Third week of 4K

For the third week of school, she was able to go! She got the okay from the eye doctor and we were all relieved to get back into a routine.

Hannah goes Tuesday through Friday from 12:00 to 3:00. It's perfect for her. Gets mommy and daddy time in the morning and then gets fun school time in the afternoon.

September 20 was Pink and Brown Day. Grandma had made her a beautiful butterfly skirt which was perfect for this day. She was so excited to wear it! She also wore a brown football clip in her hair:



For the project that day, they did ice cream cones:



September 21 was Black and White Day. Hannah was so excited because her patch was also black. :):



She insisted on wearing a crown because she didn't want to be just a pirate, but a pirate princess. :)

For the project, they did checker boards:



September 22 was Crazy Color Day. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with this day but we found her New York City T-shirt with a bunch of bright colors and designs and thought it would work out good:



Hannah loved the project for the day. She had M&Ms in a cup and had to color the chart based on what color the M&Ms were.



September 23 was Homecoming for our school. Our school colors are blue and white. Hannah was so excited that she would be able to wear her blue dress that she loves so much!:



Her cooperation for these pictures is kinda going down as you can see.

We did take a couple of selfies together. Hannah loves taking selfies with her mommy:



They have a Homecoming parade in the afternoon. The elementary kids all walk in the parade except for the 4K students. They watch the parade. Hannah is so excited to be in the parade next year! Here is her class watching the parade:



And here is her class at the school. This picture was posted on Facebook:



Here is Hannah's project for the day:



Her teacher would tell her what items needed to be colored and she would find the color and color it.

That night we went to the Homecoming game. We played the Grantsburg Pirates. Our school colors are blue and white. Grantsburg's colors are purple and white. We didn't realize it until we got to the game that I was wearing a purple coat and Hannah was wearing a pirate patch. We did not plan that well but I promise we were cheering for our school!



My dad also came with. It was fun. As you can see it was raining. We stayed through halftime when Hannah's sitters played in the band for the half time show. Then we left.

It was a busy but fun week and I'm so glad Hannah was able to go to school and enjoy it!

I felt God

My friend told me one day I'd find this beautiful. At the time I thought there was no way I would ever see this as "beautiful"....but I'm getting there. I'm finally able to see some beauty in this and I wanted to write about it.

Hannah loves riding horse. She's been riding ever since she was very young (I can't remember just how young). She has basically grown up on a horse being her sitters family have 4 horses. She just loves it so much.

Although I didn't grow up riding horses, I've always loved horses and loved riding. Now I get a chance to ride when I want and I'm so grateful for it.

We were recently at their house for a party and they were getting the horses ready as people wanted to ride. Being Hannah was basically blind in both eyes, I was very hesitant to let her ride despite her pleas. But then my friend said she thought she would be fine as she's proven herself many times she can do it. So I decided to let her ride with me walking along side.



Here she is on the horse with her friend, Kabeer.

In all honesty she did great. She was born to ride horse.

After awhile, we were switching riders. I decided I wanted to ride. While Hannah's friend wanted to stop, Hannah did not. So I let her ride with me. She was doing so great.

I didn't anticipate us riding into the woods and thought we would just ride around the yard, but I wasn't too worried when the group decided to go into the woods. We were riding a very gentle, older horse and we had ridden this horse so many times.

We were at the tail end of the 4 horses which worked well for us....or so I thought. At one point, we were going down a hill and would be taking a road at the bottom of the hill.

While the other horses walked down the hill quickly, I made our horse go very slow and it worked well. But then disaster struck.

When the other 3 horses got to the bottom of the hill to the road, they immediately started running which no one expected. Because we were a little behind and our horse does not like to be behind, when we got to the road, our horse took off in a sprint to catch up to the other horses.

I knew we were in trouble.

I tried hard to get the horse to slow down, stop, anything, but he wouldn't. He kept sprinting and kept going faster and faster.

Hannah was sitting in front of me and was hanging onto the horn. I basically just had the reins I was hanging onto. I didn't want to hang onto Hannah as I knew if I fell, I would potentially take her with me.

I didn't want to scare Hannah but I knew I wouldn't be able to hang on. I just kept telling her to hang on and hang on tight. She wasn't scared but the thought of her getting hurt terrified me to death.

Then it happened---I was thrown off.

I remember hitting the ground but I wasn't focused on that. What I remember so clearly is watching my "blind" 4-year-old daughter on a sprinting horse. I can't begin to explain the terror was feeling. I was up from the ground in record time and screaming Hannah's name and screaming for her to hang on.

The riders ahead heard me screaming and stopped their horses. The horse Hannah was riding continued to run to the other horses and then stopped.

Hannah stayed on the entire time.

When I caught up to the horse, I immediately took Hannah and held her. I'll never forget her trembling bottom lip as she struggled hard not to cry and reassure me that she was okay.

As I held her so tight, I realized just how bad this could've been and started crying. That's when Hannah let her tears loose. I asked her if she knew what had happened and she said she knew I had fallen off, but she just kept hanging on and yelled to me to see if I was okay. She said she wasn't scared but as time has gone on she has shown signs that it was very traumatic for her and now she's scared to even get on a horse. :(

It is only God that kept her on that horse and safe. The horse was going so fast. I'm pretty sure if I had been a solo rider, I probably could've hung on but I'm honestly not positive. But I'm 40 years old with 2 good eyes.

Here there was a 4-year-old, "blind" girl who by some miracle stayed on a running horse. Even when she knew her mommy had fallen, she kept her cool. Any other kid probably would've panicked and fell off themselves.

I don't know how she did it. I'm so amazingly proud of her....and so grateful to God. I know God was taking care of Hannah. There is just no other explanation.

Yeah, I'm sure many are questioning my motherly decision to let her ride on that horse in the first place, considering her situation. Trust me, I'm questioning myself with that so much and I've cried many tears over it. I think about what "could've happened", what "should've happened", how close I came to something very bad happening. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself for what Hannah went through.

And yet, I was able to feel God. We know He protected Hannah and was on that horse with her when he started sprinting. I shudder to think of everything that could've happened.

But it didn't.

We're both safe. My fall could've been much worse. I was pretty sore for about a week but that was it. What if I would've broken something? What if I would've injured my hand or arm and couldn't work? What if I hadn't been wearing a helmet?

Although I'm still not seeing this as "beautiful", I can see the beauty. I'm so grateful God protected us. While I can't get the picture of Hannah alone on a sprinting horse out of my mind, I also take a look at her and I know we are so blessed to have her here and nothing worse happened.

And she is so beautiful. God is so good.

Second week of 4K

Well this week just wasn't meant to be.

Sunday we had gone hiking in a nearby park. At one point she started complaining that something was in her eye. Me, being "Mother of the Year", simply told her to cry and the tears will help it.

I wasn't too sympathetic and now I feel awful. She did seem fine though after a little bit. We actually went to a friend's house and a church meeting and she was just fine.

Monday morning, after she had been awake for a little bit, suddenly started screaming that her eye hurt. She kept rubbing it and saying she couldn't see. It wasn't too long after that that it was swelling up and red. She was also very lethargic, sleeping and obviously not feeling well.

We took her in that afternoon and we were told it was most likely an allergic reaction or a bug bite or maybe an infection. She was put on 2 different antibiotics and Claritin in hopes that it would clear up.

It never really got better. She had to stay home from school as she couldn't open both eyes (even opening up the "good" eye hurt). By the end of the week, Hannah's pediatrician recommended seeing a pediatric optometrist. So we went to see one on Friday of that week.

As I'm typing this we've gone a couple times and we still aren't really sure what is going on. She has pustules in her eye. They are so painful looking. :( They are healing slowly which is good news. It is thought some poison ivy may have gotten into her eye while we were hiking, possibly through the air. No matter what, it's unusual and rare. Hannah stumped both her pediatrician and the optometrist. :)

I'm happy to report that as I'm typing this now the eye is less swollen and less red and it appears the pustules are less. We will be seeing the optometrist in a few days again.

This is Hannah on Friday, the day we went into the optometrist. This actually looks better than it did the beginning of the week. My heart was so broken for her. :(:



The hard part for her was missing "Blue Day" at school. She had a beautiful dress she wanted to wear. So I let her wear the dress for church and her sitter's confirmation on Sunday which made her happy:



I've gotta say, I've got one tough little girl. She is such a trooper and I'm so proud of her.

Hannah's first day of clogging

Hannah started her fourth year of clogging on September 7. Yes, FOURTH year. It's so hard to believe. She's in the Mini Tots class and also in a Beginner's class. She's one of the youngest in the beginner's class which is a little bit intimidating to her right now. Hopefully she gets better with that.

Here are some pictures of her first day:









And for fun here are a couple comparisons from years past:

Hannah's first week of 4K

Yeah, I'm going to be one of those annoying moms that want to document as much as she can for her school year. At the end of the school year, I'm hoping to print this out so we have a weekly journal of school, what she's working on and projects she brings home.

