summer trip #1 - family...

Family is very near and dear to my heart.  I love spending time with anyone in our family, and so I was looking forward to our vacation at the end of June visiting my immediate family on the farm, and also attending the first family reunion on my mom's side at Inspiration Hills Bible camp.  This week turned out to be a huge blessing with lots of quality family time and a lot of fun too.

Highlights from the farm included:

• spending a lot time with our whole immediate family (L&J being able to come out in the evenings, and M&A&E traveling up from NE for the week too)...we haven't done a lot of that without events or holidays in the mix, so it was great to just relax together
• campfire!
• celebrating W's birthday with a fabulous blue dinosaur cake made by Auntie J (pictures here)
• helping Dad install a huge farm history display rock at the end of the driveway
• Farming Family Fun Night!...supper out at Lange's and family pictures to follow on a beautiful evening

Highlights from the reunion included:

• being able to connect with cousins and aunts and uncles that we haven't seen in a while (and feeling like we were caught up with immediate family from our time at the farm so we didn't just hang out with them the whole time)
• (lowlight of W getting sick, but he recovered Saturday afternoon and was able to have fun the rest of the time)
• golfing for S
• silly family team games (I usually hate these, but oh it was so much fun and good bonding time...now I know where some of our childrens' competitive spirit comes from)
• impromptu talent show (kids' acts stealing the show!)
• Rook
• story-time with M&A (M&A, hope you don't mind me signing you up for that, I love listening to your read as much as our kids do!)
• 25 out of 34 members of the K side being able to attend (including 8 children ages 5 and under!)
• A 14-player Scrabble game where we took out the blank tiles and gave each player 7 tiles - only 2 tiles were not able to be laid

On to a lot of pictures:

Dad entertaining all his grandkids with his iPhone

campfire on the farm (notice how wet the fields are?)

M & S helping Dad install the big rock at the end of the driveway

M & A & baby E posing by the rock

the kids love being on the farm

no, this is not a game of chicken, just a little fun while...

...these guys set up...

*...a great family picture!

high fives during family team games at the reunion

*S looking for the bubblegum in a plate of powdered sugar

little C helping with the popcorn game (he still talks about "poptorn on my FEET")

*the kids sang the Grizzly Bear song during the talent show and took part of a 3-way tie for first place!

storytime with M & A every night...the adults enjoyed it as much as the kids did!

G and E had fun in cutey-patootie matching pj's!

my contribution was a craft for the kiddos on Sunday - we made tumble bunnies and raced them

by the end of the weekend, the kids needed some down time with a movie, and cousin G was more than happy to find one on her laptop and join right in

I think this is one of my favorite picture ever

fabulous first Kole family reunion!

so the B family DOES have a garden this summer...

Even with all the choas around our house this summer (more on that later), we did decide to plant a garden!  The annual garden planting holiday in my family is always Memorial Day.  The frost is officially out of the frozen tundra yet there is still enough time to grow most garden variety plants and get a good harvest.  And this works well for us since S always has Memorial Day off!  Well, we did plant on Memorial Day, but I have no pictures.  So fast forward a month to these July 8 photos and I will give you a little garden tour...

Beans!  I went a little overboard and planted 3 big rows of beans.  And our ever present rhubarb plants which we enjoyed a lot of strawberry rhubarb sauce from this year.

3 roma tomatoes, 2 peppers (possibility of green, red or yellow...one died I didn't remember which one!), and a packet of morning glory flowers thrown under the windmill (which started climbing all on their own!)

butternut squash, zucchini, cantelope, watermelon

S got a new used mower last fall (our reel one couldn't handle the leaves on the ground), and it has a bagger, so for weed control, this year we are going with grass clippings.  And I will say after 2 layers, it is working splendidly!

We also picked strawberries this season too already.  I was hoping for the bounty of last year (30 jars of jam and 8-10 quarts frozen smashed ones), but it was not to be this year.  So goes life with farming though...it has been a tough spring and early summer for all farmers and our prayers and support are with them!  We headed out to our local berry farmer on July 4 (along with every other family in the city it seemed like!), and picked delicious yet raspberry sized small strawberries.  We picked for over an hour, but only got enough berries for a flat and a half.  We still had fun though! 

G thought we should all wear our sombreros (is it wrong to wear sombreros on July ? =), but only Dadda joined in on that one...

...and the novelty wore off fast and they switched to their sun hats soon enough.

2 1/2 hours of cleaning strawberries later, we had a wonderful berry fool to eat and 3 precious quarts of smashed strawberries to put in the freezer.

Well all the prayers of the farmers were heard and this July we have had some hot and incredibly humid weather!  Not good for pregnant ladies, but awesome for the fields and also for our garden. 

Look how much it grew in just 2 weeks!  Small fail from farm-girl, I totally planted my bean rows too close.

what the kids are most excited about in our garden...

