Rain pounded the roof and windows when my alarm went off at 7:15 am. I jumped out of bed because I had to leave early enough to get to my Pickleball Club, The Putaway. I hoped my teammates would arrive around the same time so we could all do a proper warm-up. I knew the competition would be fierce. I play a lot of pickleball with most of the ladies at the club, but the stakes are higher in a 3v3 tournament format. We also had teams from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Getting

It has three layers It swallows pretty fabrics Rectangles, squares, triangles Hours at the sewing machine A Treasured Keepsake Creature Comfort for all It’s great for a chilly car ride It’s great to make a fort It’s great to spread out on a bed It’s great to color a room (even a hospital room) You may know by now… It’s a Quilt! Manufacturing Sunshine! This quilt is called Manufacturing Sunshine. I created it because I needed to feed pretty fabrics into the throat of my machin

Fall has really arrived in the Mid-Atlantic, with temperatures dipping below 50 degrees F this morning. Who doesn't like to curl up under the quilts and down comforters with a good book? We can now! Seth Godin’s current list of book recommendations includes 491 books across many genres of delightful, insightful reading. James Hunt curates and maintains the list, and it includes Marketing, Grit, Classics, Business/Leadership, Autobiographies/Biographies, and more. Click here f

Okay, so the annual Special Love Gala was just outside Childhood Cancer Awareness Month (September) by two days. It was the best event of the year, and a great way to top off the previous month! Seeing “old” friends and meeting new friends of Special Love is one of the highlights of the evening. The other activities are no less fun: perusing silent auction items, cocktails and appetizers, and then dinner and dancing with a “fake” casino. NBC4 meteorologist and Special Love Bo

What a month of posts in September for childhood cancer. Today, I took a sort of break from writing, and focused my day on errands and quilting. Besides posting 30 blog posts in a row, I also did other things that I want to share here soon. One super fun long weekend was spent in South Haven, Michigan, with the BGGGW adventure. That’s the Bowling Green Girls Gone Wild visit. Six awesome ladies (who live coast to coast) got together to have fun, create new memories, reminisce

It’s been a month of crafting stories and posts to share during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. I poured my heart and soul into every one. Some were long. Some were short. Some came easily, while others took hours and plenty of tears to write. The post I wrote about my dear friend and Art Therapist, Tracy Councill (Day 18), took me five hours. There were tears and deep thoughts about her life and the thousands of children and families she touched through art—helping chase a

On this second-to-last day of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, I want to shine the light on the people who so often stand just outside of it: The caregivers. Of course, my experience comes from childhood cancer. For years, Bill and I cared for Ryan while also trying our best to make sure Olivia had the childhood she deserved. A definite balancing act, with more balls in the air (and spinning plates) than we could count! But caregiving certainly doesn’t belong only to the can

I decided to read a favorite chapter from The Focused Fight - Chats from the Other Side of the Bed (Chapter 15 - Seeds of Advocacy). It’s become a fan favorite (or at least, several people who told me liked this chapter a lot). Chapter 15 has more, of course, and so does our story. But maybe this small glimpse from the other side of Ryan’s hospital bed is enough for today. When I wrote this book, I wanted people to understand that childhood cancer doesn't happen only to the c

It’s fairly typical that siblings of a child with cancer in the family get a raw deal. The ones that are healthy and still need attention from parents and other adults in their lives may think they are overlooked, and are a lot of the times, that’s the case however, never intentional. It’s because the kid with a cancer diagnosis and all its craziness that turns families upside down, trumps the healthy kid(s) every time (or most every time). At least that is what I saw in my e

During Ryan’s main treatment for the first 10 years, we had three dogs; Wally, Lucky, and Lucy (not all at the same time, though). Wally first, then we added Lucky, and when Wally passed on, we adopted Lucy. And no, our dogs couldn't cure cancer. But they had other duties to keep all of us smiling when we were around. You know doggone (pun intended) well that they couldn't raise Ryan's blood counts, make a transfusion go faster, take away the side effects of chemotherapy, or