We'll see how I do. :)

September 1 was her first day and she made this.


Of course when I saw it, my eyes filled with tears. I'm going to be that mom that goes through more Kleenex than you could ever imagine this year.

September 2 she did some handwriting skills



On September 6, Hannah was sick. Her first official home from school sick day. :(

September 7 was Picture Day at school and very happy to say she felt well enough to go!



September 8 was Red Day:



I think we nailed it :)

Here are a few things she did for Red Day


She made an apple. Of course I had to include a picture of her writing her name on the back. :) It's so cute.


She got a book of red things to color red.

September 9 was Orange Day:



I feel the need to explain that she found the orange string around the house and just HAD to wear it to school because it was orange. I hope teachers do realize that sometimes kids insist on dressing themselves for school. :)

My testimony at church

I'm not one to stand up and talk in front of people. I've gotten better but it's never been easy for me. When I took Speech in college, I remember having to take a lot of Xanax just to get me through the semester.

So when I was asked to stand up before our church and tell our story about this summer and how our small group helped us, I was nervous....and yet so honored. If my testimony would help show the importance of helping others, praying for people and how awesome our church family and God is, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I wanted to put this into my blog so I always have it and I always have a reminder of how important it is to be there for people.

Here it is:

For those who don’t know who I am, I’m Tammy Wondra. I’m married to Mark and we have a 4-year-old daughter, Hannah. We started coming to the Alliance church in January 2015. From the day we walked into this church as strangers, we were greeted as family. I joined the women’s bible study on Sunday mornings and became an Awana helper as Hannah joined Cubbies.

Mark suffers from many health problems and our life has always been a roller coaster of stressful events and emotions. The women’s Bible study has prayed for us from the first time they met me and I have trusted them with my fears, frustrations and tears. I am so grateful for their support, prayers and love.

In March of this year, another Awana helper, Sarah, asked if I would like to be involved in their small group. I was excited to get to know more people in the church and excited to study more of God’s word.
In May tragedy hit our family. Mark was hospitalized down in the Cities for an acute brain bleed. His recovery and prognosis was unknown. His condition was very serious and we were unsure if he would even pull through.

Even though I had only been involved with the small group for a couple months, Sarah called me stating they wanted to help. After talking it over, they offered to mow our lawn for us. While I was grateful to not have to worry about that for what I thought was a couple weeks until we got home, I was overcome with emotion when Sarah told me they would do it for the whole summer. Rich and Paul took turns coming weekly to mow our lawn through the months of June, July and August. I never had to worry about it at all.

Not only did they take care of our lawn, but Sarah also brought over a couple meals and took Hannah for a couple days so I could get a break.

Mark ended up spending 6 weeks in the hospital and a rehab facility. He was only home for a week before he was readmitted for another week stay in the hospital. This summer, we’ve been adjusting to a new life, a new Mark and many changes. A summer that we would prefer to forget.

While we faced a nightmare, we also were very encouraged by the support and love we received from the Alliance church, especially our small group. Not having to worry about mowing the lawn for the entire summer was a huge relief to me. We have a fairly large lawn and because of Mark’s poor eyesight, he’s unable to mow it. The responsibility has always been mine. I also work full-time and take care of Mark and Hannah. I wasn’t sure how I would have done it all without the help of our small group.

So many from the church prayed for us this summer. Pastor Chris came down to the Cities to see and pray with Mark and Pastor Jeff came while Mark was admitted in the hospital here. There were so many people praying, so many wonderful messages of support and we are very grateful.

Our family endeared a nightmare this summer that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. But because of our small group and our church family, we were reminded constantly that we weren’t going through it alone. We are loved and God will always be there for us and provide for us. We want to thank our entire church family and especially Sarah, Paul and Rich who went out of their way to help. Sarah reminded me what it says in Ecclesiastes: There is a time for everything, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain.

When Mark came to the baptism service, which was his first time coming back since his brain bleed, he was amazed at the love, support and prayer he received. Many people came up to him and he felt so blessed to be there. He told me later “We sure do have a great church family” and I agreed with him.

Professional Gotcha Day pictures

We get professional pictures done on Gotcha Day every year and we are so grateful to my friend for doing them for us. Here are some of them:

Picture day

Hannah was so excited for Picture Day at school. In fact, the day after Picture Day she didn't want to go to school because they weren't going to take pictures. :)

Here she is on Picture Day: