A Ballinger-Bratayley fan fiction
After Caleb passed away, Annie and Hayley's lives as they knew them changed. Since his death, Annie and Hayley have been living the life every kid dreams of; they act, they sing, they have a whole bunch of frie...
A/N sorry I've been MIA. This past week I've been at school from 7 AM to 4 PM everyday for marching band practice. Six of those hours have been spent outside in the hot sun. I'm gonna try to get some stuff up this weekend, but I've been pretty tired to say the least 😂
August 14, 2019 Colleen's POV Now that I've been home for a few days, we're gonna get working on some baby stuff. Erik painted the nursery, and oh my god, I am forever thankful. The two of us are going out today to Target to get a car seats. Katie gave me some tips on how to pick one and I found one online we really like. While we're there, we're gonna try to get a bedside bassinet. I plan to have them sleep together for the first few months, while it's still safe. After that, hopefully I won't have to feed at night, and they can sleep in the nursery. We're also going to order cribs today. We picked white ones out online, and we need to do is order them. We walk through the baby section, immediately overwhelmed. To simplify the process, we go straight to the car seats to find the one we like.
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That is the car seat we end up getting. It got really good reviews online and pediatricians recommend it. It's safe and simple. If we're gonna buy two car seats, I'm not about to buy another if we have a boy, not that it matters if a boy had a pink car seat. We're looking at bassinets, and I'm freaking out. Erik says, "hey, look, Colleen, right here. Here is a twin bedside sleeper. Plenty of room for two kids to sleep safely." He can always manage to bring me back to planet earth when I'm stressing. We leave Target with two car seats and a bassinet. I wanted to buy a lot more, but I'm having my mom bring my PO box stuff over later. I have a feeling there is a lot a lot of baby clothes, the only thing is, the twins aren't announced. I kinda want to dress them alike, but I'm not sure yet. Today, I'm filming the gender reveal. It should go up tomorrow. On the way home, I turn to Erik and say, "love, have you thought about names yet?" He shakes his head. "I don't think we should do names that start with the same letter," I say. "Me neither," he says. As he's driving, I start searching online at twin names. People do the dumbest things; "Harmony and Melody"? Wtf!? I sing but I would never do that. Erik says, "what about two names that go together but aren't too matchy? Like two flower names or something?" "That's kinda cute! I like that! Except, the two that come to mind are Rose and Lily, which I like, but we most certainly can't use. Sorry. I'm not going down that road." I continue scrolling, but eventually give up. "We'll start brainstorming. Make note of anything you ever come up with." It's only until you start trying to name a child when you realize how many people you hate.
Erik's POV *later at home* Gwen, Tim, Chris, Jess, and all the kids are here for the "gender reveal." They all already know, but we're filming for YouTube today. We got purple spray paint and a whole bunch of really big white poster board. We're going to tape it to the fence in our backyard and spray out "twins!" Colleen and I stand in front of the fence, me with a can of spray paint. She says to the camera "okay, Erik's going to spell out what it is in colored spray paint. Also, blue is boy and purple is girl, not that you wouldn't know from the word." "Okay, three, two, one!" Everyone counts down. I spell out twins as neatly as possible and we gave back to the camera, putting the energy on. Rachel takes some pictures of us in front of the board, then all the kids come running. Chris lights off purple smoke bombs and we're just all having a blast. The family, our family.
Katie's [Donnelly] POV Today I'm getting the results back from the MRI I had done on my brain yesterday. They usually read them pretty quickly, but this is really important. We get to find out if they removed the tumor in its entirety. My whole family is at the hospital this time; Mom, Dad, Brennan, Ryan, and me. My doctor comes in my room and says, a smile on his face, "Katie, in its current state, your brain is cancer free." I jump up and squeal. This was the news everyone was pulling for, obviously. This doesn't mean remission. I still have to battle leukemia. But now the pressure of me having a freaking tumor in my head is gone. I look around at my family; my mom is crying, perusal; my dad just kinda looks shocked; and Brennan and Ryan each are patting me on the back and stuff. "So, the doctor continues, we're going to start another round of chemo. You'll have treatment everyday two weeks followed by two weeks of rest. That will be one cycle. You will have 5 cycles in this course. After weeks two and four, we will re-evaluate and make sure it's still working. From week five, we will progress in the direction we need to. And, he continues, you get to go home tomorrow." Today is a day for celebration. A couple months ago, we thought I might die. The cancer cell count in blood had never been higher and the tumor was growing faster than anyone knew. They nearly killed me with radiation and chemo together which were both essentially pointless.
Later that day, I'm back in my hospital bed, lying on my bed in front of my laptop. I'm trying to enjoy the laser few hours of not being sick all the time. Chemo is a good thing for me, but it makes me really sick. I feel good right now because I haven't been on treatment. My head feels so much better. Tomorrow is my first day of chemo and then I'll go home. Everyday I'll be back in outpatient for treatment. I have Colleen's vlog of coming to the hospital on my computer. I smile at the shear thought that Colleen freaking Ballinger was visiting me, some regular old girl from Maryland.
Colleen's POV -August 15, 2019- "Okay, considering all things, we're gonna say between 150 and 175 right? Children included. Good god, that seems like a lot," I say, finally having gotten a chance to sit down with Erik to start planning a wedding. "I mean, by the time you account for all of our immediate family, 150 isn't much. Which is what we want," he says. Erik and I are wanting to have a fairly small wedding. He is a private person, and I'm just not into having a big *second* wedding. However, I don't want the day to be any less special for Erik. It's still his first wedding. Erik approached me one day and told me he thought it'd be cool to be in a theatre. We both have backgrounds in theater because I was all about those musicals and Erik performed a lot of Shakespeare stuff. I thought it was kinda perfect to hold our wedding in a theater. I got in contact with a really cool theater in Santa Barbra--somewhere I've performed as Miranda many times. We booked the venue and set the date for Saturday May 9th, 2020. The girls are technically due at the end of November, but will probably be born around the beginning. They'll be about six months old on the day of the wedding. We're praying they aren't crawling by then. This whole wedding planning thing isn't nearly as stressful as I thought it'd be. All Erik and I needed to do was just sit down and do it. While booking the venue, Erik and I joked around about having a Midandick "themed" wedding and both ended up actually falling in love with the idea. It's not going to be disgustingly Miranda, just simple touches. For example, our colors are going to be purple and red, the colors of the sweats and cat sweater. We're also doing a thing where people can write to us on popsicles that we're going to dye the ends of blue. Then they'll tape it to a mountain silhouette. We're also displaying Miranda lipstick and Patrick's fanny pack. "So, for colors," I say, "they're red and purple, as we discussed. You know, I'm not wearing white. No way, not doing it." I'm not going to wear white and have my dad give me away and pretend like I've never done this before. Everyone at that wedding will know the truth. I'm not a young, virgin, innocent girl getting married for the very first time. I'll be 34 years old and two kids later. "I want you to wear whatever you feel good in," he says. I smile. God, I love this guy a lot.
