What a lovely and unexpected night. Thank you to the Hartselle Area Chamber of Commerce for their kind words and recognition. I am so very honored to have received the Dr. Thomas M. Guyton Humanitarian Award.

We love this town and we love getting to help and serve those around us. There is no better way for us to remember our girl than to give back to the place and people that gave so much to us.

What a gift it is to live in a town like ours.

Until tomorrow,
‘Carrow💜

Sneak attacks are something I have come to expect along this journey. It never fails, when we receive good news something seems to come along attempting to steal our joy. On the heels of the amazing, over-the-top successful Butterfly Ball I knew an attack was on the horizon, it was only a matter of time. And even though I was expecting it, I wasn’t prepared.

We have spent the past six months preparing for the Ball. Planning filled my time well and gave me a good outlet for energy while keeping my mind busy. But once the event was over and clean up completed, my mind had time to wander, time to think about what made us start this process in the beginning – Kayleigh. More specifically, the loss of Kayleigh.

Tuesday, sitting in the glow of my Christmas tree, making plans for Thanksgiving, the holidays loomed larger than life in front of me. The magnitude of loss seemed to be unbearable. And then I walk into my kitchen and read the sign over my sink, “The will of God will not take you where the grace of God will not protect you.” What a much needed reminder. Yes, the loss I feel is great, but there is so much more at play here. I miss her, but she is enjoying perfection and her story is making a difference. My little 7 year old spitfire was the catalyst that changed my life and the lives of so many around me.

So, I survived the hard day and woke to a new morning. A new day where I remember I have so much to be thankful for. The kids and I took the flowers from the ball to Kayleigh’s grave, we even took the new puppy to say hello – she would have loved both. Then we went to my grandparents house where four generations gathered under one roof to enjoy one another and give thanks for our many blessings. What a good day.

My verses for you tonight are to remind you that sometimes we fight an unseen foe, but thanks to our salvation through Christ, we have the tools and strength we need to face every challenge. Not simply face the foe, but to prevail.

Until tomorrow,
‘Carrow💜

“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
2 Cor. 10:3-5

Ephesians 3:20 (NLT)

20 Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.

Success!!!!

The inaugural Butterfly Ball is in the books, and what an amazing event it was. All I can say about this day is that God indeed does more than we could ever ask or imagine. Pieces fell into place, we had some things slip through, but I must say, it was fantastic!

I think we’ll take a little time off before we start planning for the next event. We are so thankful for our incredible family and friends. What a blessing they are to us.

it was a wonderful evening

Even Grace joined us

And my crazy family

And thanks the the Woodruff ladies…

Grace came home with this!

Hello Friends!

I thought it was time for a fun update. I had hoped to have our tree up on Happy Hallowthanksmas, but we’ll – life got in the way. So this weekend was the weekend of the Christmas tree. Usually this job only takes an afternoon, but evidently after running 24/7 for 2.5 months our prelit tree decided to give up. Yikes!

In case you were wondering, it takes a VERY long time to cut the old lights off a 10 foot tree, but after 12 hours and 2,000 new lights the tree is up! We topped it with purple glittery stems and sprinkled in silver sparkly butterflies. I’m quite certain Baby Duck would have approved. Now on to the rest of the house. More purple to come…

#happyhallowthanksmas
#livepurple

Until later,
‘Carrow💜

Today’s thoughts from Mr. Whiskers

So on this day last year Kayleigh wanted to see Christmas lights on the house and have the Christmas tree up. Not knowing how much longer she had with us, ‘Carrow and I had already removed the word no from our vocabulary for Kayleigh in her final days. All of this happened before Christmas, Thanksgiving, and even Halloween thus giving birth to Happy HallowThanksMas. I told ‘Carrow that week that I may never put anything but purple lights outside from now on for Kayleigh. Soon we found out that our closest neighbors on our street along with many other Prayers for Kayleigh followers were doing the same with purple Christmas lights and purple light bulbs. Kayleigh loved her lights and Christmas tree and left us a few weeks later.

Fast forward to October 20, 2017 and I begin the process of digging out all of our purple lights and by Saturday night our house was back to glowing Purple in honor of our girl. To our surprise, one by one we have watched our neighbors this week start to put out purple lights as well. That is a pretty awesome sight in my opinion. I did ask ‘Carrow to make a post telling why we were decorating with purple this year but it appears that everyone already knew.

During the process of decorating we found out about the passing of seven year little girl in Mississippi that we had mutual friends with named Sophia. We had been following Sophia’s journey earlier this year and learned very quickly that her parents were quick to give glory to God in the good and the bad days. Angel and Joshua certainly have my respect and my heart hurts for them right now. Please cover their family in prayers this week and during the coming holidays. Today I was able to livestream part of Sophia’s Celebration of Life and needless to say I couldn’t watch much of it. All of the emotions from this time last year began to rush in. This time last year was the start of the major decline for Kayleigh’s condition. She struggled the more in October and half of November than she did during all of her time after diagnosis.

“Love for Sophia” is an appropriate name for her Facebook page because this sweet girl is loved by so many. Sophia was one of around 150 that were lost to DIPG so far this year that we knew about. There are some good results coming from a few trials and out of Mexico but we still need more treatment options and funding. The Prayers for Kayleigh Foundation will be hosting our 1st Annual Butterfly Ball in November and the proceeds from this event will go directly to DIPG research to help give our DIPG kids and families more options than what they have currently.

