our little adventure.

about a month ago. well it really started back in august when my sister in law was in town right after we got the cancer diagnosis. i told her i was having a real hard time sleeping. so she decided to set me up with a little google reader and added some of her favorite blogs. something for me to read at 2am or 4am when my mind was racing. one of the blogs was enjoying the small things. a blog by kelle hampton. check it out. its big. and inspiring. begin with the birth story. needless to say i started reading it. loved it. and found joy in her writing, pictures, and her story. so when cancer was not that fun to talk about sara and i would text, chat, or email about kelle's blog posts and it began to be something we enjoyed to together although states away. so a month or so ago when kelle mentioned her daughter's upcoming birthday...sara texts me with...wouldn't it be fun to go to nella's party (kelle's daughter. who is ava's age). to which i respond...i will email her. and sara says...okay if you get us invited to this party i will fly us to there. so i decided to casually send kelle an email. and i did not tell sara or justin. in case i never heard back from her or whatever. well when i woke up the next morning at 7:30am there was an email from kelle. i was shocked. this women has thousands. maybe millions reading her blog. no joke. but she said come. with open arms she invited us. not knowing us. or whether or not we were crazy. she got us. she understood it. so we went. the floyds and the ryders flew to naples. to help celebrate nella. meet family. meet friends. share in it all. and man...did we share.

we have great husbands. they willingly took off work. watched the kids so we could hang out with kelle, meet her friends, and go to isle of capri although it was a little cold and mostly just a girl thing. they helped make this entire weekend possible. as soon as we received the email from kelle justin said...we have to go. i have not seen you this excited about something in a while. we need to go. and we will make it happen. and we did.

it was a great combination of our family sharing an unexpected wintertime vacation together and sharing in the festivities of the weekend with kelle, her family, and her dear dear friends. we shared a hotel suite with the floyds. that was a little crazy with ava and jack and isabella running around. but we laughed. and we laughed hard. ate good food. and just spent time together. it was so nice. and i did not feel sick at all. writing that made me cry. i like not feeling sick. i like that the only thing that reminded me i had cancer this weekend was my hat. and meeting new people where in turn i shared our cancer story a few times. and i felt loved. and strong. and it was good.

thanks for a really special weekend.

 isle of capri