Most of you remember that there have been a few posts about the Hess family and Ryan's fight with cancer.. I have mentioned that if you are a government employee that you could donate vacation time to him to help the family. I'm not sure how many of you have been following their story since then but for those of you who have and for those of you that haven't as well...

Ryan was recently given approximately two weeks and has started hospice.

I have struggled with the right words to say regarding all of this but I wanted to just ask that you all keep Ryan and his beautiful family in your prayers.

They are so amazingly strong and inspiring. Take a moment to go to their blog to be inspired by these very special people.

teamryanhess.blogspot.com

Wishes in the Sky

I've posted a little about Stephanie and Christian. They are parents to 4 young children. Stephanie (Nie Nie) is the author of a blog I frequent and through her blog I have been inspired in so many ways by her style, her love of life and her family, and her passion. I have also read her sister's blog . Stephanie and Christian were in a private plane crash last week and are in the hospital. It is still critical. There was also one other person on board. His name was Doug and he was also a father of 4 but he did not make it. A lot of us in the blogging world have been frequenting Cjane to get updates on their situation. She asked any of us that wanted to participate to do a balloon launch tonight. Stephanie had a tradition. For birthdays and special occasions they would write wishes in helium balloons and let them go. The idea was for all of us to do this at the same time tonight. If you live in Utah you may have seen what I'm sure turned out to be a balloon launch of epic proportions in Provo.
I really wanted to be involved. Today on the way home from Gabe's party, Abi and I stopped off at the party store and got two balloons. We got a blue one and a green one as I read somewhere that they were favorite colors. As 7pm drew near we dressed up and we wrote wishes on the balloons. Abi drew hers on.

Getting ready. We said a prayer, talked about what we were doing and then handed Abi the balloons.

Then told her to let them go:



It was a really moving and special moment. We sat outside for a while watching until they were out of view and then sat there still. it was so peaceful.