Better to Give

Abe's not the only elf in our house. I've been working on two fundraisers this week and, while I'm (mostly) happy to help, I'm also getting plenty psyched to see the finish line. For the last two days my friend Katie and I have been decorating mailboxes for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. We were assigned 13 mailboxes to decorate and those people should thank their lucky stars that they drew Katie. She's a honest-to-goodness designer and did a beautiful job. I mostly held greenery in place while she secured it with floral wire and agreed with all her decisions on what else we needed to add to the displays. I'd say there were a dozen times during the two days when I wanted to throw up my hands and say we were finished because it looked halfway decent, but Katie would adjust a ribbon, or add another Cyprus sprig, and it would look a million times better. Attention to detail is just my downfall.

Before I show you all some pictures of our handiwork, I should mention that other than some pine boughs, we had to collect all the plant materials that we used in the decorations. I am fairly certain, having gone to law school, that I committed several illegal acts to obtain these items. Let's just say that we used Cyprus, nandina, magnolia, pine cones, and holly and I only have one of these plants in my yard. Trespassing? Yes. Petty larceny? It depends on your perspective. I could have been providing free pruning services. In fact, here is a picture of neighbor Ed and Em's nandina before I clipped some berries for the project:

Here it is afterwards:

What? Don't you believe that I have mad Edward Scissorhands skills?

So, Katie and I met up with our purloined and borrowed clippings, and those big bows that I helped make, and sized up the situation:

Somehow, Katie looked at the bare mailbox, worked some magic with our materials and came up with this:

And we got two of those ginormous monument mailboxes:

The picture makes this look like a hot mess, but it is actually very pretty. We finished up our work decorating Katie's parent's railing. I think it might be my favorite:

Now, the problem is that I'm now under the misperception that I could do this at my house. We have a big railing across the front of our house and a few of these babies would look fabulous on that railing. Ha! You know the likelihood of this happening is about the same as Audrey the Moose being an actual moose and not a figment of the Baby's imagination.

So, I've also been baking my fingers to the bone (wow, that sounds gross) for our big fundraiser at the elementary school that the Boy and the Girl attend.

Basically, the kids' school is transformed into an artists' market and cafe with homemade soups and desserts. If you like Etsy, the shopping experience is like that, only better because of the immediate gratification. My favorite thing to do at Marketplace is to take the kids to the cafe, let them pick out a yummy dessert, and then sit back and listen to the music. This is a major, major undertaking and pretty much every parent in the school contributes in some way to the production. I volunteered to bake a couple of items, one of which was the chocolate cake with mocha icing that I've already blogged about. My second contribution is a little sweet deliciousness called Congo Bars. I've made them so many times, my cookbook looks like this:

They're basically blondies or cookie bars and are easy to make and good. Who could ask for more?

Here is the recipe:

Congo Bars

Combine in a medium bowl:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

Mix dry ingredients.

Combine in large bowl:

1 pound box (2 1/4 cups) light brown sugar

3 large eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 cup (2 sticks) butter (cooled)

Mix all wet ingredients with a wooden spoon. 

Add dry ingredients to butter-sugar mixture. Mix until well blended.

Add:

2 cups chocolate chips. Mix well.

Bake in a greased 13x9x2-inch pan for 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees. 

They are so good that the kids insisted that we make a batch to keep for ourselves because I have scads of free time to bake something else. But, of course, glutton for punishment that I am, I baked another batch. Here's a picture:

Are you licking the computer screen. Seriously. So. Good. Sister made them for a friend who wondered how they took so long to get here from the Congo. Ha! We think that the name originated because they were served at Congregationalist Church picnics, or maybe just enjoyed by church congregations. This recipe comes from Sylvia's Cakes & Breads, which I've mentioned before on the blog. The Congregationalist Church originated in New England and Sylvia is from Maine, so the Congregationalist Church theory makes some sense. But, my step-grandmother, Emily, who was from North Carolina and not a Congregationalist had a similar recipe for Congo Squares. I was thinking that she may have been Baptist, but then I remembered that she and Grandaddy had this clock on their screened porch: 

  

So, I'm thinking probably not Baptist. Grandaddy and Emily's house had two other amazing features. One was a grill shaped like an Arkansas razorback hog (I tried and failed to find a picture). The grill was red and smoke came out of the razorback's nostrils. Awesomely crazy. The other feature of their house was a doorbell that played "Dixie." It probably explains a lot about me that I thought that all three of these things were incredibly cool, and knew that I had to live someplace that fully embraced cocktail hour(s), college sports, and nostalgia. Nearly 20 years later, here I am. 

Well, I think I'm going to let Abe do the rest of our elf work because I need a break. Speaking of Abe, I wonder what he'll be up to tonight!

