The Rest

This is not to say that the gifts that I haven't blogged about individually are not 'special gifts'....there are just too many to count. The kindness and generosity shown to our family during the last seven months blows me away every time I think about it. So while these each don't get their own post, please know that it was all of 'the rest' that made the biggest impact for us. It's how we got through.

I think I've listed the many things done for us before, but here we go again:

• before we started the first stay, a few neighbors cleaned our house and did all of our laundry
• a meal calendar was set up and we received meals each week while we had long hospital stays (the meals were awesome, but someone else managing the set up was HUGE)
• we were asked to keep a cooler on our front porch and in it we received 'random' drops of fruit or other foods
• cards, cards, cards
• gift cards for dinner places
• bowling GC's for when Ruby is better
• offers to take the big kids out for a movie, or overnight
• emails, emails, emails
• childcare for my big kids after school on days I was at the hospital (again, a friend did this for me for the first stay, and the set up of this by someone else was amazing!)
• meals brought to me in the hospital
• muffins/snacks dropped off at the hospital for me (food for the hospital was HUGE!)
• texts, texts, texts
• GC's for fro-yo for the big kids
• good friends that picked up my kids when they got sick at school and I was in the hospital
• new pjs for me and ruby for the hospital
• prayers, prayers, prayers
• 'random' gifts in the mailbox or front porch for Ruby or the big kids
• a basket with small distractions for the hospital (yarn for my knitting, new books for Ruby, etc.)

Please know that this is not intended to be braggadocios. While we do have the best friends, neighbors and community ever, my intention with this post is to help others who want to help others. I cringe at the amount of times I can remember a neighbor going through a rough time and I found the excuse of young kids or no free time getting in the way of my helping them. This journey with Ruby has opened my eyes to all of the ways that people can help, and how much an impact even the *little* things can have.

I've read before that "How can I help?" is not a great question for someone in a position like we just went through and now I get it...it's hard to ask for help sometimes. There are some things that you can just do without asking, and others that you can do with minimal asks (ex. "I'm bringing you dinner...would you like it fresh to eat tonight, or something you can freeze for later?")