MariosStavraki

I have taken on some new roles with the work I do and I am so busy that people aren't hearing from me much. Just know I am still here and love you all! Because I have been so busy Mike took me to dinner last night. While at our table there was the most adorable little girl sitting next to us. She had big beautiful brown eyes and the cutest bob haircut. She was with her grandparents and kept playing with her grandmother laughing out loud. At first I smiled because she was so infectiously adorable. Then the tears that generate out of no where just fell like Niagra Falls and I could not stop them. Mike joked that we couldn't get the waitress to pay for our bill. I said, "well hell no she's back there thinking I am NOT going to that table." And then we both laughed which is all you can do.  Many of you know I am in Texas just merely four hours away from the devastating floods affecting the great state I live in. I've seen such horrible devastation and Mike and I b...

What does Graham Allen say?, "Watch out America because this one's going to sting!" It stung me but I learned from it.  I have taken on a new position at work so I don't have much time to blog anymore. However I decided to take a mini lunch break today to check my Facebook and update my blog.  About a year ago I posted a blog with the link to an article about the circle theory. Basically it works like this. If a person is affected by a tragedy or major situation then you place that person and their immediate family (spouse and children) in the inner most part of the circle. Then you draw additional circles around the middle which associates to the next closest people. So a circle for family, then friends, then co workers, etc, etc. You cannot dump anything negative into the inner circles and you need to refrain from getting involved more than you have been asked to with the inner circles. Even though last year we were the inner most part of the theory I decided to ado...

When I first lost Jude I heard parents who had lost children say that the second year is the hardest. I personally thought they were insane and disregarded their comments. I can now admit that the parents that told me this information were very well versed in grief and were spot on.  I think you spend so much of your life right after losing someone very close in deep shock and you don't truly FEEL anything. I personally ran from the situation and immersed myself into work, traveling, or having multiple glasses of wine. Now that I have a reign on my grieving process I feel very very alone. I'm not lost but I do feel alone and almost a bother to those around me. Simple tasks seem like MT Everest to me and require a lot of patience from others. It's mostly all based on my own hang ups but I do see many other grieving parents struggle with the same feelings I do. The "seconds"'seem to far exceed the "firsts" in emotional turmoil. The second birthday is f...

So this past weekend I flew with my BFF Gina to get Emily's dorm set up. I seriously owe Gina like 400 hours of babysitting or whatever she needs for the past two weekends. She flew all of Emily's luggage to West Virginia for Emily's competition and then she turned around and helped me fly all her luggage again to Alabama.  I am happy to announce that Emily was second runner up at the Teen International competition!! We were absolutely thrilled she placed so well. Her friend Carly teen CA won the entire event and she was just a doll!!  So now skip forward to the past weekend and it was a whirlwind. Gina and I flew out very early on Saturday morning and got to Birmingham. From there it was about an hour drive to Tuscaloosa where we had to hunt Emily down in sorority rush week to get the key to her dorm. I made a joke to Gina that I hoped Emily's dorm wasn't on an upper level since we had so many items.......it was on the 5th floor, of course. Anyway, we set the entir...