Birthday Bumps

If you’re reading this you may know that I turned 25 a few days ago. I spent the majority of my birthday week in California, which made a hard day a whole lot lovelier.

 

A brief overview of the day:

A homemade birthday breakfast with the cutest balloons

A surprise delivery of flowers & amazing presents sent all the way from Boston. (THANK YOU Caitie, MK, and Jeff!!)

Lunch at a restaurant that only serves mac and cheese

Pedicures

Mini golf at Urban Putt

Ramen and Cupcakes

Night at the Exploratorium (which is basically an interactive science museum)

 

 

It was a wonderful day full of surprises, flowers, adventures, thoughtful messages, treats, and puppies.

 

 

But now I want to talk to you about the most important part of the weekend.

 

Every year Ariel and her family celebrate the lives of lost loved ones by doing something good for the world. This year, they organized an amazing party where each guest had the opportunity to build and decorate wooden boxes that will be filled to the brim with donated art supplies and activities. These boxes will then be given out to children at pediatric hospitals undergoing treatment for life threatening illnesses.

 

 

In addition to the art supplies the boxes will also have one of 3 very special books inside. During the party the guests split up in to 3 rooms and each group created stories that will be turned in to a finished book with various activities inside. Each story was based off one of the three people we were honoring that day: Ariel’s late sister and father, and Bryan.

 

Bryan’s story, Bravo Bumps will be a coloring book full of mazes and activities for children. It’s a story of a small octopus named Bumps who makes his way from the San Francisco Bay to the Globe Theater in London where he pursues his dream of becoming the greatest actor on land & sea.

 

 

It’s not an accident that this little thespian happens to be an octopus. Bumps played a big part in our relationship. When you’re in a long distance relationship you do a lot of things alone. A lot of things that you’d love to face with your significant other… you have to tackle solo. And, as two people who had a lot of challenges thrown our way on the regular it was easy to feel a bit lonely in the face of certain obstacles. So, Bumps was born.

 

Bryan and I would send each other the little octopus emoji (who we named Bumps) to help get us through those tough moments. Whenever we were sad, anxious, excited, or nervous and we couldn’t physically be with one another- Bumps was there.

 

Our first Christmas together I made Bryan a little Bumps out of felt (so he’d never have to do anything scary by himself).

 

 

Now Bumps lives with me, so that I never have to do anything scary alone. I hope that Bravo Bumps will bring smiles to these kids and make those long and often difficult hours in the hospital a little brighter.

 

(Bumps making challah with us!)

 

I can’t wait to share the finished book with all of you.

 

<3

 

 

Here are a few quick sketches of Bump’s adventures I did while we were writing Bravo Bumps: