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*Welcome, Welcome!*

Welcome to our little corner of the world! I’m Heidi, I’m married to Kit, we have six kids who are now teens and young adults and all but one are taller than me.

In 2005 our third child decided to show up four months early at a whopping 22 ounces and give us a good scare. This blog was created to keep family and friends updated through our 4 months in the hospital. You can read a bit about his NICU story here. He started a wish list of places he would like to see and things he would like to do before his eyesight declines further, an anticipated complication due to his early arrival.

Over a couple year stretch of time we began working on that wish list and being blessed in countless ways by friends, family, our community, and complete strangers as Ben tackles this challenge with his typical passion. So thank you, whoever you may be! We’re glad you came by and we welcome your comments and messages. Continue reading “*Welcome, Welcome!*”

Robin C Pierce Art

Our second child, Robin, just graduated from art college! (Which in the UK is like US high school, not US university.) Robin’s deciding if they’ll do an additional year of training before starting university or take a gap year and work on personal projects, which includes setting up their website and started to blog about the ups and downs and challenges and fun of being a young artist. You can check out Robin’s page here. We also put a link on the top right side, where I imagine we’ll add more as the kids create websites.

Surprise Muffins (With Vegan Version)

When I was a child my parents gave us the Betty Crocker kids’ cookbook, which I loved and adored and wish I still had. We now bake muffins in bulk for our family, but I wanted to see if I could find the old “surprise” muffin recipe online for when the kids want to bake up just one dozen:

1 egg OR 1 T ground flaxseed and 3 T water (mix and set aside)
1/2 cup milk OR other liquid (almond milk, orange juice, etc)
1/4 cup canola oil (rapeseed in the UK, or any healthy oil)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (do 1/2 cup wholewheat at least)
1/2 cup sugar (can do less, but I have a sweet tooth)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup jelly (US jelly, not UK) OR 1/2 cup fruit (grated apple, blueberries, one mashed banana)

Directions

Heat oven to 400 degrees (200 C, gas mark 6)
Grease medium sized 12 muffin capacity pan (or use muffin pan liners, silicon)
Beat egg and stir in milk and oil
Add remaining ingredients (except jelly) and stir until flour is moistened. The batter will be lumpy.
Fill muffin cups till 1/2 full
Add 1 teaspoon of jelly
Add additional batter till cup is 2/3 full
Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown

If you are doing fruit instead of jelly mix it in gently, then fill muffin cups as usual.

Completely Subjective Paris “Must See” List

My first trip to Paris I was with a french club when I was 12 years old and we did the standard spots, which was enough to make me fall wildly in love with the city. While my parents were living just across the German border from France I was able to visit a few times more with friends & family, either by bus or driving but again – we mostly hit the highlights* tour. Kit and I visited with our firstborn & my husband’s wish list to see was a palace, a cathedral, a museum. He didn’t especially care which, as he likes to travel slow and meander as he feels so inclined. It was December, we had an active (running!) toddler, and it was cold so our trip was dictated by those parameters – but also so, so wonderful as I got to share a place I love with the person I love most.

* Highlight tours include Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Arc, and maybe a couple drive by spots like the Opera House or Sacre Coeur. Longer tours may include a day trip out to Versailles. Not that any of these spots don’t deserve an entire day to themselves, but tour trips tend to be quick and cramming in lots.

When Ben’s wish trips began I had a dream about Paris and when we had the opportunity to visit London we hopped the two hour train ride down to Paris with our kids. I was thrilled that they seemed to enjoy the city as much as I did, but it never feels like there’s enough time to fit in everything I want to see. Since our move to the UK we’ve been very fortunate to make a couple more trips down and see things we hadn’t on our first visit, and things new to me – like I hadn’t been to Versailles yet! On one of those trips we had friends meet us there and bring me to places that were new to me, but some of her most favorite.

Then I saw a video online about a new exhibit in Paris and I knew I was going to find a way to see it. Fortunately that same friend also wanted to go and was up for an adventure so we met in Paris for four glorious days. (Paris at your own pace vs. Paris with children in tow is pretty significantly different, as you can imagine.) Once again my friend introduced me to new spots, which made them all the more special, and we were able to wander slowly and it was just amazing.

So, after however many trips that is I’m compiling my list of the spots in Paris that you must NOT miss… not that you should skip walking by Notre Dame (still beautiful after the fire) or the Louvre, but you know those spots and you’ll no doubt fit them into your trip. These are the ones that you may not have considered that YOU NEED TO GO SEE. Continue reading “Completely Subjective Paris “Must See” List”

Guess What??

webOne year ago when we had the chance to visit England for Ben’s wish trip we did not in our wildest dreams imagine what would come next…

We’ve moved to England!!

Kit’s working in the city of Nottingham (for his same company in Denton) and we’ve got a great house. We’re connecting with some neat home educator groups and making friends and we are so unbelievably excited to share this adventure as a family – and to share it with you! We’ll be posting photos and videos here to keep in touch with friends and family as we’re exploring our new home.

Though we will miss Denton and our loved ones here SO MUCH, and it does feel like our hearts are being stretched between two places. Hopefully they’ll be able to come visit (hint, hint, y’all!)

Chocolate Chip Cookies, Brit-Tex Version

FullSizeRenderI have an american version of this recipe I had to modify when I realized our measuring cups were all in ml which I think is the same as grams? So change as needed to correct for my mistakes.

