On Saturday, got up at 5:30 and the anxiety over the party planning and all the emotions of what the day would bring were swirling around in my head. We decided to head over to the gym and get our workout in first, since we knew it wasn’t going to be the healthiest day of eating.
I was nervous, excited and emotional. I’ll never forget the feeling of fear that day, 1 year ago, when we heard the news, but we didn’t want the day to be about those sad anxious feelings. We wanted the day to be about the celebration of the fight and just enjoying the life we got a second chance at living.
We hurried home and got the food going and started getting everything packed up so that we could get things checked off the to-do list. I’m a perfectionist of the worst proportion and I just wanted everything to be perfect. We were celebrating the most important person in my life and by giving to other people, that’s how I show my love.
I worked hard on this party. I spent hours shopping for the perfect plates, cups, napkins and trays and serving utensils. I spent even more hours designing cupcake flags and cutting each one out by hand with an exacto knife and thinking of decorations and games for kids. We ordered LiveStrong bracelets, balloons and cupcakes. Everything had to be perfect. And, it was.
Now, I can laugh about it, but we were running about half an hour behind schedule and stopped at our local grocery store to pick up the cupcakes I ordered, plain vanilla with extra yellow icing to match my cupcake flags.
Here’s where I had an anxiety attack. They brought out 4 dozen cupcakes with yellow roses with green leaves! I kinda freaked out, and they insisted that’s what I had ordered. Turns out that the lady had filled out the order-sheet wrong and wrote the icing color next to flowers. We had to wait for them to redo them, which only took about 15 minutes, but it did put us 45 minutes behind schedule. However, the two bakery ladies were great with their customer service and even gave us a dozen of the cupcakes for free. Plus, there was no charge for the extra icing either.
We got to the event location and my best-friend Amy and her mom brought some food over and came to help me get everything set up for the party. I frantically set about making the food look perfect as well as getting everything set up.
It was such a gorgeous day and we picked a location we had found out about through a Twitter friend called Party & Event Creations and it worked out PERFECTLY. There was a huge yard where the kids and adults headed out to play and once we got all the food ready and a few of our lost guests had made it, we called everyone in to eat.
Here’s where I wanted to say thank you to everyone, but I got so choked up and didn’t want to cry in front of everyone. So I just said Thank you and let’s eat. It was a feast!
If I was a good public speaker, I would have wanted to tell everyone how proud I was seeing Casey surrounded by all the people who love and support him. To thank everyone, who traveled from around our area to celebrate his fight and his life. That the feelings of fear and anxiety that 1year before had overwhelmed me, were now was replaced with so much joy that it felt like my heart couldn’t hold all of it.
Just to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart because I can’t even express how much it meant to me. Even those who wished they could be there and sent us messages of love and support. I cannot thank you enough. It was such an amazing and inspiring day, even now just thinking about it still makes me smile.
You can see our entire Facebook album of pictures from the celebration here.
While we celebrated Casey, we also celebrated and raised awareness for those who are survivors and those who are currently fighting. We will work as hard as we can every year to raise as much money as possible to help find a cure for this horrible disease.
We’ve just kicked off our Relay For Life efforts and if you care to make a donation to help us in this fight or buy a Luminary in honor of/in memory of someone you know who has battled cancer, please consider visiting our Relay For Life website.
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