Birthday Prep

I can hardly believe that my little men are turning 6 and 3 in just a few weeks! This is the first year we are not having a party at our house. We've always opted for the small family/close friends, make sure the house is clean type party, but since the kids are both in school and have lots more friends I had little interest in hosting 25 kids pumped full of sugar running around the house. The kids really wanted to have a party at Pump-it-Up and we were ready for a low maintenance celebration. Since Pump-it-Up will be doing all the "work" I've decided to make the cake...a first. I found a cute space shuttle cake on-line that I'm going to attempt to recreate. I remember my mom always made us cool cakes and I loved it! If you know me, you know I'm all for a nice party, but have little interest in consuming myself with over the top detail and decorations. It simply stresses me out when too much is going on...that I'm responsible for. I've always admired those folks who love to plan and prep for a party and go all out. I start out will all these grand intentions, but always resort back to keeping it simple to hold onto my sanity.

I loved the pictures I took of the kids at the beach over the summer so much I used them as part of the party invitations. And his year I'm ordering the personalized "Thank you for coming to Nathan and Reese's Party" stickers I've been eyeing the last few years. I could never justify the cost, but I'm going for it this year. In lieu of the traditional junk toy goody bag (I've never been fond of them) I'm getting a copy of Magic Tree House #8 Midnight on the Moon, perfect for our space theme, for the big kids and a pre-school space book (to be determined) for the younger group. Nathan has just recently been turned onto the Magic Tree House books and we love to cuddle up at bed time and read a chapter. Although I'm usually pretty tired come bedtime it is still one of my favorite times with the kids.

On to a completely unrelated topic.....I've been on quite an emotional post-cancer roller coaster this week. I went to the conference, left inspired to share my story and use my experience to help others. Yesterday, I met an amazing woman, Ann, diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 30 years old when her two boys were just 5 and 2. She is a 45 year survivor!!!! We had so many similarities it was wild. I felt like I was having a conversation with my future self. You'll probably read more about her in my blog next week, but for now I'll just leave it at that. I'm struggling with how I feel about talking so much about my battle. It's one thing to blog about it...some how there is safety behind the computer. But publicly, I struggle with it. I don't want to be all about having cancer and I like it when people I didn't know back then don't know. When I was with Ann I ran into my neighbor from across the street. The conversation and how I had met up with Ann warranted me to share with my new neighbor that I was a cancer survivor as well. I felt like I was telling a dirty little secret. Part of me wants to forget cancer ever happened to me..to never talk about it again, the other wants to shout it out loud like it's some kind of award I won or that talking about it will some how help me make sense of the question I often ask myself "why me?"