Junior/Senior Formal Dance

So I was the head chairperson for the Junior/Senior Formal Dance at Church. I had about 2 months to prepare! Not enough time at all! But it all came together! The main thing I was worried about was it being lame because only 5 guys come and like 50girls! This is what happened last year. So we advertised and tried to put things that guys would like such as.. lots and lots of food. We also had a few Chick-fil-A prizes.

The theme was A Night to Remember. We chose a broad theme so we could change it as needed. But we went along the lines of Enchanted Forest.

We passed out posters to all the ward buildings. And then the night of we placed these two posters outside with the lanterns so they knew which doors to enter from.

 We had this archway when they entered the foyer. I loved our archway!! We used 3 different types of ivy, huge lilies and some white dangley flowers. We also wrapped the arch in black tulle to make it a little softer. We brought plants from home and filled the foyer with some.   

We had a trail of sparkly pom pom leading from the foyer into the gym, we used spray glue and then sprinkled glitter all over them, they where gorgeous but go glitter everywhere! They also rained glitter if you bumped them..

My very favorite part of the gym was our mirror wall. It was gorgeous! We had people bring their cheap $5 mirrors from walmart and also the beveled edge mirror was the prettiest. The light refracted rainbow colors because of the beveled! It was so pretty the hardest part was trying to figure out how to hang them. We finally came up with the idea of a nursery table flipped on its side so that the little ledge under the table was holding them up. We then used t-pins to hold the tops from tipping.

All the plants you see where donated by Ooltewah Nursery. This really transformed the gym! The only thing we have to do is a service project there. I think it was totally worth it! For the center pieces we did a couple of different things. We only had 3 big round tables set up and maybe 4 small rectangle ones. We did not want everyone to have room to sit, we wanted them up and dancing. On all the tables we had vases with glittery rocks and huge sticks/limbs and tea light candles in little glass vases hanging from the limbs. We also draped the limbs with crystal or pearl or silver beads.

On the 3 big round tables we also had 2 fish bowls (that matched the vases on the small tables) with 2 fish in each. This was really cool and a big hit with the youth.You can also see out sparkly rocks in the tall vases!

And of course we had to have a dropped ceiling and an official photo backdrop.

We had 2 photographers to capture all the youth having fun. We then had them upload their pictures to a slideshow that was playing on the stage. And last and definitely not least the buffet table.
We had a salsa bar, chocolate fountain (white and regular) and some meat things.. Everything was DELICIOUS!!!Oh and we had a beautiful ribbon wall behind the buffet table.

PS sorry the pictures are very amazing.. :( but you get the idea. :-D

Ciara's Baby Shower!

So I threw a baby shower for my friend Ciara. It was really fun she is having a little boy, and her nursery is a Circus theme. so we threw her a circus themed baby shower. Not much to really say about it. Other than I love throwing Parties! It's so much fun to scope out Pinterest, and take people's ideas and make it your own.

We had funnel cakes, pretzels, mini corn dogs, chips and salsa, a fruit and veggies tray, cupcakes, brownies, a funfetti mix, popcorn....

 We made a circus tent in the house which was really cute. we added the red streamers to incorporate the popcorn and add red.

 The punch was TERRIBLE! we tried to make the punch that has the cute floating duckies in it. So we put in the koolaid packet, 2 cups of sugar, and sprite. It was soooo sweet, we probably did not need any sugar at all. yuck yuck yuck. We diluted it with ice and added a ton of water and it was still way to sweet!

We had a bored jar and had the guests fill out some fun activities that mom coulddo with baby when he gets older. We played the game where you could not say the word baby and whoever has the most paci's at the end won. We also had a dr Seuss book that everyone could write their wishes for the baby.

 And here's the new Mom-to-Be. Can you see her glow? Because she looks GREAT!

LiveStrong Party

 So I am finally posting the pictures from David's Live Strong/Birthday/Survivor Surprise Party. This was so much fun to plan and do. Although searching online for ideas was really difficult. There was hardly anything! So hopefully others looking for ideas stumble upon my post so they can have some inspiration.