... and one of the things I am most excited about in our garden!

Here's to a bountiful harvest for farmers on all scales!

introducing baby b...

I am at 21 weeks with Baby B, and that means an ultrasound!  Last Friday, S and I and the kids headed off to the new clinic and hospital in MG to have an ultrasound and get a tour of the hospital that Baby B might be delivered at (our midwives deliver at 2 locations now, so we need to be familiar with both).  The ultrasound was fantastic.  I was extremely nervous going in, but as soon as they turned our monitor on (ok super fancy place - the nurse had a computer and then we had a flat screen monitor on the wall for us to watch on!) and we could see the little one wiggling about, my heart settled down and we just enjoyed seeing our very active little baby evading the ultrasound tech trying to take their picture. 

The kids really got a kick out of it too.  They were all in awe looking at the screen, especially looking at the profile because you could really tell it was a baby!  Their attention span of course was pretty short, but they did great just playing during the rest of it.  G would come back to the screen quite often and ask S what they were looking at now.  And she wanted to know where the placenta and umbilical cord were too! =)  A highlight for all of them though was after the very nice technician took the above picture, she asked how to spell each of their names and changed the "Profile" caption to "Hi G!", "Hi W!" and "Hi C!" and printed a personalized picture for each of them.  They held on to those pretty tightly the rest of the night, especially C.

After all measurements were taken and everything looked at possible, apparently Baby B joined their siblings in getting a little bored with the ultrasound (hence the yawn =) and we were done.  G checked the monitor and exclaimed "You took over 100 pictures!!!  If someone took 100 pictures of me I would be super tired of it."  Oh, and just so you all know, we are going to be surprised about the sex of the baby like we were with all the other kids.  It is such a fabulous moment at birth to find that out, and even though I waned a little bit and wanted to find out with this one, S talked me out of it pretty quickly.  I told him it was a good thing I am a sucker for tradition...

Everything looks really good with Baby B as shown on ultrasound, which we are so very thankful.  And we are overwhelmed by His goodness and power in creating this perfect little one pound person growing inside me.  Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

a happy 4 yr old...

Happy Birthday dear W!  What a big boy you are!  We love you so much!  And it seems only fitting that you had a 4-part birthday this year for your 4th birthday!

W's birthday part 1 - Friday June 17

• Yeah, it is a little early, but we have a tradition of going out to Noodles for birthdays, and there was no time to fit that in on W's actual birthday!
• Plus after a whole week of VBS we all needed a break!
• Uncle J, Auntie C, K & G joined us which made for a fun supper out!

(sorry no pics of that!)

W's birthday part 2 - Sunday June 19

• Dadda was home all day Sunday (also Father's Day!) so we celebrated W's birthday a little early with him
• Also W's cousins/friends could come over that day
• W asked for blueberry cupcakes...I pulled out blueberry muffin mix and he said "THOSE aren't cupcakes, that's MUFFIN mix!"  When I told him I didn't know how to make blueberry cupcakes, he thought for a minute and then said "I know, momma!  We can use the muffin mix!"  Love this boy.  We did doctor them up a bit so they were great "cupcakes" 
• Received one of the best birthday presents from his aunt and uncle - a handmade TENT!   So neat and W has yet to let me take it down...=)

W's birthday part 3 - Monday June 20

• Actual birthday day!!!
• Opened gifts from us in his tent in the morning...just what this boy wanted too.  A Thomas the Train shirt, a James train, Cars cars, and a jungle animal Playmobil set
• Rest of the day was filled with a long day of work for Dadda and a lot of packing for Momma being that our vacation started the next day, but W was happy and content to play with all of his new toys!
• We did make a fun trip to the library, and had Mrs. L over for birthday cupcakes.
• Received very cool Cars sheets from Mrs. L!!!

W's birthday part 4:  Wednesday June 22

• W loved that we got to go to Boppa's farm and thought it was especially for his birthday!  Plus all his aunts and uncles and cousin E were there too!
• Had a bonfire for supper and ate in Boppa's shed - hot dogs, applesauce, biscuits and marshmallows!
• Opened gifts from Boppa and Aahma - his very own little John Deere tractor (1/64 model) like Boppa's, and 3 Elephant and Piggie book by his favorite author, Mo Willems.
• And Auntie J made W the most fabulous wonderful amazing super cool birthday cake - a blue dinosaur!!!!  (By the way, Auntie J loves to make cakes and is very talented - the body is all cake and the head and tail are made from rice crispie bars, and she also made her own fondant to cover the whole thing!  Seriously amazing!)  Thanks Auntie J for a very memorable cake that W is still talking about!

blessings...

