Happy New Year!

I just wanted to take a minute to reflect on 2012.  There are some wonderful things that have happened for our family in 2012 and I am so grateful for those things.  I have an amazing husband and we have two wonderful daughters.  Our family is very blessed.  I can't help tonight but think about those that have been less fortunate and pray for them that their 2013 is better.  I hope that your 2013 is blessed.  I hope that 2013 sees the Jersey Shore come back better and stronger than ever.  I hope that 2013 finds some respite for those that have suffered from the Newtown tragedy.  I hope that 2013 finds our country in a better fiscal position and our politicians understanding that their constituents need them to come together to serve us as a nation not as two parties.  Ok enough pontificating :) May 2013 be a year of health and happiness for you all!!!

Don't let LIFE get in the way of LIVING

I am in the middle of something so unreal and unbelievable that I haven't even fully processed it yet.  I got a call yesterday that changed my life.  My best friend in the whole world had collapsed and preliminary tests were showing a brain tumor.

My heart stopped beating, the tears began to flow, and I just kept saying no this can't be happening.  We have plans, we are supposed to hang out over Christmas week while we were home in Jersey.  The kids and the husband and I were planning on heading to their house for New Years.  All in an instant life just changed.

As of right now she is responding to the medications that she was put on and has been released from the hospital.  Her prognosis is still up in the air because they won't really know exactly what is going on until the tumor is removed.

This post is to serve as a reminder that life can be short, life can be long, but life isn't always what we expect it to be.  We need to roll with the punches, stay strong for those who need and cry with those that support us.

Stop putting off seeing that old friend and make time.  If you have a bucket list shred and just do it.  Don't wait another second.  I am by no means insinuating that the world is ending on Friday.  I just had a wake up call that one of the most important people in my life, the one who knows me like no one else on this planet and vice versa is going through something so terrible, and for a moment I thought that I would lose her.

So LIVE, live for the laughter, live for the tears.  Say I love you.  Dance and be silly and have a good time.  Because when it's all over who cares what anyone says you lived your life and loved it.  Make sure you have no regrets and if you do turn them around.  Don't let life get in the way of living.

Please if you could all take a minute and say a prayer for my friend and her family that they make it through this ordeal and that she comes out stronger than ever.

Watching playtime

All my girls ever want to do is be dressed up in costumes.  J2 especially from the minute she wakes up in the morning, until bedtime, she wants to be dressed up.  She dances and prances around the house with different characteristics of the particular costume that she is wearing.  It's pretty adorable.  When she's dressed as Aurora she sings "Once Upon a Dream" and dances around the living room spinning and twirling.  When she has Cinderella on she sings "A Dream is a Wish".  It really is too cute for words.  She never wants to just be J2.  She always wants to be in a fantasyland.  J1 likes to dress up but is far more practical.  She plays with her dolls and has elaborate conversations and scenarios that she plays out.  I love listening.  I almost hate to play "with" them because watching their imaginations work without my involvement is so amazing.  Listening to J1 with her toys and her blocks is so intense sometimes.  I hear her telling her dolls some of things that we tell her.  She makes sure that they say "please" and "thank you" to each other.  She talks to them like she talks to us.  She sings songs to them.  She also loves to build towers and castles with her blocks.  I never thought that watching my kids play together and apart could be so fulfilling.  As much as I love to play with them, I enjoy watching them use their own imaginations to play on their own even more.  I just can't believe how lucky I am that I have two healthy and beautiful little girls, and an amazing husband.