Orange You Glad Invitation

Here's the invitation that I made for the "Orange You Glad You're Having a Baby" shower.


It was an accordion card and since I was able to hand deliver them, I packaged them with a bag of oranges. (So they smelled good too.)

Overheard at the Bookstore

While at the bookstore tonight Daniel and I noticed a group of teenage girls congregated in the diet section. Of course we quickly posted up in the next aisle to eavesdrop on their conversation in the hopes of catching some wisdom from the adolescent psyche. We got some real doozies...

"This one is 100 diets. I'm just going to keep flipping through it till I find one I like."
"No carbs. They only work if they're no carb."
"I want a celebrity diet."
"Like what?"
"Like this one where she drank garlic water. There was so much garlic in her system that she just sweated it out."

So be on the lookout for the new diet that's all the rage with the stars: the garlic water diet.

Orange You Glad Baby Shower

Last weekend I had the pleasure of throwing a baby shower for 5 of the 8 expectant women in our region's Young Life family. I'll post the other half of pictures tomorrow including the invitation which set the orange theme with a knock knock joke.

I got the idea for one of the favors the sugar shower scrub from here via Style Notes.

This tree was the scene for a beautiful photo booth.

The Mommies

Lindsey and Binny. Binny volunteered her home for the event which was also the location of Daniel and I's wedding reception.

My favorite picture from the day of Wendy during the blessing.

Bittersweet

The first week of June I leave for my month long assignment working at Young Life's Castaway in Detroit Lakes, MN. I'm super excited to spend my last month on staff at the camp that started it all for me. 11 years ago I went to Castaway as a camper and heard the Gospel for the first time. Let me say in the biggest understatement that it changed my life completely. As a result, though Young Life owns over 40 camps just in the US, Castaway will always remain as a sort of mecca for me.

The one downside, and though it's the only downside, is pretty significant. I will be a part from Daniel for the entire month. This will be an interesting experience for the two of us. I'm very excited to live on the lake and experience all the great and powerful aspects of camp day in and day out, but I'm also pretty bummed that Daniel won't be there to share it with me. He was there with me 11 years ago as a camper too. We also worked there for a month 4 years ago while we were engaged. His absence will make this time around a lot different. This situation is the definition of bittersweet.

The Memory

I was in my sister's neighborhood tonight so I stopped by to say hello to my nieces. Their house is right across the street from the neighborhood pool and as I pulled in I was hit with a vivid memory. Last summer all four Hogan siblings were in town (myself, two older sisters, and younger brother) and hanging out at that pool along with my mom and niece Hannah. Hannah was being a typical three year old goofing around in the water, more interested in messing with the fountains than doing any actual swimming. It was a special afternoon since everyone was in town together, but it was also very normal. It was also pre-cancer, pre-brain tumor, pre-having-your-world-shaken-to-its-core. It was this memory of Hannah playing at the pool that played over and over in my head during our first days in the hospital. We were just waiting for the results of each test and scan. Waiting to hear from each team of doctors after they had consulted with my sister and brother in law. Waiting to see what was to come for Hannah, our family, and our sense of any normalcy that could remain in the face of childhood cancer. It was this memory of the summer just a few short months before she got sick that I kept going back to. As I've written before, it was this afternoon that I wanted to rewind back to. I wanted our lives back before cancer. There was no going back.

I'm not sure why my panic and grief manifested itself in this memory. I have replayed the scenes from that afternoon and Hannah's innocence over and over again, so it was bizarre to see the pool just a few days from reopening for the season. Could it really be almost a year later already? Could it be that we survived the horrific fall and numbing winter? Could it be that we get to keep our Hannah and experience another summer like last year's?

Somehow life goes on. It is different, for better or worse. We have adjusted to our new normal, a normal where cancer is not so shocking anymore. But still a normal where we can enjoy afternoons at the pool surrounded by family and joy and laughter and all things simple and good. I welcome the opening of this tiny little pool and all that it symbolizes for our tiny little family: life, survival, resilience, strength in brokenness, honesty, gratitude, and our Hannah.

The Greatest Show of All Time

It's 1:30am and we finished the 4 1/2 hours of LOST finale programming. I'm surprised that I'm able to call it the greatest show of all time after what I first thought to be a slow, boring, and going-nowhere final season. I need to apologize to the producers. I was wrong, very wrong. They knew what they were doing all along and I see that now. I cried multiple times. At the final scene was incredible leaving both Daniel and I in tears. They did their job by leaving the two of us inconsolable. When a grown man says after watching that he "just needs a good cry", you know you've accomplished something good, really, really, really good.

So yes I can move forward with my life even without LOST being there to accompany me. Jack would want me to keep living even if he's not here with me. Claire and Charlie would want me to move forward. Sawyer would want me to enjoy life. And Locke will be there as a type of holy spirit supernatural counselor. Now I have to log off of blogger and log onto Lostpedia and all the other forums to geek out with my fellow fans!

The Universe Reads My Blog

The "universe" must be reading my blog. Yesterday I made an online confession about breaking something at Hobby Lobby and not turning myself in after the offense. Well today I went to Hobby Lobby again to pick up some more of what I purchased yesterday and guess what I saw. There is was right there in a pile on the floor...shattered shards of a giant ceramic garden fairy (well that's what I think it used to be before it's trip to the floor). An employee was approaching the scene for clean up with a disappointed look on her face. I think it was a break and run. No one else was surrounding the scene, just a bunch of passerbys who glanced down at the debacle silently judging the culprit. The fairy was huge, at least in the $30-50 range which believe it or not people do apparently spend that much money on fairy decor. This made my $2.17 (before tax) accident seem mild if not completely forgivable.

So...I think the universe is trying to tell me something. But what? It needs to speak a little more clearly.