A new decade

Rather than being depressed that I turned 30 today as most people seem to be, I am actually finding myself to be rather excited and proud. I've had a pretty amazing 30 years and I'm excited about what's coming next. 30 is just one more year that I can say God has blessed me with.

My best friend Stacey's birthday is only two days before mine, so since we were 16-years-old we have been celebrating our birthdays together. We even celebrated our 18th birthdays together in Singapore with our first alcoholic beverages at Hard Rock Cafe (18 was legal in Singapore).

So we decided we had to do something special for our big 3-0 together. And I think special definitely describes yesterday. We did the Great Strides walk in the morning (which has traditionally fallen right around our birthdays) then headed straight from there to Patrick's of Atlanta for a spa day. We had massages (I had a hot stone massage that was so fabulous I can't even explain it!), manicures, pedicures, and facials. We were treated to a fabulous lunch, and just hung out in the quiet, serene spa. After weeks of packing and yard work it was exactly what my body needed. And after opening a new business and handling loads of fresh produce while pregnant, it was also exactly what Stacey needed as well! (www.bigorganicgarden.com if you're in the Gwinnett area!) It was truly the perfect way to ring in 30 and we've decided it should be a yearly tradition- next year we plan on mud baths and massages!

Great Strides 2014

[No pictures of the spa day- I did think about it, and wish I had gotten at least one picture, but we looked a little goofy in our robes with our greasy post-massage hair]

We finished off our amazing day with dinner at our favorite spot- Bahama Breeze! We have not celebrated every birthday there, but it has become a tradition for us, from our first birthday celebrated together at age 16, to our 21st birthdays when we were finally legal here and could try the Bahamaritas, and now our 30th, with many more in between. Stacey and I have always had a thing for the beach and the tropics (hey, we did spend 4 months together in Costa Rica!), and Bahama Breeze has just the perfect atmosphere to sit back and relax while enjoying the company of friends.

The birthday girls

 Unfortunately I could not find a picture of Stacey and me together at our 16th birthdays! Sad! My mom found one of Cassie and me, and I found one of Stacey with the group. I had one other one of Stacey, but I think she'd be happier if I didn't post it. ;)

Cassie and me, 2000 and 2014

The groups at age 16 and age 30
In attendance at both: me, Stacey, Cassie, and Adam!

As I was packing up clothes in my closet for the move, I came across a dress that I just about got rid of until I remembered that it was the dress I wore for our 16th birthday! Why I've kept it this long, I don't know, and how I fit in a dress at age 30 that I wore when I was 16 is also beyond me (and, honestly, not really a good thing as much as most people would kill for that), but it was fun to wear it to our celebration as it brought back so many happy memories.

30 is bringing a lot of changes that make me both happy and sad, but I am looking forward to seeing what God has in store for me for this next decade. :)

Less Words Wednesday: May Snapshot

A busy busy busy (but FUN!) weekend here:

We walked Great Strides...

Yellow bellies?

Though I don't think yellow bellies walk 5Ks while pregnant

(THANK YOU for your donations! If you would like to donate, you still can! www.cff.org/great_strides/drewby. We accept donations until the end of the year!)

I also hosted Stacey's baby shower!

Creating a birth blessing bracelet

The (almost) finished product- she can wear it during labor to
remind her of the love and support of her family and friends
then pass it on to her daughter!

Balloon bellies

What the cupcakes looked like (before the party)

What the cupcakes actually looked like when served
100 points if you can guess what happened...

Can you tell we're tired?

And even though this is technically "Wordless Wednesday" (or in today's case, "Less Words Wednesday") I just have to share a little story from the shower. One of Stacey's aunts brought her two daughters to the shower, one of which was a little blonde haired sweetie between 3 and 4 who was declared to be an animal/bug/nature lover. She indeed proved to be more than happy to spend the entire time outside with our dog Lucy. Towards the end of the shower several women were gathered in the kitchen chatting when little Gracie came running in with a "special find" clasped in her hands. Women peered down with smiles to see what this little blonde angel in her bright yellow frilly dress was so excited about. Smiles quickly turned to shocked and horrified (and in some cases amused) expressions as the girl ran around the table looking for her mom. (It really was amusing to watch each woman's face one-by-one go from big grins to wide-eyed with hands clasped over their mouths). When she was close enough to me I finally understood the looks of horror as I saw clasped in her hands something small and brown, with a tail. Little Gracie had found a mouse, but not just any mouse, a dead mouse. Mom quickly grabbed her, and the mouse, ran out back, and threw it over the fence which was followed by an instant meltdown from Gracie who "waaaannted to keeeeeep iiiiitttt!". I think we all felt a little heartbroken for her (while also feeling the need to wash our hands), and I think we all had to grin at the humor of a little girl bringing such a treat into a room full of women.

