Special Shoes!

In January I received an email from a friend of mine offering to make custom-painted shoes as a gift for my boys in honor of February being Heart Awareness Month. I was so honored by her offer! She told me to ask the kids what color shoes they wanted and what they would like painted on them. I did that and boy, did they have opinions!

Caden requested yellow shoes with the tools from Handy Manny. Except he did not want “Flicker” the flashlight tool because he is not in all the episodes! He also wanted his special “duck” blanket he's had since he was born, and his name.

Kyler didn't want as many things on his shoes. He has a favorite stuffed lion named rusty that he wanted painted on. And he wanted his name. Other than that, he didn't want anything else. But he definitely wanted white shoes!

In addition to what the kids wanted, I asked my friend to put hearts with bandaids on them to symbolize the kids' mended hearts. I talked to the boys about it ahead of time and they were both okay with this. I emailed pictures of Caden's duck blanket and Kyler's stuffed lion so she could see what they looked like. And she got started looking for shoes in the color they wanted.

On March 11 we received a package in the mail with the special shoes. Each of the boys opened their shoes and was so excited! Both of them are in love with their shoes and for the first couple days they did NOT want to take them off! It was pretty cute! My friend even told both the kids to not worry about getting them dirty but to play in them as they would any other shoes. Caden has taken this to heart and will wear his shoes anywhere. Kyler, on the other hand, only wants to wear his shoes in the house because he doesn't want to ruin them. I keep telling him he needs to wear them and show them off before he outgrows them. 

The shoes are absolutely amazing and I am so grateful for the incredible gift give to us by our friend. She is so talented to be able to paint such amazing things on the shoes. We are very blessed indeed!