Wake Up Call

October 18, 2013October 18, 20131 Comment

I snuck away for a pedicure and was reading Self Magazine which was all about breast cancer and awareness. I read the statistics and a learned more about the risk groups and realized as I am now in my early thirties, I’m now at a higher risk and that it’s time to start taking those self exams seriously.

The next morning I got an email from a very good friend of mine. It started out apologizing for the mass email – as it began, I thought she was about to write that she and her husband were getting a divorce – I don’t know why I thought that, I love her husband and they have a great marriage, but it seemed to be the only logical piece of bad news she could be sending out. I literally felt my heart stop when I read that she was writing to tell everyone that she had breast cancer. 32 years old. Stage 4 breast cancer. My heart is racing as I write those words.

The good news is that she is crazy tough. And she is married to an amazing guy and they have been battling this awefulness together and she’s going to be ok. The road to recovery is long – she’s already endured several months of chemotherapy and despite it being successful, she is having surgery and then radiation. And all the while she has been open, honest about her feelings and making jokes. I will never look at arm pit hair the same way after she told me how excited she was to see hers growing back!

The part that makes my heart happy is that as I forwarded her email to our massive group of Phis, they all jumped in. They started a Meal Train so for the next several weeks, they will have dinners brought to their house a couple of times a week. There have been gift bags, flowers, emails, cards, texts and love going out to her. I know sororities get a bad wrap most of the time, but I’m proud to know my chapter has an amazing network of women who come from far and wide to help when a sister needs it.

I hate that this had to hit so close to home in order for me to pay more attention to my own health and risk. Take this as your wake up call to get your annual exams, do self exams and contribute to a charity/non profit who is working on a cure for such a miserable disease.

California Love

September 4, 2013Leave a comment

This past weekend marked our 30th something pilgrimage to Coronado, CA. It was as lovely as ever, always a family affair and always so much fun.

This guy capital L LOVED the ocean. We could not keep him out of it. Wave to the face? No biggie. Freezing cold? Not a problem.

Our view from the beach

The only place this guy looks small

Baylor is equally crazy for the ocean and sand castles. I love the urgency on her face to get the water to her sand castle.

Mason looking a little afraid. Rightly so.

We ran into her buddy Tessa – you would have thought they hadn’t seen each other in years…

If this isn’t the perfect “big sister little brother” picture

Auntie Ali, Uncle Gary and Mason looking crabby

The Noni

PW took nap shift one afternoon which left me alone. On the beach. With trashy magazines. And boat drinks. HEAVEN.

The view from our room. Noni goes to great lengths to get joined rooms, beach side, with patios. It is worth every ounce of effort!

The Del at night

Spying on the spectacular beach wedding

This wedding was spectacular. They had chandeliers hanging from the structure and table skirts that looked like beautiful seaweed. It was stunning.

Amazing sunsetAfter a full day running on the beach, playing in the waves THEN hitting the pool, Baylor rolled over and asked what I was looking at on my phone. I turned to answer her and found this:

So here’s to the end of summer, another great vacation and many many more!

Practice Makes Perfect

May 16, 2012Leave a comment

Yesterday Baylor and I babysat baby Mason for a few hours while Ali got her hair did. I wanted to help out because A. nothing says fun like trying to calm a baby while someone is putting foil in your hair and B. I secretly wanted a little practice. I wanted to see what it would be like to have two of them and get a few things done.

After a bottle, change, car seat move and a packed diaper bag, we ventured out to pick up coffee at our favorite roastery and grab a few things at the grocery. Bold, yes. But none of it was essential so there was plenty of time to abort the mission. But thankfully, M was the perfect gentleman and sat happily in his car seat the entire time. B was a golden child. Like the kind you think your kid is going to be when you have a second child. She listened, she helped, she even climbed in the same door as Mason’s car seat, shimmyed into her seat and was 90% strapped in when I got to her side. I’m sure it was the novelty of having her cousin around, but I’m going to pretend that this will still happen (at least for a little while) when it’s her brother.

The one thing I didn’t think about was me. Well the belly anyway. Mason is about 7 weeks old and I look more like I ate a really big burrito and am allergic to sit ups more than pregnant so everyone (naturally) assumed he was mine. I don’t know why, but I was a little unwilling to accept the chubby momma role (since his actual mother is back into her pre pregnancy jeans. bitch.). Thankfully my assistant was happy to tell anyone that looked her way that this was her cousin Mason and that she was babysitting and that her brother was in mommy’s belly. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.

All in all, it was a positive experience. Although I plan to really enjoy my current one munchkin schedule.

Baby What??

January 23, 2012Leave a comment

In anticipation of my sister Ali’s baby shower this past weekend, I tried to find some baby shower game ideas that were a little outside of the box. And by that I mean something that was not annoying like that damn game where you put the clothes pin on your shirt and ever time you say “baby” someone gets to take your clothes pin. The last shower I was at where we played that game, a fellow guest literally started pinching me after she took all my pins. It almost got ugly.

I found the usually stuff like “Guess Mommy’s Tummy Size”…boring, and potentially a loaded game if Mommy is a little larger than she thinks she is. “Baby Item Word Scramble”…yawn. “Finish the Baby Rhyme”…blah blah blah.

As I dug deeper, I found some really messed up baby games. Such as:

“Pin the Sperm on the Egg”. I’m not kidding.

“Dirty Diaper” – I thought this was only in the movies – you melt candy bars into a diaper and make people guess what the candy bar is by smelling it. There are no words for describing the level of nastiness of that one.

“My Water Broke!” – guests are given drinks with ice cubes containing plastic babies. When your ice-cube melts setting the baby free, the guests shouts that their water broke and they win a prize. I actually kind of like this idea because I don’t really have to participate, but it needs a new name.

“Bobbing for Nipples” – again, not a joke. Just like bobbing for apples but you use bottle nipples. Lovely.

We ended up using a variation of a game we played at Ali’s wedding shower – she gets asked a series of questions and then has to eat something when she answers wrong. Pregnancy themed food was pickles and ice cream – ice cream if she was right and pickles if she was wrong. I only tortured her a little with questions like “how many feet does the average toddler crawl in a day?” and “who is the celebrity whose daughter is named Sadie Grace?”.

All in all, it was a lovely shower and Ali got lots of great gifts – I was running around like a crazy woman so I didn’t get any pictures, but Ali’s sister-in-law did so more to come!