An Incredible Gift

Honestly, I don't quite have words for this yet. But I don't think that we necessarily have to wait, to share what God has done, for when we feel like we have the perfect words.

How? Who? Why? I cried for a good long time yesterday and just kept saying out loud "How does this happen?" "Who does this?" "Why us, why now?" "Really?....$7,500....??"

Our goal has been met. Tessa's SJN school year has been covered. And all I can think is that I want nothing more than for the absolute love and provision that God has shown us, to be felt and seen by each and every individual that has helped us reach this goal for our sweet little girl. We are so incredibly grateful.

It resurfaces again and again: Ephesians 3:20 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us."

http://www.gofundme.com/tessa

Our thank you to "Yukon HUD Charities":

Monika Anderson and  staff and customers at the Yukon Henry Hudson's...wow.  You have shocked us, you have blessed us, you have given the kind of gift that leaves  us speechless and in tears...joyful tears.  We have been saying "How?" "Who?" "Why?"  Your message of encouragement touched our hearts and your gift and the kind of love you have shown our family, takes us to a place of gratitude that we have never been before.   Thank you for all that you have done.  Thank you for providing Tessa with the opportunity to continue on at SJN for the remaining 2014-2015 school year.  Thank you for believing in what this school has done for our daughter...for our family.  Thank you for eliminating the financial burden that we were facing heading into the final 5 months of her school year.  Thank you for believing in us as her parents...for trusting in our decisions to take this financial risk for the sake of inclusion, opportunities and experiences for our amazing little girl.  Thank you for helping her experience life as a 4 year old little girl.  Thank you for providing so many more days of smiles, frienships and growth.  We know this message will fall short of showing our intense amount of gratitude, but we pray that you hear and feel our sincerity.  

With all our love and thankfulness, The Bynum Family! (especially Tessa :) 

Christmas Party Fun!

Two Christmas parties down and a few more to go! :)  

Darin and I had a fancy date night out Friday to the SandRidge Christmas party and Sunday evening we had the Hearts for Hearing Christmas party.  Both parties were full of lots of fun and great memories.

Our dear friends took care of the kiddos for us Friday evening and got some fun pics before we headed out!

SandRidge Energy Christmas Party

Hearts for Hearing Christmas Party

Tessa's reactions were priceless!

Oh my goodness...My most favorite picture of all!!!

(haha, clearly we did not all fit in the sleigh ;)

~Whitney

An Amazing Gift!

Tessa received an AMAZING gift at school on Monday!! A 'coat' for her wheelchair and a matching hat ~ so she can stay toasty warm outside with her friends on colder days. 

THANK YOU to all of the incredible women who put their heads together on this and to the incredible talent and creativity that resulted in such a beautiful & cozy chair cover for our sweet girl. 

The love you have for her, shines through her every smile!

My jaw dropped when I got home Monday and was able to see everything in person.  I mean, I could tell in the pics from school how amazing it was....but it was incredible to see the creativity up close and personal.  And the hat..the HAT!  I kept telling Darin...who would have thought!?!  The design is so clever and perfect.  I've always wanted to put a warm hat on Tessa but knew all the ones I would find would be too tight or interfere with her cochlear implants and headband, etc.  This hat is simply brilliant.  SO EASY for us to put on her and take off and I can tell she's not bothered by it one bit.  

Look at that face! :)

And the coat is just beautiful!!  Not to mention how simple it is to put over her wheelchair.  The coat fits almost every piece of equipment we have for Tessa....her special needs jogging stroller, her activity chair, her power chair, and of course her manual wheelchair she has at school.  We literally have an option to keep her warm regardless of what equipment she is in!

Somebody was making all the teachers a little jealous with her snuggly-self outside on Wednesday ;)

Again with the SMILE!

This kind of love, generosity and ingenuity from such amazing people, makes me feel God's loving arms wrapped all around our sweet Tessa Rayne!

~Whitney

Bynum#Five Is A...

B.O.Y. !!!

We are thrilled and my boys' faces definitely say it all :)

Me and my little buddy Weston are halfway there!!

So thankful

~Whitney

Catching Up!

Catching up before time gets too far away from me!!

