Author

Leslie

Haunted Hospital Birthday

It was my sister in law’s 40th birthday a few days ago so her husband and I cooked up a spooky surprise party to celebrate! Jenn is my sister in all things scary, we’ve even gone ghost hunting a few times together! I’ll save those stories for another day because one of them still scares me to death…6 years later! Maybe for Halloween! đŸ˜‰ Anyways, she works at our local hospital and with her birthday in October it just made perfect sense to do a Haunted Hospital theme. I kept it pretty low key though since there were a lot of little kids in attendance and I didn’t want to scar them. Check out the details below, warning…it’s full of gross out medical humor, one of her favorite things so they HAD to be included!

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End of Year/Goodbye Gifts

I don’t think I’ve shared very much about why 2017 was a pretty awful year for me. December of 2016 I started having extreme chest pain that resulted in a lot of ER visits, dozens of Dr appointments trying to diagnose me, and a lot of pain medication. It got so bad that we ended up needing to put Brielle in daycare spring of 2017 because I was either knocked out from all the drugs they had me on to manage the pain, at a Dr appointment, getting blood work/bone scans/XRAYS/cardio workups done, or trying to survive when a particularly bad bout of breakthrough pain came through. 12 months after I had my 1st Dr appointment for the pain (and my first of many minsdiagnosises) an amazing Dr finally figured it out, I had a severe case of erosive esophagitis with a lot of acid etching and ulcers all over. On top of that I was having nearly daily esophageal spasms that would last for hours and start to twist in on itself. When that happened it’d push even more stomach acid up, and since I had all this exposed tissue from the etching, when the acid would touch it the pain was excruciating. I’ve had several Drs say that the pain is on the same level as a heart attack. So long story short, I’ve been on a plan of medications, diet changes, and reducing stress (unfortunately, all this was stress triggered and I still get flare ups when my stress levels get a bit too high) to ease the symptoms for all of 2018. I’ve been off all pain medications since earlier this year and I feel part of the world again. Especially since I don’t really remember much of 2017, it’s so bizarre and scary that these drugs can be so powerful to basically erase your memories!

I finally got the go ahead from my Dr to take Brielle out of daycare the beginning of summer and I was absolutely ecstatic! I’ve missed her so much but it was a bit of a bittersweet moment. Our whole family has come to love her daycare teachers and the friends she’s made there so we were all sad to have her leave. I wanted to come up with something that she could give out as goodbye gifts, but they’d work for end of school year gifts as well! For her friends she gave out crazy straws and they were a huge hit with all. Attached was this tag I created. You can download it below

For her daycare teachers we got them each a jar of honey that is locally made as well as another tag I made. You can also download this one as well below. Overall, I’m so thankful that she had such amazing people in her life while things were so unpleasant at home but I’m also so thankful to be healthier and get to see her so much more! Enjoy the tags!

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Back to School Breakfast

I wanted to start a new tradition since Brielle started Preschool this year but also because it works for my mom too since she’s the Head Secretary at her school. Plus, this year had something extra special…my sweet sister in law, Abbey, graduated and started her very first year teaching elementary school!! It was so fun to have my parents and my brother, Alex, and Abbey over for breakfast. It’s not very often we have such a little group so it was nice to have some quality time visiting and hearing about the changes Abbey had been doing to her classroom. I set up just a tablescape for this event and everything came from the Target Dollar Spot or were things I already had. Admission: I fully teased Scott when he bought this abacus years ago, like when would it EVER be used?! Now, I’m pretty stoked he got it since it gave me my color scheme.

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Ant Picnic Party

I went low key for my birthday this year and decided to do a BBQ at my parent’s cabin for just family and close friends. What better theme could work better than a picnic theme but it seemed lackluster to just stick with the classic red gingham. While I was mulling over it, one day Brielle and I were taking a walk and she found this huge ant pile on the sidewalk. She was totally enamored by them and suddenly the inspiration hit me! Ants and picnics…of course!

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