Letter to Mason

  

Dear Mason,

Tomorrow is your very first birthday!! Mommy & Daddy are so very excited to be celebrating this first of many milestones with you! As I look down at you asleep in your crib tonight, I am overcome with emotion. Being your Mommy has been the most joyful, exhausting, rewarding, funnest & fullest year of my life. I am so very thankful for you & even more thankful that God chose to give us you. Thankful that he picked you just as you are & blessed us with your precious little life.

Exactly one year ago this evening I was admitted into the hospital to prepare for your arrival. I remember so very clearly the turn of events that happened up until meeting you for the first time. 

When I saw you for the first time, I was in awe that you were finally here. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. When I heard you cry for the first time it made Mommy cry because I had waited so very long to meet you & be able to hear that beautiful sound. 

 

When I finally got to hold you in my arms you looked right into my eyes, stopped crying & it was truly love at first site. It was the most magical moment of my entire life. In that moment, I was your mother & you were my son & you would be changing my life forever.

So hard to believe that a year has passed since that amazing day!

This past year brought us many "firsts" - we saw your very first smile, heard your first giggles, cheered you on when you began to roll over for the first time. I cheered & cried when you finally started to crawl since you had struggled with getting the crawling thing down. 

You had your first solid foods, took your first steps, said your first word & so, so much more. I am so proud & amazed at how far you have come in one short year. 

You came into this world weighing 7 lbs 4 oz looking so tiny, so soft & pink, so innocent & dependent & absolutely perfect in every way. And now look at you! You are no longer a little baby but now a little boy - 24 lbs of laughing, talking, walking, clapping, happiness who charms every person lucky enough to meet you.

You are turning one year old tomorrow & beginning a new journey - a journey that will take you in many different directions & teach you many things. As I sit & watch you sleeping, I think of the man I hope you’ll become & how I will do anything & everything to be a good mother to you & help guide you in your journey through childhood & into adulthood.

You have grown into such an amazing little person already. You are so sweet & so very loving. You never grow tired of giving out hugs or kisses & I hope as you grow older that never changes. You are so smart & I know in my heart there are big things ahead for you. You also seem to have a gentle & wise spirit - my little “old soul.” You have already made this world a better place for being in it & I feel so honored to have been chosen to be your mother.

You melt my heart every time you smile & when you wrap those little arms around my neck & squeeze ever so tight - I melt every single time. Those hugs help make the world right again. Never in my life have I been so excited to wake up because I get to wake up & see you. I look so forward to when you finally open those beautiful brown eyes of yours & I get to see your precious, smiling face. It makes me excited for what the day has in store for all of us.

Tomorrow we will start a new chapter in our lives - life with a one year old. This last year has been an amazing journey. It has been the most rewarding, incredible, special time in my whole life. I will cherish the experience of your first year of life in a very special way & treasure it always in my heart.

Words cannot express how much I love you Mason. You are my little Bubba, my sunshine, my heart, my purpose for being - my everything. I’m so proud of you & so very honored to be your Mommy. This last year has been filled with priceless memories & I look forward to so many more to come.

Lastly, my prayer for you, my hope for your future is that you become a man of God, a leader, a man who is stable, caring, independent, smart, gentle & strong like your Daddy. I pray for your purpose & for your life story. Being our "miracle baby" I know you are here for something big & important & I thank God for letting us be here to witness your life. 

Happy first birthday, my precious, sweet little man!

Love,
Mommy & Daddy

Winter ONEderland

Those of you who know me know that I have a few crafty skills up my sleeve & when it comes to party planning or making my own creations, nothing I do is plain & simple. I LOVE planning parties so why would planning my son's 1st birthday party be any different?!?

I have been planning this shin-dig for quite some time now & to say it was SO much fun is an understatement! Once I decided on a theme there was no stopping me. I spent whatever free time I had on the internet searching sites like Etsy & Pinterest, gathering ideas, saving & pinning pic's. I guess you could say I was a bit out of control but I didn't care. I never thought I would ever be given this chance to throw a 1st birthday party for my child so forgive me if I wanted it to be amazing & perfect. Yes I know he won't remember any of it but I don't care. He survived his 1st year. We as parents survived his 1st year & to me that was something worth celebrating!

Back in December I had decided on a Winter ONEderland theme (thank you Pinterest) full of snowflakes & penguins with a red, teal & white color scheme. I knew I wanted a dessert table with lots of yummy desserts to pick from & I knew I wanted the party catered so I wouldn't have to do any cooking or prepping of food. I also knew I wanted the location of his party to be fairly close so we ended up having his party at a local bar & grill in their private room & it was absolutely perfect for our event.

So after weeks of party planning, today was the big day. All the hours I had spent creating, printing, cutting, pasting, gluing, going over in my head exactly how I wanted his party to be had finally paid off & after it was all said & done - it was amazing. It was perfect. It was everything I had imagined it would be for our little man! 

40 of our very closest family & friends were invited to the birthday event & all but 4 were able to come. Those that attended may have thought it was a bit over the top. Others may have thought it was the best 1st birthday party they have ever been to. Some may have even thought I was trying to win the "Mother of the Year" award. But to me it wasn't about any of those things. It was about my son's very 1st birthday celebration & to me he is worth "over the top" plus oh so much more :)

So without further ado, here are pics from Mason's Winter ONEderland party :) I will warn you though....there are LOTS of pics.

First - some of the "details":

Invitations

Mason's party shirt

Table centerpieces

Dessert table

Strawberry Cheesecake

Mason's "smash" cake

Sugar Cookies

Vanilla/Chocolate Cupcakes

 Candy/Chocolate Tray

Taco/Nacho bar

 Mason's birthday "throne"

 

Monthly photo banner

Favor bags for the kids

  The "goods" inside favor bags


High chair banner

 Now for some pictures with family & friends:

Mommy & Mase

Mase with Daddy

 

Mason with Uncle James

Grandpa & Grandma "Farm" with their grandson

My sister-in-law Meghan with Mase

Uncle Steve with his nephew

My dear friend Stetson (of Stetson's Famous Cheesecakes) & his wife Janice with the birthday boy

Mason about to "smash" into his cake

Mommy, Daddy & our birthday boy

 

Mmmmm - this is good!

 
Post cake-smashing - all giggles with Grandpa "Farm"

Mase with the "game-night" girls:

After the festivities were over, we headed back to our house & decided to open gifts there rather than at the party. Mase was so spoiled by everyone's generosity & he had so much fun pulling tissue paper out of bags & checking out all his new clothes, books & toys.

It was such an amazing day & so much fun was had by all - especially the birthday boy! We are truly blessed to have Mason in our lives & we thank God each & every day for him. 

Thank you for supporting & loving our family. I hope you enjoyed getting a glimpse into Mason's very 1st birthday party & perhaps got some inspiration for your own parties as well!? A special thank you to all our family & friends who made it out & made Mason's party ONEderful :)

Vendors

Invitations: Etsy - PuzzlePrints

Party shirt: Etsy - Pocketbaby

Penguin centerpiece/favor bag treats: Oriental Trading Company

Strawberry cheesecake - Stetson's Famous Cheesecake

Cupcakes/Sugar Cookies/Smash cake: Gretchen's Gourmet Goodies

Cupcake toppers/penguin confetti: Etsy - A Delicate Gift

Monthly banner/menu placecards: Etsy - Adorable Affair

Birthday, high chair banner & favor bags: made by yours truly :)

Rock Chalk!

This year I had gotten my husband tickets to a KU basketball game for Christmas & I was looking so very forward to going myself as I have never been to Allen Fieldhouse to watch a game - shocking I know! You can imagine my disappointment when I started getting sick a few days before the game :(

I had woke up Saturday morning hardly able to get out of bed but I was determined that nothing was going to keep me from going to this game the following day. I made my way to the Take Care Clinic that morning & got checked out & my diagnosis was sinus infection, bilateral ear infection & strep-throat - I seriously haven't been that sick in a LONG time. I was given an antibiotic, spent $25 in cold medication & made my way back home to crawl into bed. Thank goodness Shane was here to take care of Mason - I honestly don't know how single parents manage when they are sick?!

Sunday was game-day. We had Miss Katie come & babysit Mason for the day while we made our way to Lawrence, KS. I was feeling slightly better as we left & was so high on cold medicine & adrenaline that I didn't even notice the low-grade fever I had. We had lunch in Lawrence & then made our way to the Park-n-Ride shuttle area & were shuttled on over to Allen Fieldhouse. 

We had General Admission tickets & unfortunately this was the line that awaited us. The windows above the guy's head in the red hoodie was the entrance. There we stood in the 9 degree temp's, for around 20 minutes - did I mention I had a fever??

The line seemed to move fairly quickly & before we were able to get chilled to the bone we were inside Allen Fieldhouse. Unfortunately we didn't get a lot of time to look around at all the memorabilia as we needed to find a seat. 

 

General admission = first come, first serve so when we got into the building it was like letting a herd of cattle out to pasture. Everyone ran inside to get a seat & surprisingly we didn't have any trouble finding good seats. We ended up sitting right behind the student section which was super fun as everyone around us was pretty rowdy.

We were playing San Diego State University who ended up giving us a heck of a game!

