Hope Is On The Horizon

Hi, friends;-)

I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend, I know we are! We started our weekend a little early by getting the kids out of school early on Friday so we could head to STL! Is that wrong? Nah ;-) But we were so excited to have baseball tickets for our beloved Cardinals on Friday night (from my fabulous dr!) and they was Cards/Cubs tickets! Most people here in the midwest know that the Cardinals and Cubs have a rivalry that goes WAY back and they are the most popular games to go to, obvi. The tickets are hard to come by and especially this late in the season, when our CARDS are playing so well and, I’ll just go ahead and say it, heading to postseason…well, we were just very excited, and thankful!! It was fantastic, we won the game with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the ninth!!! And we were also stoked that we got to see future hall of fame pitcher, John Smoltz pitch at Busch. Awesome. Very awesome.

But the real reason we were in STL in the first place was for the Longaberger Horizon of Hope luncheon, which they have as a fundraiser for breast cancer research. I was so honored to be asked by my dr to attend with her as a survivor. So so so nervous, but so honored! Katie attended with me as my guest and we had a great little mother/daughter time while the boys spent their time at Bass Pro. There were a couple speakers, lunch, raffle, auction, and gift drawings. I spoke after lunch and as I was awaiting my turn to speak, I was SO nervous. I was hot-flashin’ all over the place, y’all! But once I got behind the podium, I settled down and was able to deliver my speech. I think I probably talked about 15 mins or so. I got choked up twice, and both times were when I was talking about the strength that God has given me and my family. I tried to put in many ‘light” moments, because 1) breast cancer is such a “serious” subject and 2) that’s just how I roll;-) Everybody stood up and clapped when I was finished, guess that’s my first standing “o”! Wow. It was quite the experience.

I know that in order to use us, God will sometimes put us outside our comfort zone and this was def that. But when they asked me to come back next year I didn’t hesitate to say yes. And I would be very interested in doing something like this again. I hope everyone enjoyed it and got as much out of it as I did. It was a great day! I didn’t get my camera out (darn nerves!) so I will post some more pics when Julie (my dr) sends them to me.

Today has been a great day as well. We slept in this morning and went to church where the preacher had a wonderful message on using our spiritual gifts…Hmmmmm….. Boy, God is good! Then we went out to lunch and when we got home I got on the TM and got in a wonderful 8-mile run!! No leg pain whatsoever! Praise God!!! It was fantastic. I watched the lovely ladies of The View while I was running. I hope Elisabeth comes back from maternity leave soon, I miss her;-( Ya know she’s my girl!

We are relaxing now. The boys all went out back to go bowhunting, and Katie and I are chillin. We are waiting for the Cards/Cubs game to start at 7 on ESPN…going for the SWEEP!

It’s going to be a busy week around here, Tyler’s Jr. High basketball season starts tomorrow! Go Bulldogs!!!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, everybody!