Recently in Friends Category

My friend Jill and I did the bouquets and a few small arrangements for a friend's wedding (it was our gift to her) - Congrats Kimberly & Matt!!

Jill and I are on the flower committee at church ... and so we are used to doing HUGE flower arrangements and those don't make us nervous ... but bouquets are a totally different animal. Wedding flowers are ... going to be photographed and scrap-booked for forevermore! They have to look just right!! Jill and I ended up putting flowers together ... and then standing in front of a mirror holding them as the girls would -- to make sure they looked like what a bouquet should look like.

I think they turned out pretty well ... and the most important thing -- Kimberly loved them. AND we got a steal on the flowers from our florist ... we used the same wholesale place we use to get the flowers for our church arrangements ... and so we did the bridal bouquet, 3 bridesmaid bouquets, 3 small table arrangements, 7 boutineres and 2 corsages for $220!! Not bad ;)

More photos

Quick construction and weekend update! Our new house was finished and we closed and moved in about 7 weeks ago. It's been a whirlwind of activity since then ... we've been taking pictures - but haven't had a chance to post them.

This weekend the house had an initiation of sorts ... we were one of three houses in a progressive dinner for our church's student ministry. At some point Saturday morning - we thought we must have been smoking crack to volunteer to have 45 kids under 17 and all the accompanying adults in our brand new house on our brand new carpet and wood floors - eating sticky gooey desserts too! - but then we realized - hey - we can always rent a carpet cleaner on Monday ;) It's not a big deal!

It's a great time to have a party at the house - because we don't have much furniture on the first floor yet :) We borrowed some tall bar-height tables from the church - and had them all over the first floor of the house. The theme of the night was "Black and White" - attire and decor was to be black/white. It was a fun evening -- all the girls were decked out in super cute dresses and some of the guys even had on jackets and ties! I think they enjoyed getting dressed up - and some of them had never done a progressive dinner before - so it was a new experience for them!

Here's a few pics from our house -- more from our house and the other two houses in the link at the bottom.

More Photos of the event at all three houses ...

Seven years ago today we lost a beautiful, kind, smart, witty and strong woman. Amber was 22 and leukemia took her from us.

Today on the drive in to work - I was flooded with memories. Memories of this day - seven years ago - when a circle of friends had their faith rocked to the core. A circle of friends who hadn't believed that their friend would actually die from cancer. Of course she wouldn't - not when thousands of people were praying - every day - for God to touch and heal her body. She is only 22. We believed. We had faith. We had hope.

And then - she was healed. But not in the way we wanted.

Seven years ago today I posted a new entry on The Amber Zone - a blog (though it wasn't called a blog back then) several of us had created to keep everyone updated on how her chemo treatments and eventual bone marrow transplant was going. People from all over the world visited it - friends, family, strangers. Amber would sit in her hospital bed at Vandy and enjoy reading through the comments people posted - encouraging and lifting her up.

Seven years ago today Brenda, her mom, told me to post this - "Amber has been healed. Her pain is gone. She is with Him."

It took a long time for her circle of friends to accept God's will. We questioned Him - and I believe God understands how we cannot sometimes understand His plan. He understands that we do wonder - HOW CAN THIS BE YOUR WILL? WHY? He understands our pain and suffering and questioning ... even when we do not.

But now - seven years later - we understand more. And yet we still grieve the loss of our friend. So many things I will never forget.

I will never forget Amber getting striped tan lines. She had a black and white striped swimsuit - and she tanned through the white stripes. It was the funniest thing. Especially to a fair-skinned redhead.

I will never forget all the trips to Gatlinburg, Knoxville, Florida - our circle of friends went on lots of trips together. We played practical jokes. We were like a family.

I will never forget staying in the tiny rooms at Breezy Point with Amber on a mission trip. Staying up late at night talking about Wade and my latest crush.

I will never forget Amber and Wade (her husband) finding each other when Amber was only a freshman in high school. They were best friends - she made him light up. They married during her last year of college. To some it seemed they were so young - and had seriously dated only each other - and then getting married so young. But now - you see God's hand in it. She had a great love during her short lifetime.

I won't forget a huge group of us rolling a friend's house during the bachelorette party for my sister-in-law and almost getting arrested for it. Amber was sitting in the passenger seat with the leftover toliet paper when the policeman stopped us. He asked us if we had just rolled that house - and in all seriousness she said "Yes, sir. We sure did." The policeman just laughed and waved us on.

I remember going through the drive-through at Taco Bell and every single time - we would sing the gordita song to the cashier. These are the things you do when you're a teenager. Silly things. We did a good rendition of the gordita song though. :)

I will never forget ordering take-out when she was in the hospital - and playing board games so loudly that the nurse came in to tell us to "keep it down a little ... Oh - nevermind - its good for there to be laughter on this floor!"