Announcing the KU players:

Half-time:

During the game:

Unfortunately KU ended up losing the basketball game which was quite disappointing but being there in person watching the game was priceless. We will definitely be doing this again! I just hope next time I am feeling better.

Rock Chalk!!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to our family & friends! 

This past year brought us many blessings & we have so much to be thankful for heading into the new year - our little man, our family, good friends, our health, good jobs & so much more. Sometimes it takes a certain person or a specific situation that act as gentle reminders throughout the year to help you remember how truly blessed you really are. Ironically, as 2013 was coming to an end, this happened to me on New Year's Eve.

Past New Year's Eve's for us have often been spent at home, curled up in bed fast asleep when midnight rolls around & honestly - I wouldn't want it any other way. We can barely stay up past 10pm anymore, we are not big partiers/drinkers like we were in our 20's & early 30's & besides, we live in a big city & I would rather not be driving amongst all the drunk people out there on the interstates after midnight has come & gone.

This year however I spent NYE a bit differently & experienced one of those "gentle reminders" that 1) again how short life can be & 2) how very blessed I am for my health, the health of my husband, son & family.

Most of you who know me know that I work at the largest heart hospital here in Kansas City in their Cardiovascular Lab. It is a place where a Cardiologist & a team of 3 nurses/techs perform heart cardiac catheterizations on patients as well as do angioplasty, stent placement in the heart & leg arteries, biopsies on our heart transplant patients, surgically implant pacemaker & defibrillator's & work with the CVOR to do TAVR & AAA repair procedures. Along with all these duties we are expected to be on call nights & weekends for that unsuspected patient(s) who is having a heart attack (myocaridal infarction) & needs an emergent heart cath procedure to open up a blocked artery around the heart - which is what causes a heart attack.

Let me first say that I LOVE my job! I must love it as I have been doing the same job for over 18 years. (Wow does that make me feel old?!) However, as mentally challenging as some of the days may be or as tough as some of our patients & situations can be, one can find yourself starting to become "cold" to those days or situations or even the patients. Unfortunately, it happens to a lot of people in healthcare & a lot of us move on to other jobs in the hospital when you start "not caring" anymore. But it seems that every single time I start to feel like that I get that one patient who stands out & reminds me why I love this job in the first place & why I keep returning day in & day out.

This year I was on call for New Year's Eve/Day & we had gotten called in around 9:30pm on NYE. I was just starting to get ready for bed when the pager went off. It was freezing cold outside & I wasn't happy at the thought of getting in my car & having to drive the 38 mile one-way trip to the hospital. How selfish of me, right? But I made it there safely & we were able to open up the patients' blocked heart artery & another life was saved.

Just as we were leaving the East hospital our pager went off again. More mumbling & grumbling. This time it was for the South hospital so the cath lab team hurried to the other facility where our patient was clearly in distress & not doing well. There was a lot of chaos, rushing around, the Dr was being a royal PIA & tensions were high. I remember looking up at the clock at 11:58pm & thinking "what a heck of a way to bring in the New Year"!? 

We were able to get him stable, open up his blockage, place a stent & transferred him to the ICU in stable condition. I made my way home around 1am & while driving I started thinking about the case. About how I was getting too old for these middle of the night call-ins. How mad I was that Dr. C was such an ass towards us. How I was feeling unappreciated for what we do. Then my focus shifted to what a great thing we did tonight for 2 patients. Those 2 men were someones son, someones dad, someones brother & uncle. We had a hand in saving their life, spending another year with their families & for that I began to feel proud. 

Fast forward to the following Monday & imagine my surprise when I had this email in my inbox at work from our 2nd patient on New Year's Eve:

“I wanted to contact EVERYONE at Saint Luke's South ER, the Cath Lab Team, ICU group..and probably another 50 people I am not even aware of...and of course Dr. C & his team for saving my life on New Year's Eve. I am in disbelief that so many strangers worked so desperately hard to keep me alive. Talk about dancing with stars. I had dozens of stars that night doing a coordinated dance just for me. 

On a night when so many other people were out celebrating a simple change to a new year, I found myself experiencing the best New Year's Eve show in town put on by a group of professionals that gave up their night to be there to give me my life. I am forever grateful. Could you please help me in getting this message to all the people involved? 

Thank you!”

This letter brought tears to my eyes.

I am one of those "stars" this patient talks about. I had a hand in saving his life. He is forever grateful because of us. 

Thank you Sir for the "gentle reminder". For reminding me that what I do is important. No matter how simple or complex a procedure may be, what we do is important. 

I can't think of a better way to end & begin the year :)

Here's wishing all our family & friends health & many blessings in the New Year!