  I basically wanted to incorporate some of the language and things that had become part of everyday life. I also wanted a lot of yellow. I had most of the guests wear yellow (well those that remembered). The fun part was that David had No idea! This was my first surprise party that I have ever been to that was successful. I do not have any really good pictures of David being surprised unfortunately.

 Nora made all the food, which was delicious! We had a really wide variety of foods. We had chips and mango sals, beans and corn salsa, mini corn dogs, and mini pigs in blankets, eggs, veggie platter, fruit platter, cupcakes, a really yummy fruit dip, ranch dip, and chocolate sauce dip.

 I made the bunting happy birthday banner and the big fans out of paper. These where really fun to make and hide from David.The streamers are just cheap streamers that i sewed together. And made them cute a ruffled! We bought the flowers with cute buckets from walmart and the dollar store.

 We had a lot of balloons hanging across the hanging open thingy loft balcony. The poster were made by his younger sister, they say LiveStrong, congrats, happy birthday, cancer survivor.

 This was also really fun, coming up with fun names for our food, that corresponded with our life for the past forever 7 months. TPN is nutriton through your veins. When David had a blockage from the tumor he could not eat. So they hooked him up to this for months a month. David was on sooooo many pills during this time so I could not leave out the drugs.

  I bought the liveStrong bracelets online for our party favors. These where big hitsStron! The little LisveStrong labels where actually the back of the bracelets, which was awesome and super easy to leave out everywhere.

Overall everyone had a great time and David was feeling great, which had not happened in a while. It was fun and bright... My happy cancer free husband! :-D

Cancer Free :-)

On Tues the 14th we had the most amazing news ever! David's tumor is completely gone! We went in to see the doctor and to get chemo. The Dr Anz came in to tell us about the results from the CT scan. He said the tumor is gone and there is only some scar tissue left behind from the radiation. This is probably the best news I have gotten all year. David will still have to undergo another round and a half of chemo. He should be finished with chemo forever on the 11th of September. He will still need surgery after that. But it should be minor. We are so ready to put this all behind us and move on with our lives. Especially David!
I do want to thank everyone for the prayers and fastings on our behalf. We have truly been blessed with mental and spiritual relief. We can feel the prayers and our so grateful. We still have a ways to go so we would appreciate those continuing. We look forward to celebrating when this is all over. We are thinking Ski Trip! Wooohoooo

Mission: Cancer Eradication

So I just have to share an awesome little video that Davids cousin Josh made for him. I made a little picture on the white board in the hospital and he was kind enough to animate it for me! Its a pretty awesome little video.. ENJOY

https://vimeo.com/46336436

hospital visit #6?

Six hospital visits since Feb? That is really a lot.. Basically one a month....A most of those visit where for a week but one was for a day. But most where a week long. Well, how is David after is first round of this new chemo? Well since today... he is now officially bald. I'm still getting used to him walking into a room. I've been having to do a double take because it does not look like my husband who had such thick hair.. But, I know you are all wondering... he does not look half bad. It's growing on me ;-D
But back to the hospital visit... On Thursday afternoon I noticed he was running a fever of about 101.2. So i called COHA (The oncology office) and they said to bring him in tomorrow morning, and also give him Tylenol. So we went in at 9:30 and they did a lot of blood test and his White Blood Cells(WBC) and his granulocytes(GR) were extremely low. David had gotten a treatment of Chemo on tues and from the tests they did we had already known they where low. oh and WBC and GR are what they body uses to fight infections. So they put him in the oncology wing of the hospital and there we stayed until today (Mon). While in the hospital David was put on IV antibiotics. That dropped his fever and his blood counts slowly came up. By the way, the oncology wing at memorial hospital is fantastic! The room is huge! (well compared to other hospital rooms) and we had a microwave and fridge! Yippee! That meant i could microwave little noodle packs for lunches and dinners.
I just looked back to the last post, and you guys do not know anything since radiation.. (and by that I mean you've heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from me ;-) The Drs thing that David has a different type of cancer. Germ Cell. This is typically a testicular cancer. Although they are not 100% sure about that either. It is the one that makes sense. So they decided to treat him like that is what it is. So we will be doing 4 rounds (approximately) of chemotherapy. This chemo should work better because it is geared towards this type of cancers. Each round lasts 3 weeks. The first week David goes in and will be at the oncology center for 6 hours Mon-fri. The 2nd and 3rd week he will go in on Mondays for an hour or so. And that is one round, so 4 rounds will take about 12 weeks. So we have 9 weeks left. This week is a go everyday week.
We will be getting a lot of tests done after this round of chemo so in about 3 weeks we will find out how much the tumor has shrunk.
David is still feeling good about the treatments. Although the chemo has not been to horrible yet. It has made him nausea and fatigued. But it has not been to bad yet he still feels up to doing things.
Me.. Well I start work again tomorrow. So I will hopefully be able to juggle everything and not feel to guilty leaving David alone at chemos :( .
Ok well I think thats about caught everyone up..