And then there are things I will be forever changed by experiencing.

I will never - ever - forget seeing my brother, my boyfriend, and four other friends being the pallbearers at Ambers funeral. Young Men. Boys, really. It is an unnatural sight.

I won't ever forget hearing our friend Tim play a beautiful song he wrote for Amber at her funeral. (Tim - who's wife Heather is now fighting for her life in Knoxville after being hit by a drunk & high-on-cocaine loser in a wreck 2 weeks ago.)

I won't ever forget the prayer service we had during DiscipleNow weekend at our church for Amber. The church was packed. Where two are more are gathered ...

I will never forget her parents - Brenda & Mike - unflinching faith. The testimony of their lives is one of complete faith and trust in God's perfect plan for Amber's life. I will always love and treasure them.

I won't ever forget Amber planning her funeral. She had the song "Friends" played for us.

And friends are friends forever
If the Lord's the Lord of them
Though it's hard to let you go
In the Father's hands we know
That a lifetime's not too long
To live as friends

I won't ever forget Dr. Jay - our pastor - reading this from the inside cover of Amber's bible.

Had lunch with four Nashville bloggers today ... Katherine, Pam, Patrick, and Lydia. Thankfully I can continue to be lazy (thanks Katherine) and not write my own entry about it - because Katherine and Pam both blogged about it already! Be sure to check out the plate. It's freaky. :whoa:

When I got home from work yesterday, I found my first birthday present on the doorstep! A beautiful little Amazon box. :bounce: I love seeing Amazon boxes on my doorstep. :cloud9: I quickly opened it up ... and two books off my wishlist were in there Dan Brown's Digital Fortress and Angels and Demons. :bigthumb: A little note from Addie ... who is so thoughtful in knowing I would want some books to take on my trip next week!! (Little did she know I was going to try and squeeze in a trip to Barnes and Noble this weekend to pick up some books! Now I don't have to worry about that -- and can concentrate on all the other last minute details one has to do before going out of town for two weeks!)

THANK YOU ADDIE!!!! You ALWAYS give me good gifts ... (somehow you manage to pick the things on my wishlist that I want more than the other things! You're good!!!)

I haven't done a meme in forever. Here's a short one:

Unconscious Mutterings :: 9.12.04

1. Self-esteem::shrink
2. Migraine::headache
3. Phoebe::Buffet
4. Nervous::tick
5. Punctual::on-time
6. Liver damage::drinking
7. Legal disclaimer::contract
8. Reverend::Pastor
9. Supple::lips
10. Binder::school

What was your first website? My first website was an update site for my friend Amber - when she was going through chemo & the bone marrow transplant for leukemia. We had the site up so that we could post what was going on - so that they wouldn't get a hundred phone calls a day. Everyone at our church could just go online and see how she was. We had a guestbook for people to sign in and send her messages - and she would even write little messages back to people when she was feeling good.

It was one huge long page with animated gifs out the wazoo. I had a huge blinking graphic with her name on it - all the horizontal bars were animated gifs. It was the twinkliest site out there. But at the time - very cool. It was a wonderful way to keep everyone informed.

Everybody has to start somewhere ... thank goodness my fondness for twinkly gifs faded as my coding knowledge grew ;)

Today is the 5 year anniversary of the death of one of my close friends. On pretty much every other day other than today, when I think of Amber I think about all of the hilarious fun times we had together -- of how we laughed and cried together so many times. She was a ... bright light in my life! An exuberant spirit ... a kind-hearted girl with such a witty sense of humor. I am so thankful that I was able to be a part of her life. I treasure our friendship and the many many memories that I will always have of her.

But on this day, the day she died ... I tend to remember the last year of her life ... and how all of us around her lived and breathed everything to do with her diagnosis, her chemo treatments, the bone marrow transplant, remissions, the re-emergence of the cancer, and the eventual realization that she wasn't going to beat it. It all started with what seemed to be a cold .... and then suddenly it wasn't a cold. It was leukemia. Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. I can still remember being shocked to the bone hearing her say those three words. For 11 months, we spent weekends at Vanderbilt while she was going through treatment. When she went into remission, we all went to Six Flags in Georgia and she wore a cool blue cap to cover her beautiful bald head. The cancer came back ... and back to Vanderbilt we all went. We held bone-marrow match donor rallies ... and a donor was found! She got the transplant ... and it didn't work.

And she died March 9, 1999. I think that was the biggest shock of all ... not for one moment did I ever think that she would actually die. I mean ... that happens to other people. Not my friend. She's only 22 years old. She just got married! She's going to go through chemo, have a bone marrow transplant, and then we can get on with living our lives. I believed it! Through two rounds of chemo, we all still believed it! How could it be any other way?

