Violet Brielle Spataro

When our friends at Make-A-Wish asked if Violet would like to make her good friend Juni a send off video for her upcoming wish trip to Disneyland, Violet excitedly responded, "Yes! I want to make a video for Juni! Can we do it right now?"  It was so so sweet. We dressed Violet up in her favorite Cinderella dress and tiara that she received on her own wish trip to Disneyland a few months before. These were part of her special princess make-over on her 3rd birthday at the Bippity Boppity Boutique. Violet was giggly and twirling, ready to tell her friend all about the magic she was going to experience.   The result of Violet's pure joy when thinking of her time in Disneyland and the love she has for her friend is this very sweet video below. As thousands have now said, you may want to grab your tissues! For mobile users click HERE . When I was first able to view the finished video through Make-A-Wish, I cried. I imagined Juni and her family seeing it f...

Violet is so loving with other children. There is just something very special about her caring nature. On many occasions she has told us how much she would love to have a brother or a sister. When we found out that we were pregnant at the beginning of April, we were so overjoyed and thrilled to let Violet know that she was finally going to be a big sister! Violet's face lit up and she jumped up and down with excitement after Josh and I shared the wonderful news with her. For the days to come Violet would sing about the joy of being a big sister and she would hug and kiss my belly. Violet would tell us, "I love our baby sooooo much. I am going to let them play with all of my toys!" After the first month, Violet told us that our baby was a boy and that she was going to have a little brother. It was so precious! She was so happy and our hearts melted as we imagined them playing together in the future. Every week Violet would ask to watch the video online of what our baby...

For the first time in a very long time I feel like we are beginning to live a normal-focused life together as a family. It is an amazing feeling and I am so grateful for it. The days of being in the hospital on a weekly basis gets smaller and smaller in the past behind us. I thank God for that every single day. We are no longer living with family. We have recently moved into a home of our own and we love it very much. And, although we are still in financial strain with all the catching up we have to do, it was time. Time for us to be together on our own, in our own space and to just feel settled. To be able to unpack things from our home in California that we haven't even seen in over 2 years ... it's a wonderful thing! I can never express fully how thankful we are for all the help we have received to get us to this point. And, it is so reassuring to know that we have such an amazing support system to help us get through the years to come with Violet's monitoring ap...