Great Strides 2011

*UPDATE- Cute baby photo added!*

SOOOO many of you who read this blog donated to either my half marathon fundraising page or my Great Strides page. I am so thankful for that! Each and every donation makes me feel so supported and loved!

We had a fabulous day for our walk today. Actually, maybe a little too fabulous... the high in Atlanta was in the low 90s. Too hot for May, in my opinion!

We had 8 wonderful walkers striding with the Simpsons' Striders this year, all decked out in yellow and red! And Homer made it to the walk again this year! You may remember that he made an escape for feedom last year. But thankfully I had bought 2 balloons initially. He's really just too perfect for our team. A lot of teams carry balloons as a way for teammates to find them. And obviously for "The Simpsons' Striders" Homer makes sense, but on top of that he has the bouquet of roses (65 roses= cystic fibrosis). The problem was my other Homer had a hole and I wasn't sure if he was mendable (blogger says that isn't a word, but I say it is). Thankfully a little bit of duct tape did the trick!

Amazing how things change in one year. Here's me and Drew at the walk last year acting like our team balloon:

And me and Drew this year:

A few more shots of our wonderful day and our super striders:

Drew strided too!

Drew and a future girlfriend? ;) Loved meeting Gwen!!

And now, perhaps what you've been waiting for... our total!  Drum roll please.....

We raised $8600 as of today!  If you count the money that Stacey and I raised for our half marathon (and I think we should since many people donated to one or the other) then we  raised $9,342! Not too shabby and only $658 away from $10,000. I have a feeling we'll hit that by the end of the year. Which reminds me, it's not too late to donate!! You can still help us out! Please head over here if you would like to let us know just how fabulous you think we are! ;)

Flower Power

Those are all the beautiful flowers I just bought for my garden! They are helping me accomplish two things:

1. Check item #11 off my "11 things in 2011" list and...
2. Helping me raise money for CF!

As one of our fundraisers for Great Strides this year we are selling flowers! I thought it would be fun to sell roses as one of the monikers of cystic fibrosis is "sixty-five roses" (say it out loud...). Well, Flower Power doesn't sell roses (they mainly sell bulbs), but they do sell beautiful flowers, AND we earn 50% of every sale, which is pretty amazing!

They had a great $40 "All Season Perennial Garden" mix that had 4 different plants that bloom from late winter all the way to fall. But I wasn't a fan of all the flowers in it, and, when you buy online, you can get a set of gladiolus for free with the purchase of 4 items, so I created my own "All Season" perennial garden.  For $40 (and a flat-rate shipping fee of only $5!) I bought (clockwise in the photo above):

• African Corn Lilies, which bloom in "late spring to early summer".
• Mexican Shellflowers, which bloom in "early to mid-summer"
• Freesias, which bloom in "summer"
• and Montbretias, which bloom in "late summer to early fall"

Of course, I also got my free Gladiolus, which bloom in "mid-summer to fall". I also already have my pink daffodils which bloom in early spring, so I should have color from early spring to fall! And the best part is I only have to plant them once and they'll keep coming back!

Please check out our fundraiser here and consider buying some plants for your garden. *Apologies in advance to Canadian family and friends- they do not ship to Canada. :( *

A plea

When I was born the life-expectancy for someone with CF was in the late teens or early 20s. Now that I have a child of my own, I can only imagine how my parents felt hearing that news.

But here I am. At age 26 I am healthy and strong. I carried and gave birth to a beautiful 8.5 lb baby. I live, I work, I do all the things any normal 26 year-old might do.

In fact, on top of doing what a "normal 26 year-old might do" I am training to run a half-marathon; the more I run, the healthier and stronger I get and the more I prove just how far CF research has come. I am running for me. I'm running for my son. I'm running to kick CF in the arse.

I chose to run this particular half-marathon because I can run with "Team 65 Roses," a team that raises money for CF research. I knew it would mean a lot to run with a team of people all devoted to bettering lives for those with CF.

I write all this because I am asking you for your help and support. You can help me out in many ways!

1) You can donate to my half-marathon fundraising page here.
2) You can donate to my Great Strides team page here. (This is the fundraising walk I do every year- we raised a whopping $10,081 last year! That's right, we broke $10,000! You all are AMAZING!)
3) You can purchase flowers to beautify your garden and help me raise even more money here.
4) You can pray for me in both my training and fundraising efforts. (This might seem silly to some of you, but I know I can't do this without help and support!)

