little cup of whipped cream and that dogs love it.  Turns out, she was dead on.  Sophie loved it. 

See for yourself....

Am I the only one who didn't know puppuccinos existed??



I love you....I love you more.

I got the sweetest phone call today from a sweet little soul that I love so very much. 

Hearing her beautiful voice and having the opportunity to tell her how much I love her and miss her and hearing her repeat the same words to me made this day go from ordinary to extraordinary.  No lie.  A five minute phone conversation and having the chance to say, "I love you!" and hear her response of "I love you more!" is all it took to make my heart so profoundly happy.  It's always been interesting to me how people can impact your life without them knowing it and in my life in particular, it's interesting how a seven-year-old has accomplished just that.  This sweet little life has taught me how to love unselfishly and has shown me what true resiliency looks like.  She has blessed my life in ways that I can't even explain and has filled my life with so much joy and happiness. 

My prayer is that she will always know that she is a survivor, a champion and an overcomer.  That she will know that she is wonderfully made and that there is a divine purpose for her life.  That she will always feel loved and affirmed and wanted. 

I'm constantly overwhelmed at the thought of how such a little girl has made such a big impression on my life and am so completely grateful to have her in my life.  It's surreal how this little person makes me want to be a better big person.

I heart Sundays!

Initially, I thought I would write about how fabulous this past Sunday was but I decided to just show you....