I’ll end tonight by bragging on some special people that have been overly generous towards PFK and our family in general. We have been planning the Butterfly Ball really since January of this year. We have thrown out ideas for Silent Auction Items and things we needed to be donated, etc. . My family includes quite a few fishermen and in the last few years some of us have taken to Kayak Fishing. Yes, we bass fish out of Kayaks and it’s a blast. When we fish, we will fish competitive tournaments from time to time and you always make some good friends along the way. One friend in particular that we have fished will for a while now had a really good year and won a new kayak for how well he fished for the year. We found out a few weeks ago this person wanted to give his prize kayak to PFK as one of the silent auction items. We were blown away and grateful to this individual for his kindness and generosity. Another call we received earlier this year was from a local High School football Coach that honored Kayleigh last year during one of their home games and raised money to support Kayleigh. The coach told us that this year his team was having a “Kick Cancer” game and could our PFK Foundation be the fundraiser recipient. We graciously accepted. All of the players wore pink jerseys with the name of who they were playing for on the back of the jerseys. At halftime they honored all those who had either fought, beaten, or fallen to cancer. Cole was honored to wear the #14 jersey for Kayleigh. Falkville High School raised over $5000.00 at the first “Kick Cancer” game this year benefitting The Prayers for Kayleigh Foundation. Thank you to Coach Schrenk, Donna Schrenk, Officer Sully, Falkville High School, Falkville High School Football Team and everyone who participated in this wonderful event. PFK was honored to be a part of this wonderful event for a great cause.  And last but not least, another fisherman that I have yet to meet but has sponsored the Kasting for Kayleigh fishing tournament two years in a row and has had a successful turnout two years in a row.  Last year , of course , Mr. Myles and Heartland Anglers helped us support Kayleigh.  This year the proceeds went to The PFK Foundation to Support DIPG Research at St. Jude Hospital.  Thank you Myles for all that you do.

I’ll leave all of you with this verse that I keep coming back to:

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Goodnight and have a Happy Hallowthanksmas!!

Happy Birthday Cole!

Brother Duck turned 10 years old this morning. He is our crazy smart, never stop talking, Pokemon loving, Lego building, always inquisitive, only son.

I thought he was going to be our last baby. Actually, I had planned for him to be the last because he was a VERY difficult baby. He required very little sleep and completely gave up napping before he was 9 months old. Of course, God had different plans and how thankful we are for that. We actually announced we were expecting Kayleigh at Cole’s 1st birthday party. You could say that news made for a BIG surprise for everyone.

With only 18 months between them, Cole and Kayleigh were their own entity – two peas in a pod. They could play together for hours and fuss very little. The only time we had problems was when Grace tried to boss them around. That Sissy Duck, she’s quite a bossy character!

Kayleigh’s death has been hard on Cole. Not only did he lose his little sister, but he lost his wing-man, his buddy, his partner in crime, the one who helped him battle the big , bossy sister. It hurts my heart to see him miss her so, but we talk about Baby Duck often… how we know where she is and that heaven is so much better than here. We talk about how we would never ask her to leave heaven to come back down here to this broken world. Through our conversations we’ve decided we aren’t mad at Kayleigh for leaving us, we’re just a little aggravated that she broke in line. See, she was the baby, she was supposed to let the rest of us get to heaven first and she was supposed to wait her turn. Of course, when I think about it, her getting to the best part first is just how it should be. That kid could charm her way to the front of the line anywhere, why not heaven too?

So today, we celebrate our big guy – our Brudder (Brother) Duck. We are so thankful for him and his kind spirit. We continue to pray for healing in his broken heart knowing that God has great plans for him and his future!

Happy Birthday, Cole –
Love,
Mommy Duck💜

Mommy Duck

One of my favorite memories of Kayleigh is the three months she refused to answer to her own name. She was about three and she informed us she was “baby duck.” I remember trying to get her to answer to “Kayleigh” with all sorts of bribery but she was steadfast. Actually, she was ornery, obstinate, and down right stubborn about it. Of course, I’m ornery, obstinate and down right stubborn too, not to mention, I’ve had many more years to practice. I figured getting my three year old to fall in line certainly wouldn’t be that hard. Oh how wrong I was. Looking back, I can see I made a serious tactical error when I failed to account for her daddy’s stubborn streak. My sweet girl, took mine, her daddy’s, and probably a little from everyone in our family tree and combined it with her precious smile and sassy attitude to create this unstoppable force. She simply set her mind to something and promptly became the most beautiful pint-size steam roller until her expectations were met. Not only did I cave and start calling her Baby Duck, I started answering to Mommy Duck, and to this day we are Mommy Duck, Daddy Duck, Sissy Duck, Brother Duck and Baby Duck.

Mr. Whiskers

Tim began growing a beard in November 2014 for “No Shave November.” His beard was in honor of a dear friend fighting glioblastoma brain cancer, but after Kayleigh’s diagnosis Tim decided there was no good reason to shave – his beard would be a reminder. Fast forward to our last family vacation with Kayleigh in July 2016. We were on a cruise visiting multiple ports and of course there were many people selling their goods around the ship. One gentleman was working very hard to get our attention, but we were doing our best to move on and return to the ship. Finally, the man began saying, “Mr. Whiskers, you know you want to shop in here!” The children found the nickname absolutely hysterical. From that point forward Kayleigh would call Tim “Mr. Whiskers” any time she wanted a good laugh. Tim even began using “Mr. Whiskers” as his sign-off name on the blog.

The Adventures of Mommy Duck & Mr. Whiskers

We will use this portion of the site to keep you updated about what is going on in the life of our family. It seems we always find ourselves on one adventure or another. We are excited to share the journey with our Live Purple friends.