Happy Birthday, Tim and Hannah!

Happy Birthday today to Tim and Hannah! Would love to hear updates from them or their folks about what they're up to for their birthdays! E-mail me some photos and I'll post them up here!

Hope you both have great birthdays!!!

Here are a few pictures Maggie found in the archives...

Happy Birthday to some folks in our extended family...

Happy Birthday this week to Smitty and Barb! Smitty's is today and Barb's is in two days. Just a little reminder to send our surrogate moms/grandmas some birthday love this week!

Happy Birthday, Nicholas Daniel!

Happy Birthday to Nick today! Was wonderful seeing him in Milford over the weekend and I hope everyone has a great time at Ryan and Amy's today!

And don't forget to check out Nick's latest adventures in photography by clicking on the link to his blog, Passion Through My Lens, to the right.

Happy Birthday, Nick!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO HARVEY JOSEPH ARDIS!!! It's one of those "milestone" birthdays - time for Social Security! He's on his way to the golf course on a beautiful sunny day - life is good!

Nicaragua

I'll tell you much more about it soon when I have some time, but thought I would throw a few pics up on the blog to give you just a taste of the amazing week we just had in Nicaragua...

A woman we ended up buying some fruit from at this giant, mostly open-air market. They had everything from fruit, veggies and one interesting meat section to tons of shoes, toys and oh, so much more. This is near my friend's house in Leon, Nicaragua.
We stopped at one of the 2 hotels in Leon one hot afternoon for a cocktail and to see this amazing hotel. Being inside the grounds of the hotel was like an oasis and so different from what you see on the street.
This is the Sandanista Museum in Leon. They are not a big fan of George W....
There's an old Sandanista fort/prison on the top of this crazy mountain next to the trash dump in Leon. The four of us and Josh, the female dog, watched the sunset from up here. More pictures of this to come, including the inside of it.
This is the view from the kitchen of my friends' house toward the front door. By the brown chairs is a little TV area, and you see the open courtyard and hammocks. The dog is laying right in front of the room we stayed in.
This is the view from Brooke and Jordan's roof deck. There are amazingly beautiful Catholic churches in Nicaragua, and lots of them.

All of the buses in Nicaragua have different designs and are super brightly colored. Daniel, whose got an amazing new camera, would like to do a photo series just on the buses if he ever goes back. (which, we're already planning...)

This was out of the west coast beaches (about 15 min. from Leon). That's the Pacific Ocean. We stopped here for a beer on our way to their friend Josh's (after whom the dog is named), who has a great beach house.
Two sassy ladies let loose on the streets of Leon.
A typical scene while driving down the road in a more remote area just minutes outside of Leon.

Lots more to come! Stay tuned!

New "Poster" Blues :-)

Okay Balice Family - I'm new at this so I didn't post properly or in order :-) My photos are each posted as "new post" because I couldn't figure out how to just add all of the photos to a single post so you have to click on "older posts" at the bottom of the page to see all the photos. My "essay" on our volunteer day is posted after the photos. The essay is also listed on the side so you can just click on it there too. Kirsten posted the essay for me and for some reason my "smiley" and "frown" faces only show up as a stray letter (J, L, ...). Anyway, all the information is here so check it out. I'll get some lessons on posting from Kirsten when she returns from her trip! Thanks for your patience!

Volunteer Day Photos from Janet

What a gratifying experience for a worthwhile cause! Disney certainly came up with a great idea that is increasing volunteerism all over the country. We will be back here in a couple of weeks!

This entire family of volunteers - mom, dad, and six children - sang a beautiful christian song for all the other volunteers at the end of our shift.

Lots of young people volunteered - they were a fun group!

Chris was our "coordinator" - making sure we had clean water, clean work area.....and he also made sure we had pop, tea, chips in order to keep up our strength :-)

Lots of used soap bars, partially used lotions, shampoos, and conditioners are picked up every single day from local hotels and resorts - ALL of which would have been simply thrown away otherwise!

There was a lot of soap in those big totes - each one had to be individually cleaned in the bleach water and placed on a rack ready to be sanitized. Harv and I got through 2 large totes full of very small bars of soap!

These delightful young people are individually wrapping the sanitized soap and boxing them up for shipment to Haiti.

Time to sanitize the cleaned bars of used soap.

Carl and Barbara live in Orlando and volunteer regularly. They gave us some great suggestions for excellent restaurants in our area, opening up a whole new area of exploration for us!

Harv is ready with his lab coat, gloves, and bleach water!












Oscar Gonzalez was happy to explain everything the organization does to work with hotels and resorts to collect their used soaps.

Janet shares her "Give a Day, Get a Day" promotion

A Day in the Life…..

