This is me
One of the most asked questions I receive nowadays is ‘Are you still working?’
If you mean am I still waking up at 2:30am, driving from Boca Raton to the West Palm Beach WPTV NBC NewsChannel 5 studios, reading and writing scripts, prepping for the anchor set or heading out on a reporting assignment in the live truck somewhere from Miami to the Treasure Coast... then no.
Those were some exciting and exhausting days!
Here is a rundown of what I’ve been working on for the past ten years and why this phase of life has been full of more work, joy and sadness than I could ever have imagined.
In the spring of 2010, my now-husband Andrew got down on one knee along the pristine shoreline of the Boca Beach Club and asked me to marry him. WPTV viewers who spotted the plane called in to the newsroom to find out what my answer was…
This guy was full of life. A smart, hardworking, handsome, fun, live-for-the-day, athletic Louisiana outdoorsman, huge heart kind-of-guy who also loved to cook. So yes. I most definitely said yes! I packed my bags and joined him in Dallas where he lived and worked. We had been dating long-distance and we decided it was time to be in one place.
Andrew and I planned the wedding of our dreams at the Boca Raton Resort & Club and tied the knot in 2011.
The following year we purchased our first home in Dallas and were thrilled to welcome our first child, Maya Blue, to the world. Motherhood began and there weren’t many moments of this job that I didn’t enjoy and embrace.
Our parenting world blossomed even more and very unexpectedly in 2013 when Andrew and I learned we somehow created twins! I surprised my family with the news on a trip to Michigan that fall. I put one of those Big Sis shirts on Maya (who had just turned one) and “ x 2” on her back. When Maya started to crawl around, my mom noticed the “ x 2” and said…. “Are you two months along?” I replied while pointing to my belly, “No, there are two babies in here!” Great shock and pure joy for all…
Our twin boys, Clay and Cody, arrived deep in the heart of Texas in April of 2014. Clay was born first and Cody came along one minute later. Much of that time is a delicious blur; we had three babies under the age of 18 months. I’m pretty sure that’s when I started to describe our world as ‘wonderful chaos.’
Amidst the baby highs and baby lows, sleepless nights and sweet lullabies, stroller walks and nursing challenges, countless laughs and first foods came a phone call from home in Florida. My mom discovered she had stage four metastasized colon cancer (she had quietly tackled colon cancer a few years prior). Later that night, Andrew made a decision that changed our family trajectory altogether.
The next day, unbeknownst to me, he called my parents and said we would move from Dallas to Boca, that he could make it work by commuting and that we would be there to join them and my brother’s family in Florida to help them through this cancer crisis. My mom tried to put her foot down and said that we would all just visit each other more often and that she and Dad would be just fine.
Once my engineer Andrew has a plan, it tends to stick.
In January of 2015, we moved to Boca Raton and found a condo just three blocks from my parents place (placing three babies in strollers to visit them was much easier than daily car travel!).
My work as a stay-at-home mom continued as I slowly started to add on another title: caregiver.
Mixed in with life’s most wonderful memories of preschool plays and Mommy-and-me teas, beach days and bike rides, dinners out with friends and nights in just hanging out at home were hours with Mom waiting at doctor’s offices, attending chemotherapy treatments and surgeries in Michigan and Boca, grocery shopping and errand running for both my family of five and my two parents. For the first two years, Mom was her usual smiley self for at least a portion of the day… full of joy when out and about, able to go out to lunch or dinner, enjoy trips with Dad and dear friends, attend Junior League Sustainer events, girls luncheons, family gatherings, even babysit or help pick up the kids from school.
By the time 2018 rolled around however, the cancer started to pull the tug-of-war rope towards its side. Mom was weak much of that year. We were blessed with a few more family gatherings, one last trip to the Kentucky Derby thanks to the best of friends, and countless more laughs thanks mostly to her six grandchildren.
On August 18, 2018, my mom passed away. The cancer didn’t play fair. It was ultimately pneumonia that took our mom from us and because she had cancer, she couldn’t fight them both. Not a fair fight in my opinion.
We worked hard to make the cancer go away and Mom’s battle lasted longer than most of her doctors predicted. We had ‘bonus’ time… but still, I needed at least ten more years of Mom in our lives. Thanks to Andrew and amazing babysitters and friends, I was able to give the gift of care to my children in their first days and my mom in her last days.
I miss her like crazy and the care continues for both my father and father-in-law, but that's a whole other story for another day.
So there, that’s what I’ve been up to with a whole lot more mixed in. Now that the kids are all in one school and we have moved my dad right next door to us, I’ve been able to carve a few extra minutes in my day to breathe, seek some self-care and now, create!
That’s where this website and blog come in. I’ve established a place where I could combine my emcee work highlights, spread the word about volunteer opportunities for busy people and families, share with you some things I’ve learned along the way and maintain a news/lifestyle/travel blog to feature interesting events, places and people. I hope you join me…and like I always would say as I ended a newscast, enjoy your day!