Darren LeBlanc

Well, my little lady is just loving her new Flower Girl title. Tonight, we met up with some of the bridal party from Vanessa Joy’s wedding at an unnamed bridal store (I’d mention the name, but then I’d have to tell you how horrible they were to Vanessa tonight, and I’m not in the mood for that type of post).

I helped her get her dress on and she ran around the store like she owned the place. She kept saying “I like my dress…I like my dress”.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures. Just click the image below to visit the gallery:

On a totally different note, today Olivia dropped a new one on me. Driving home from the dress fitting, she said “I want Mommy back.” She has never said that…I mean, we have talked about Mommy a lot, but I don’t think she has ever said that. At the end, she was ok with knowing that we would see mommy someday. In a very unusual state of affairs, she had talked me into tears, but she herself was quite alright :)

I stopped by the church of my childhood for opening night of their new play. One of my AoH team members is the technical director (good job tim).

Click below for some images from the show.

PS…I took liv to an easter egg hunt today. It was fun :)

I mentioned a couple weeks back that I wouldn’t be on here much this month. It seems, I predicted right. I am sorry for my lack of communication, but I’ve been locked in a room working on the new anthem of hope website and a few other hot items.

We had a launch party for the site, with our team, at the Nauvoo Grill Club in Fair Haven. (They donated the food and room for the party..I’ll write more about them later. They were great) Since we had the whole team coming in for that we also took staff pictures and had a bunch of productive meetings. Click the picture below to visit the new anthem of hope Flickr page.

 Anyway, I’m tired, but we are getting there. I have such a great team (see them in the staff photos gallery). http://anthemofhope.com goes live the morning of April 1st at midnight.

For those of you local to me here in Long Branch, NJ – it is likely you are either annoyed that you have to shovel for 30 minutes to get to work, or…you are home from work. For me, it is the latter :)

I wanted to show you all some images from the video shoot we did on saturday. Click below to see the gallery:

Images taken by Vanessa Joy.

Here are some images I snapped while working in Arizona a month or two back. Click the picture to go to the gallery.

Olivia and I had some visitors tonight; friends of mine from college. Chad and Michelle are youth pastors in central PA, and they made the drive out to meet up for dinner. It was nice.

Speaking of church youth pastors…I just wanted to highlight how many of these people give so much of themselves to help our kids grow and make good choices. If you want to be proactive about your kids spiritual growth, a good place to start is to meet with the youth pastor and discuss how you can partner together. As parents, we are undoubtedly first and most influential in our kids lives, but a unified support system from different areas is pretty powerful. So, if you are a church-type person, call you youth pastor aside after church and ask her to dinner. Even if you aren’t creative enough to figure out good ways to work together, an invitation for a meal will certainly make her feel appreciated (a feeling people in that arena rarely experience).

 Anyway, Chad and Michelle are heroes of our faith. They love the students so greatly and invest so much. I wish their were more people like them floating around.

Click HERE for some pictures I snapped while they were here:

A couple new galleries:

Kyleigh, Taylor, Kelsey and Spencer

Sarah

Click on the picture to check out the photo gallery from Olivia’s 2 yr birthday. Thanks to Ann for being a great photographer and taking all of these.

There were a few others from this party that I took in this gallery.

I’ve been kinda MIA the last couple weeks (meaning I post like 3 times a week instead of 7!). I apologize to those of you who still look for daily posts here. I have been working over 50hrs a week on Anthem of Hope and with my mandatory Daddy-Livi time everyday and my full time day job, I’m just too wiped at 3am to stay up later and type (haha). Anyway, thats where I’ve been lately.  I suspect I’ll be back to everyday post someday…but not now.

That reminds me…A friend of mine posted these on facebook a couple months back. Can you find me? (if you happen to be in this picture or something, or you are my mom…you can’t vote!)  And if I’m guessing right, this was probably only about 3 years before I started dating Misty…we were so young.

It has been a slightly rough few days, but not because of Christmas. I know everyone expects the holidays to be hard for someone that recently lost a loved one, and I do totally understand that idea…but that hasn’t been the case for me. Christmas was a good day and no harder than any other since losing Misty. For me, the hardest part of this season has been Olivia’s birthday present: her new room.

Olivia turns 2 today and I decided it was time to redo her room. She had a cute room before, but as she is getting older, it was becoming less functional. I spent some
time planning a new room for her that will provide space for her to play, read and learn, rather than just sleep and get changed. I spent a bunch of nights up late, sketching out where new furniture was going to go and what the room was going to look like – and buying stuff online. This was the hard part. If Misty were here, this past week would have been potentially the highlight of our married lives. She loved Olivia more than anything and doing something big like this for her would have just made the year.

Nevertheless, the room is done and today we had a party for my little lady. Unfortunately, I cannot find my wide angle lens for anything. It would have let me get a nice shot of the whole room from one of the corners. Instead I just have a few shots that show you little areas I wanted you to see specifically.

Oh and before I get into pictures, I would be remiss to not mention my Extreme Toddler Room Makeover team. Kelsey gets the prize for spending 2 entire days  (like 12 hours each) with me painting and the such. Colleen gets a kudos for helping me create the color scheme and overall design. Genevieve, Taylor and Kyleigh were the first rate production crew you wish you knew. My dad was the hero with the hammer and drill and mother-in-law with the sowing machine. Seriously, this was just a reminder that I’m really blessed to have such great people in my (and Olivia’s) life.

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Basically, everything is changed in the room. We went from a crib to a toddler bed, replaced or painted all the furniture and went with a brown and pink color scheme. The strange pink thing hanging from the ceiling is “daddy’s chair”. I wanted to have a bean bag chair to sit next to her when she is on her new pink comfy chair. There was no good place on the ground, so I hung it.

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I wanted to show you this because it’s my favorite part of the room. The first two angel figures (from left to right) were from Misty’s collection and the second two are more recent. The meanings of each form a timeline of Misty’s life and death: Love, Courage, Remember, Shining Star. It’s a artistic way of representing Misty’s life and legacy for Olivia.

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Olivia now has her own little play room, with a dining table (with tea and toast set) and her own bookshelf and toy chest (on the left – out of the picture). She loves being able to get her books off the top shelf with the little step stool. If you can’t tell, this furniture is really small…it’s pretty cute.

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And I’m far from being one to create a “shrine” for someone…but I thought it was good for Olivia to have a couple pictures of her and mommy. These are called standouts and they are glossy prints mounted by the lab onto a 1.5 inch foam-board. 

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That’s all for now (till I find my wide angle lens and can take a good picture of this room – I’m so annoyed about this. I lose everything). You can see the rest of the pictures HERE. I am home from work this week, but my focus is on Anthem of Hope, Olivia, and cleaning. So, I might not be around the blog much this week. But, I’ll be back. Thanks for reading…really.

UPDATE:
Sunrise, thanks for your concern. Apparently a couple people are also fretting because my inbox has a few messages to the same extent. The bean bag is attached to a hook that is rated at 65lbs, so unless you are planning on hanging from it with olivia…I don’t think its coming down :)

(note: smilie face means I’m joking around…not being jerky)

Also, to the person who emailed me “from a monthers perspective”. I’m am olivia’s “mother now…and I do have that perspective much more than you’d think. The bag weighs like 1 lb…I’m not too worried about it. Thanks for your  concern though!

Oh yeah…and the wall outlets have plugs in them…they are just clear and you can’t see them :)