The change

Well no one has heard from me in a long time. So I thought I could actually give people updates through me. Instead of you hearing everything from someone who heard something who heard something who talked to me, :-D 

Well where to begin? I guess the beginning? So since David and I have been dating he has had back problems. He finally went to a real doctor back in November. In December the doctors called to tell us that he was anemic. So he started to take iron. In January when they had him come back for a checkup they checked his blood again. the next day they called us and told us to come to the office immediately, and from there we would go to the hospital. They told us he probably had an ulcer, which would be why he was anemic. Unfortunately, that was not so. They found a mass in his duodenum (or small intestine right below the stomach). Later that week we found out it was adenocarcinoma. Which of course David and I had no idea what that was. Soo I left for work thinking it was not anything serious. Fortunately, I called my mom she did some quick research and called me back saying honey you know that's cancer right? Well I had no idea, so i ran a red light. oops! Then I went home early from work and went back to David. Of course after all that they still needed to do more tests. We stayed in the hospital for about a week, and found out the treatment plan for this type of cancer. Chemo, Chemo, Chemo, and then surgery. 

So I will skip ahead to surgery. We finished chemo and got a CT scan about two weeks after they did the last treatment. Then about a week after that we met with the surgeon and scheduled the surgery for a week later. So we had about 4 weeks in between the surgery and the last chemo. About a week before surgery David started to feel terrible. He was not hungry and he was in a lot of pain. Soo we took him to memorial hospital on the Friday before his surgery (his surgery was scheduled for Thursday). We told the doctors that we thought he had a bowel block. So they gave him another CT scan. And told us it looked like the tumor has swollen up due blood and dead tumor cells. So we drove down to Emory in Atlanta on Tuesday so we could be admitted there. And we have been here (Emory) ever since. Because down at Emory they did an MRI and found that the tumor had actually grown. And because it was again the size it was before chemo they could not do surgery. So now we are waiting for radiation to start on wed. We only have one more day and we are very anxious to start. 

Well lets see what else can I fill the world in on. I guess how I feel? I hear people are always asking how we are. Not just the situation, but how we are dealing with it. The hardest thing is when the doctors tell you something new. Some bad news. That is the hardest to deal with. Then once we accept that we can move on, accept it, and figure out how to kick it in the butt! The hardest thing for me is to see my husband in so much pain. He never complains and stays positive. but there is nothing I can do to make it all better. 

But we have received many priesthood blessings, and we know the heavenly father loves us and will never give us more than we can handle. We can feel all the prayers of our family and friends and we know that David is going to get better. He will be healed. We just will be getting very good at patience. 

Well hopefully this fills you all in. I am sure its not a personal as some of you would like, but it is what it is. and I might try and update this and time goes on. Especially since I have so much time as I sit around and wait.