100 grams caster sugar
300 grams brown sugar
200 grams of softened butter (I do a bit less)

Cream all together and whip for five minutes, until light and fluffy then stir in & continue beating with:

2 eggs
15 ml vanilla

In another bowl combine:

200 grams porridge oats
500 grams white flour
5-10 ml bicarbonate of soda (I did a heaping 5 ml spoon)
5 ml salt

Stir dry ingredients into wet, then mix in:

300 grams chocolate chips. More or less, I won’t judge. 😉 If you cannot find chocolate chips (we got them at Costco) then get a couple 100 gram bars of chocolate and chop those up instead.

Scoop onto a silicone baking mat/sprayed cookie sheet and bake at I think mark 4 on a gas oven… we can fit nine cookies per square baking pan, though we are use to doing a dozen on our rectangle pan in our previously big american oven but that’s okay! We’re adapting. Kit says it took 11 minutes at mark 4. Verdict is – they are DELICIOUS! Warm and gooey and the measurements worked out beautifully. Hooray!

Pay it Forward Links

Ben’s chosen some organizations he wanted to support and to pay it forward after all the care he received with his wish list. Here are a couple of the places he’s worked with donating to:

Our Daily Bread is a local program providing meals and other resources to members of our community. We love that it’s local and the kids have been able to bring in canned goods, produce from the garden, and toiletries they collected on some of the trips. For Ben’s birthday this year he asked guests to bring donations for Our Daily Bread instead of presents and then we went over to drop them off in person, and they were so sweet and welcoming.

Lighthouse for the Blind of Fort Worth we learned about as they provided Ben’s cane training, along with information and support for our family. This is something they offer free of charge, and it’s invaluable for anyone with vision challenges to have them as a resource. At a holiday gathering there we were told they had been receiving donations from people who had heard about Ben’s story and wanted to help others – that made Ben SO happy, he teared up. There may be a similar program in your area that could benefit from your contribution!

We hope that gives you some ideas, and there are countless other programs out there making a difference in people’s lives – thank YOU for helping make that difference!!

Because Miracles Happen

During our stay in the NICU we would try to be there when the team rounded on Ben. The nurse would give report and the doctors would all discuss the plans and the respiratory therapists had notes about how he was doing on the ventilator. We, of course, were always full of questions about how Ben was doing, what the next step was, how were things going forward so we could get this boy home to us as soon as he was ready.

We would be daily reminded by them that in the NICU it’s always baby steps – tiny, tiny baby steps. Two steps forward, one (or two!) steps back. They didn’t want us to focus on his homecoming, they wanted us to focus on the fact that he had taken 10ccs in his feeding tube or that his chest x-ray looked incrementally better or that his culture had finally come back clear. There’s not a lot of planning in the NICU – it’s mostly about day to day survival. In a place where miracles are being desperately prayed for and there are too many days filled with tears and complications, it’s literally life or death. You can’t plan a lot in the NICU.

But I’m a planner – it’s how I cope, creating contingency plans and learning about our options and researching. It’s how I can feel some control over the areas I can influence, helping me better let go of the things I cannot change. I’m a mom – these are my babies. I plan.

Plus, I have six babies – planning is key to making it through the chaos. 🙂 Continue reading “Because Miracles Happen”

THANK YOU!

Ben’s story by Janet St. James aired on Wednesday at 10pm. There are been several ads running for the story on the radio and television so we were getting messages all day long from family and friends hearing it! Then the emails began… and they have not stopped. 🙂

This is the original video.

When we woke up we were greeted by an inbox flooded with emails, Ben’s Wish List page on Facebook had gone from a hundred or so Likes to several hundred (and now thousands), and there were a ton of personal messages for us as well. The entire day we were getting more, and the ones that made me laugh were friends and family literally across the nation saying, “I just saw you on the front page of CNN!” or “Why are you on the front of USA Today?” or “You’re on the news in California!” It was spreading near and far!

This is the follow up when Janet brought us into the studios to share what the reaction had been.

SO, we’ve not caught up! We woke up Thursday to such a tidal wave of support that while we’ve done our best to read every single email, we’ve not been able to answer them all yet! It may take awhile, and we really apologize. I like to have messages answered quickly so knowing I cannot possibly respond to everyone right away makes me antsy. But for some reason these six kids of mine still want me to feed them and play with them and thus, the emails and messages wait. 😉

Please know in the meantime that we have treasured every single one of you taking the time to write and share your support, suggestions, inspiration, and generosity. Words are failing us because while we knew we lived in a great community, while we treasure our fantastic village of people, we hadn’t anticipated Ben’s story being shared so far and so wide. (The messages from abroad began Friday morning!) We’ve been warned, multiple times, that we should avoid reading any comments on websites with our story because often there are internet trolls being hurtful. While I’ve not even seen all the websites on which the story was shared, the comments I have read are all kind and loving and incredible.

We think our kids are pretty fantastic, of course. We believe Ben’s story is miraculous, but we had never, ever imagined that sharing his wish list would lead to this.

There are amazing things in the works and we will be sharing them along the way. I promise we WILL catch up with the inbox and in the meantime, if you have sent something and we have not responded yet but you feel it’s time sensitive then PLEASE feel free to send it again to heidi@thadenpierce.org as that’s the best way to catch me.

Also, we will be updating Ben’s Wish List as they are fulfilled. For some of his wishes we’ve been sent a couple opportunities and we’re trying to make sure that everyone is told THANK YOU, but that we’re not accidentally duplicating efforts when everyone is being so generous. I apologize that the page is not updated yet – until I finish the inbox I’m not sure what the status is for some things. If you’ve sent a message to help with one of Ben’s wishes please know how grateful we are, and we promise we will respond ASAP!