Children's Healthcare of Atlanta

Monday night I dragged myself over to a bow-making party at a friend's house. No, we weren't working on our Katniss Everdeen costumes for next Halloween. We were making bows to decorate mailboxes for the holidays. I'm a member of the Backyard Friends group that raises money for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta ("CHOA"). This is an organization that is very near and dear to my heart because we are (unfortunately) regular visitors to CHOA.

You all have your own problems to contend with, so I won't bore you with too many stories of the times I've scooped up one child or another and driven the 2.8 miles from our home to CHOA's Egleston campus. One of those trips, though, was truly life-changing, so I hope you'll indulge me on this one.

The Boy and the Girl are 20 months apart in age. Anyone with stair-step children will tell you that this means you will spend your entire winter with one or the other one home sick. When the Girl had just turned two and the Boy had just had his four month check-up, the Girl came down with a bad cold. She ran a super-high fever that we couldn't get down, even alternating Tylenol and Motrin. On a Saturday (because it's always a Saturday when you realize that your kid needs to see someone and the pediatrician is closed) the K took her over to CHOA. The diagnosis was pneumonia. On Sunday, the Girl seemed to be doing better on her antibiotics, but there was something not-right about the Boy. I don't know what it was that worried me, but I could tell he was really, really sick.

The K wasn't at home, so I called a neighbor to stay with the Girl and I put the Boy in the infant carrier and ran to the car. I was fixated on the thought that he wasn't breathing, so as I drove to CHOA, I kept one hand on the carrier and kept shaking it to make him cry. When we got to the Emergency Room it was mercifully empty so they checked his vital signs right away. The nurse slipped the little cuff over his big toe to measure his oxygen level. She looked immediately concerned.

"It must not be working. There's no way it could be that low." I glanced over at the monitor and saw that his oxygen level was dancing back and forth between the high 70s and 80%. Normal is 99-100%. She checked it again and the machine was not malfunctioning, the Boy was not getting enough oxygen. She checked his heart rate which, for a baby, should be about 100. His was 250 beats/minute. Everything after that went by in a flash. In a minute he was out of his clothes and into a hospital gown decorated with little spacemen. He was lying on a gurney across from the nurse's station.

A nurse talked to me, "Your baby is very sick. We don't have any rooms available, so we're going to work on him in the hallway." There were doctors and nurses and other people administering oxygen, giving him a breathing treatment, inserting a hair-thin needle into his tiny veins to draw blood. They kept asking me questions, "how old is he? when was he born? was he premature?" I answered like a robot. At some point, I called the K and told him what was happening.

"Well, he's going to be okay, isn't he?" the K asked.
"They're not saying that. No one has told me that he's going to be okay." I was terrified.

When they finally got him stabilized in the hallway, they moved us into a room in the Pulmonary Intensive Care Unit. A doctor came to see me, while the Boy lay in a hospital crib with an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and a tangle of wires connecting him to countless machines. The diagnosis was respiratory syncytial virus ("RSV") and secondary and tertiary and whatever's after tertiary infections everywhere - eyes, ears, urinary tract, throat, you get the idea. Some kids and babies get RSV and it's like the worst cold they've ever had, but they get over it with no problem. When infants, especially premature infants (the Boy was not premature) get it, it can be extremely serious.

The Boy was in the hospital for three days and I stayed with him the entire time, even sleeping in the little crib with him. The care he received at CHOA was excellent. Because I was nursing, they even provided me with three meals a day delivered to his room, so I didn't have to leave him.

We are nearing the seven year anniversary of this event and I am still writing this with tears streaming down my face, remembering how scared and helpless I felt. This will stay with me forever. I really, honestly believe that the doctors and nurses at CHOA saved the Boy's life. How can you not be eternally grateful for someone saving your child? So, I will always, always do what I can to give back to CHOA.

The Backyard Friends group makes these mailbox swags out of fresh greenery, pine cones, berries and the big bows that we made on Monday night. We made hundreds of bows. Here they are piled up in bags and strewn all over the floor at our hostess's house:

We received a tutorial in how to make the greenery swag:

Here is the finished product:

Isn't it pretty and festive? So, until November 9th the price is $40 per mailbox. After the 9th, the price goes up to $50 per mailbox. The final cut off for orders is November 28th. If you live in the Druid Hills or Decatur area and would like to have your mailbox decorated, leave me a comment or email me and I will get you information that you need to place an order.

Thanks for letting me be not-funny today and telling you about something that means a lot to me. You are seriously lucky I didn't tell you about our CHOA experience when the Girl almost severed her finger playing skee ball! Have a happy day everyone!