And so that was my first real up close and personal experience with cancer ... it took a wonderful woman from all our lives. A woman I loved, respected, and cherished as a friend.

This past weekend was a Wedding Comedy of Errors. It all began the night before the wedding, when the bridal party was driving from the rehearsal to the restaurant where we were all going to have dinner. None of us are from Boston, and two of the cars got lost. My group got back with no trouble, but unfortunately, the others didn't realize they weren't going the right direction for about half an hour. So our dinner started much later than originally planned .... but we finally all got there and had a great time catching up. It was great to see everyone again. The real comedy started the next day though.

When the wedding ceremony starts, all the bridesmaids are supposed to walk from the club house at the country club to the grassy area where the wedding is being held and then walk down the aisle. It's about 50 yards or so to the beginning of the aisle where the wedding guests are seated. (The wedding was outside. In Boston. In October. It was a bit CHILLY.) We get about 3/4 of the way to the aisle - and suddenly the maid of honor, an extremely intelligient and normally very calm person, stops and says "holy :censor:, I forgot the wedding ring". (While we are shocked that she forgot the ring, we are in more shock because of the expletive that just popped out of our friends mouth. This is a girl who's probably never even said crap!) Moving on ... Does she decide that we'll just fake it and pretend we have the ring? Unfortunately, No. She immediately turns and runs back to the clubhouse to go get the ring. The rest of us are standing there like :uhh: - trying to keep the smiles on our faces (Thankfully most of the "audience" hasn't realized we're back there yet and only 20 +/- people saw her run back inside). So I'm trying to decide if we should just wait for her, or if we should start walking down the aisle. The wedding coordinator walks over hurriedly trying to ascertain what the problem is -- and she tells us to just walk even slower down the aisle - and that hopefully the maid of honor will be back by the time its her turn to walk down.

By this time, everyone has turned around and is looking at us. I start walking down the aisle, and everyone is mouthing to me "what happened?" -- I get down to the front and Shawn, the groom, is like "What's the deal?". I tell him she forgot the ring and now all the groomsmen and the groom are trying their hardest to not laugh. About this time, the maid of honor is running, again, back to take her walk down the aisle. When she finally gets up front with the rest of us, the entire bridal party is having trouble keeping a straight face. Then we all see our friend, the beautiful bride, come out of the clubhouse and from that point on the ceremony went perfectly. (Although we did have a chuckle when the minister asked for the rings! :wink: )

The grooms ring had already been the subject of much laughter: the night before when we saw his ring, I quipped "One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all .... ". During the rehearsal and at the wedding reception, we were all whispering "my precious" to the ring. (All you non LOTR fans aren't going to get this, so just move along .... )

The fun didn't stop there. Unfortunately for me. During the reception, I was dancing with the bride and my shoe caught in her train. And I slipped. My feet literally flew up, like you see in the cartoons, and I landed on my butt. It was mortifying. Just call me Graceful. Steve ran over and helped me up, he was laughing and saying "this would only happen to you ... ". Everybody at the reception was in a circle around the dance floor when I fell , we were doing some wierd game ... my "fall from grace" was a crowd pleaser and also signaled the end of that particular game :wacko:

Needless to say it was an entertaining weekend ... and it was great to finally see these two get married (after 8+ years of dating!). We spent the next two days in Martha's Vineyard & Hyannis ... I'll have to blog about that later!

My best friend is pregnant! :biggrin: Wow! She told me this weekend ... she's only 6 weeks along and only her husband and her mom (and now me) know about it. They're going to wait another month or so before telling everyone else. I wonder why this feels so strange to me? It's even more weird than when my brother and sister-in-law told us they were having a baby -- maybe because he's older than me it just seemed normal. But for my best friend, the girl I used to have sleepovers with when we were little kids -- for her to be having a baby??? :uhh: I am so excited for her :hug: -- they've been trying for about 9 months to get pregnant -- and so they are just on-top-of-the-world excited about it. I guess it just makes me realize that we ARE grown ups now. Maybe it's different with her than with my brother because we're the same age, we got married within a year and a half of each other -- and now she's having a baby! Woah! For several years now, it's been like a wedding festival -- everyone getting married and wedding showers practically every other month. I guess now the tide is changing ... now we'll be having baby showers for the next few years. I guess we all grow up eventually :wacko:

Hillary is awesome. I got this in the mail today:

Very cool Hillary -- I especially love the Chicago magnet. It will shine with pride in my magnet collection!!!! The cute little card was great too -- I'm sure all the things that you listed are going to happen to you while you're in the Windy City. Thanks a bunch !!!

Go visit and tell her you read her blogs.
Go visit and tell him what crooked fingers are good for.
Go visit and tell her to send you some dirty magazines that are left over.
Go visit and check out her new domain name and layouts!!!