Every once in awhile, a day comes along that slaps you upside the head and reminds you how wonderful your life is. Today was one of those days. It all started as a way to get a free ticket for a Disney park with their “Give and Day, Get a Day” promotion. You can volunteer at any one of thousands of participating organizations and get a voucher for a free one day/one park ticket to use in 2010. With the kids and grandkids coming for a visit, we thought it would be a perfect way to score a free ticket to Disney so that we could accompany the kids…..we are, after all, senior citizens on a fixed income! J In checking the online list of participating organizations, I was overwhelmed with possibilities and it took me a long time to decide which one would be best. I finally settled on “Clean the World Foundation” which picks up, sorts, and ships shampoo, lotions, soaps, etc. that are donated by hotels and resorts and sends them to third world countries; in this instance, Haiti. There was only one time slot left for 2 volunteers on Feb. 25th from 9am to noon so I signed us up. (I just heard a collective GASP from all of you reading this when you noticed the 9am start time - yes, it’s true, I was on the road before 8:30!)

As you know, we’re staying in a Florida resort, so we’re very familiar with the cute little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, and the pretty little bars of soap that are given to us EVERY WEEK. I assumed that we would be sorting and boxing up these nice little (donated and unused) amenities for the people of Haiti. Well, I was partially right. We arrived at a huge warehouse full of totes. These totes were filled with USED bars of soap, and partially used shampoos, conditioners, and lotions…..all things that the hotels and resorts would have THROWN AWAY every single day. We donned our vinyl gloves and white lab coats and got to work! One group was armed with brushes and vegetable peelers to “clean up” the used bars of soap, then another group (including me and Harv) rinsed off the bars in bleach water and placed them on racks. These racks, 5 or 6 at a time, were then placed into a big steamer where they were sanitized. Then they were dried, individually wrapped, and packed for shipment to Haiti. The partially used shampoos, conditioners, and lotions were sorted and put into bigger containers for shipment. We worked next to another couple our age who live in Orlando and we left with a couple of new friends….yes, the man golfed J It was only 3 hours, but our backs and legs thought it felt more like 10! When our shift was finished, we gathered in another part of the warehouse where a family of volunteers (mom, dad, and 6 kids) performed a lovely Christian song for us. We have business cards and brochures from the organization and we will be going back to volunteer again - they were a wonderful group of people who had started doing this in a garage. They cited the statistics that show how many lives (especially children’s) that can be saved, or made more healthy, by something as simple as hand-washing. We're buying beautiful, fragrant, "designer" soaps while a good part of the world is awaiting our used soap just so they can wash their hads to TRY to stay healthier! Needless to say, we were humbled by the experience.

As so often happens, we start our day with one “item” on our agenda - such as volunteering today - at 8:30 am, and we meet new people, learn new things, make new connections, and before we know it, it’s 8:30 pm and we’re just getting home! The couple next to us (cleaning the soap) told us about a wonderful breakfast, brunch, lunch place near where we stay so we decided to check it out - it’s called “First Watch” and it was awesome. We decided to walk around the area and found a dog bakery called “The Bark Avenue”, where we were greeted by a very large sheepdog named Winston. It smelled like a “human” bakery and they baked and sold gourmet dog treats - I was tempted to try one of the “cookies” J It was a dog lover’s paradise with doggie scarves, leashes, sweaters, frames, greeting cards, etc.! Of course it made me think of Millie L We then stopped into a little boutique called “The Pink Chalet” where the saleslady noticed our Michigan State and Western Michigan apparel and told us her daughter attends CMU and another daughter is planning to attend Hope College. She also told us about another wonderful charity in Kissimmee called “Give Kids the World”, a huge complex that provides a beautiful vacation for terminally ill children. We have already contacted them online for volunteer opportunities and look forward to spending some time there. We then noticed a Bravo restaurant (one of favorites in East Lansing) and called Sue & Ray to meet us there for dinner. They had a saxophone player and blues singer performing and our server, Fiorella, was absolutely fantastic! What an interesting and fun day!

After learning about all the volunteer opportunities and the hardships experienced by so many people all around us and, indeed, around the world, I told Harv that if he hears me complain again about the weather, or my weight, or my clothes, or my hair, or any one of a million ridiculous and unimportant things, he is to smack me! Of course he wouldn’t do that, but hopefully both of us (especially me) realize how very lucky we are. It goes without saying that it’s not just me and Harv, but also all of you reading this, who can say the same thing - we are lucky, and blessed beyond what any of us deserves, to be living the lives we live. We are healthy, we are free, we are safe, we are part of a beautiful family that loves one another (most of the time J ). I’d like to think that this feeling of gratitude will stay with me….it is so often fleeting and has needed to be reinforced more than once! But my new goal, actually my ONLY goal, is to wake up every day grateful for the opportunity to live THIS life, MY life….it’s pretty darned good!

Here is the link to the organization: CleanTheWorld.org If you enter your zip code on their site you can find the organization's partners in your area (yes, even in Ionia).