Please do what you can! It really means a lot to me. Your donations not only help show your support, but go towards the amazing research that has gotten me where I am today. You will not only be helping us get closer to a cure, but you will be helping to better the everyday lives of those of us with CF. You may not realize just how much time, money, and energy goes into daily care (even for someone as healthy as me!) and your money goes towards developing new, better, and faster treatments.

If you choose to donate, whichever page you choose doesn't matter. I love seeing our Great Strides numbers go up every year, but I also would love (and need) some support in my new endeavor! I will "count" both totals towards our Great Strides team total this year.

And maybe this cute little face will help encourage you...

Think he's ready to go for a run with mom?

The Simpson's Striders do it again!

Late, again... I know, but another good excuse.  Yesterday was our CF walk. I had a great time and our team raised... ready for it??  $8,467!!!  Woo hoo!!  We beat our $8,000 goal!

Now, normally we do a lot of fundraisers throughout the year for this walk... last year we submitted Wal-Mart grants (and got $1,000!!), we had a Pampered Chef party, we did a "Dining to Donate" at Applebees... this year I was a little lazy.  I claim to have an excuse but still feel bad that I didn't do as much as I normally do as Team Captain.

In spite of that, however, we are $75 from beating last year's total.  In our 7 years of doing the walk we have ALWAYS beat our previous year's fundraising.  I was resigned to accept that we probably wouldn't this year, but with $75 to go I'm really hoping we can do it!

So, with that being said, we are still accepting donations (the walk is NOT the deadline)!!  Please see the link in the right-hand column of this page!!

This is our team at the walk!  Last year and this year we had a big Homer balloon to go with our team theme (though I am not a Simpson anymore, I am still a Simpson at heart).  Not only did he go with our team theme, but he had a bouquet of roses behind his back.... what do roses have to do with CF?  Well there is a story that a mom was calling her family to let them know she had found out her son had cystic fibrosis.  When she got off the phone her son asked "what is sixty-five roses?"... so roses have become a trademark symbol for CF.  Well.... we lost our balloon.  He was tied to my camera but the knot came undone and he slipped away.  I was sooooo sad! (It's amazing the silly things that seem to devastate me these days).  But I decided I made a good enough team balloon! What do you think?

This is Homer and my dad and sis at last year's walk.... RIP Homer!

And to be honest, I can't believe I made it 3 miles!  Stacey's husband said we should always take a pregnant lady on our walk because he liked our pace this year... we definitely took it very slow.  But I made it, and am proud of myself!  We didn't stick around for the after-activities as we usually do though because the set-up was a little different this year and there were no tables and chairs!  And I don't know but after a 3 mile walk this pregnant lady was NOT going to be sitting on the ground!  So we went out as a team for pizza and had a good time.

So this lady finished a 3 mile walk at 35 weeks! Woo hoo!  And what is Floodling up to at 35 weeks??

Your baby doesn't have much room to maneuver now that he's over 18 inches long and tips the scales at 5 1/4 pounds (pick up a honeydew melon). Because it's so snug in your womb, he isn't likely to be doing somersaults anymore, but the number of times he kicks should remain about the same. His kidneys are fully developed now, and his liver can process some waste products. Most of his basic physical development is now complete — he'll spend the next few weeks putting on weight.

Shameless plug

The video is pictures of my sister and I growing up.  You wouldn't know that we have a degenerative genetic disease.  But we do. And we're looking for a cure!

Many of you know the deal with Great Strides.  It's a walk my sister and I do every year to raise money for cystic fibrosis research.  I've been a little slack this year in my fundraising, what with all the changes going on in my household, but it's not going to stop me from raising money, and it's not going to stop me from walking (even at 8 1/2 months pregnant!).

If you don't know about Great Strides or cystic fibrosis, here's some information:

GREAT STRIDES is the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation's largest and most successful national fund-raising event. This year, I'm walking in the Atlanta - Georgia Tech walk on May 14th. Please help me meet my fund-raising goal of $2,000 by donating. Your generous gift will be used efficiently and effectively, as nearly 90 cents of every dollar of revenue raised is available for investment in vital CF programs to support research, care and education.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a devastating genetic disease that affects tens of thousands of children and young adults in the United States. Research and care supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation is making a huge difference in extending the quality of life for those with CF. However, we continue to lose precious lives to CF every day. That's why your help is needed now more than ever to ensure that a cure is found sooner - rather than later. To learn more about CF and the CF Foundation, visit www.cff.org.

Please consider making a donation! It is easy and secure, just click here!