10.29.14

The day Parker realized his arms might not reach all the way around me at some point...he said we should take pictures like this to see when it happens ;)

 

11.2.14

Parker's Continent pumpkin he made at school

  

11.3.14

Some Grandpa and Grandma time!

Grandpa even got to join the boys for a night a Cub Scouts!

11.8.14

11.9.14

These two melt my heart

Admiring her beautiful long locks before bed :)

 11.15.14

Two cuties!

Miss Ella's 6th Birthday party!!

11.16.14

In his camo for church ;)

Sweet Sunday snuggles with Daddy

11.17.14

No School Day!

And Parker built a snowman all by himself ;)

11.19.14

Home with my little guy...after a rough night of coughing and fever :(

He said he 'couldn't nap'...so I took this to prove him wrong ;)

11.20.14

Arms still reach at almost 20 weeks... barely ;)

11.21.14

Goofing around!

My little gigglebox!

11.22.14

His cute little lego car

11.23.14

Not at all amused with her Sunday afternoon naptime

~Whitney

A DIY Success!!

Our white & oak kitchen table has been around awhile!

Some dear friends from work gave it to us at the time we all relocated from Amarillo to OKC back in the summer of 2006.  

This was our first home in Okahoma and we loved it!  Such great and amazing memories for the 6 years we lived there!

7/2006 to 6/2012 :)

you can see our table over in the kitchen...

Those green placemats always sat at each spot :)

Since we moved...we've made some changes ;)

The white tile table got booted from the kitchen and the chairs re-painted!

We hung onto it cause I always had in the back of my mind that we'd find good use for it later :)

And thus, our recent DIY ~ let the transformation begin!

First thing first...get rid of the white!

We knew we'd be covering the white tile, 

so we weren't worried about that part.

Ta-Da....a new LEGO table!!

And since the chairs were already done, once the table was dry we moved it right into the living room and just laid the LEGO sheets on the top.

The next step was to actually glue the sheets down, but for now we just admired our creation ;)

The next thing to tackle was the this lovely sofa table that has been around for ages! ;)

One of the rectangle pieces of glass got broken during our last move...so we've been at a bit of a loss on what to do with the darn thing.  It works pretty well in our play corner nook of the living room...but it was definitely time for a facelift!

In my world, turquoise is always a happy color!

And what better use than LEGO storage bins!

(who needs a glass table in a play nook anyway ;)

I thought I was going to have to go shopping for some bins that would fit...but then I realized we already had these in Parker's room...and they work perfectly!

And I'm especially glad there's no more glass to deal with!

 

DIY projects tend to drag out around here, but we did finally get around to glueing the LEGO sheets down.

And Parker wanted to walk on the table to make sure they all got good and stuck ;)

And ta-da!  

We have our new LEGO table and our new LEGO storage/sofa table 

Once the glue dried we removed the lego pieces that were holding all the sheets together.

What's fun too....is all we have to do is cover the table with a table cloth to enjoy fun dinner&movie nights in our living room together!

Parker and I have already put the table to great use! :)

This boy LOVES to build...and it is so much fun to build right along side him!

I wouldn't say I'm much into building the monsters and transformer lookin dudes that are built to fight and kill...but I did think a treehouse would be fun!

So this was our first official LEGO building adventure together at our 'new' lego table!

So. Much. Fun.

The treehouse was awesome!

It was so neat to see it all come together with the help of my big boy!

This all came about because I was just thinking one day recently that we needed to come up with something for the living room that would help Parker keep all the things he builds, up off the floor...away from a curious little crawler one day ;)  I really wanted Parker to have his own space where he could be creative and not get too worried about the destruction of anything he makes.  The table is also a great way to push Tessa up to it in her chair so she can watch and help Parker work on his materpieces!  We love family things....and this table is definitely going to give us lots of opportunities to participate in things as a family!  Sometimes with Tessa's equipment and positioning needs...it's challenging to all be in the same room working on the same thing...our living room is definitely the most functional place for us to all be.  It's where we can eat, watch movies, play games, etc. etc.  Parker is no stranger to sacrifices and I'm so thankful that we were able to think ahead of time of a way to create something to help him keep what he works so hard on in a safe and special place!

~Whitney