*family photo courtesy of M & A

Oh so many things to tell you all about!  Time for all of them will come bit by bit here in this space.  The past few months have been busy and full of blessings, and the biggest one of them will be added to our family around November.  We are expecting and I am 20 weeks along.  All is going well with Baby B which has been such an answer to prayers.  With each good appointment and with each time we hear his or her heartbeat our fears are lessened a bit and more and more joy is allowed to come to the surface.  We are really excited about this little one, and there will be ultrasound pictures (no, we are not finding out whether it is a boy or girl!) and maybe even a belly shot or two to share with you in the next while.

shorter...

Remember these shaggy kids from the last post?

Well, since G is home from school now and our summer has officially started...

 ...it was time for summer haircuts!

(G got over 5 inches cut off of her hair - it is now the all same length as her grown out bangs.

It almost hurt to cut off W's curls but I couldn't deal with sweaty-head boy all summer.

And this was actually C's first haircut on the top of his head - I have buzzed the back a couple of times, but the top hadn't ever grown enough.)

a graduation...

To commemorate the end of the Kindergarten school year and all that each kindergartener accomplished, G's school held a small Kindergarten graduation ceremony.  Shhhh, don't tell, but I went in to it thinking that it was going to be way cheesy.  Instead it was a great recap of their year, a wonderful program of songs and memory verses, a slideshow and great message from Mrs. Bierma about things they did and learned in the classroom over the year, and yes, slightly cheesy diplomas handed out to big proud kindergarteners with giant grins on their faces.  This has been such a good year for G and our whole family.  We couldn't have asked for a better teacher for G in Mrs. B, and G honestly loved every day of school the whole year.  What a great way to get us used to the whole school thing - dropping off and picking up a happy happy kindergartener every day!

Our friends (and neighbors) Mrs. L and her daughter K came!  (A huge amount of thanks goes to Mrs. L, who watched the boys one Friday a month so I could be a room parent this year - it was fun for her and K to see where G went to school!)

walking in with friend E (G was most worried that she wasn't going to be there and she would have to walk in with an imaginary person!)

so. so. happy.

singing with her class     (I think this is the Grizzly Bear song...ask G to sing that for you sometime =)

getting her diploma from Mr. S, the principal

showing it off with her brothers

family picture

G with proud momma and dadda

G with her para, Mrs. Pf, and her teacher, Mrs. B

hottest in the nation...

So what do we do on a day like today when temps reach 103 degrees F, the hottest temp in the nation, the hottest temp here since since 1988, and the hottest June day since 1934?

First of all, we invite our cousins and puppy (who do not have central air) to come over.  And we stay inside all afternoon!

Then after supper, when the temps finally cool to 97 degrees F, we kick all the kids outside in their swimsuits to eat popsicles...

...and play (and drink big glasses of ice tea)...

...and play (and water crispy plants)...

 ...and play in the water!

(We certainly wouldn't serve chili for supper. :)

just outside our front door...

..."mama-bird" house finch built a nest above our outside light...high enough all views of what was inside came from blind-aiming the camera and shooting...all while "mama-bird" and "dada-bird" squawked and chirped at us from nearby tree...and this is what we saw in just over a week's time...

for our little one...

*** Disclaimer:  You don't have to read this post.  This will be long and will include a lot of personal reflection about the miscarriage that we had last December.  Today would have been our 4th child's due date, and we are sharing this because we want to remember him or her and the big impact that this had on our lives.  Also, one of the big purposes of this blog is to share about our children, and we want to include this little one as well.  (and just so you don't think anything is broke, you won't be able to comment on this post.  we don't mind talking about it, but not here - shoot us an email if you want to talk more about this) ***


To our little one, Love Momma and Dadda.

We were so excited when we found out that we were pregnant with you after taking a home test on September 20, 2010!  What joy at adding a new member to our family with your new little life!  That joy and excitement was a special secret between your dadda and I, and our midwife Kathrine as we called her right away to make a 10 week appointment. Kathrine is a special person to our family as she has cared for us and has helped deliver your other siblings!

I started feeling nauseous a week after we found out about you, and that feeling is always feels like a mixed blessing to me - it stinks feeling sick, but what a great reason to feel that awful.  I worked on making sure that I ate healthy, and anytime any plans and talk for future events came up with anyone, I was planning in my head how they would work with being either pregnant with you or you being a new little baby.  There was Uncle L and Auntie J's wedding in February...I was a bridesmaid and would be 6 months pregnant with you and would have to wear a maternity bridesmaid dress!  And then there was the K family reunion in June...you would be so tiny, would we even go?  Your dadda and I talked about how you would come at the end of G's school year and that he would have hopefully a month off like he did when C was born and how wonderful that would be to have that time all together as a family.

We visited your Aahma and Boppa Roskamp when I was about 8 weeks pregnant with you.  I was worried about feeling icky and having to hide that from everyone, but I stopped feeling nauseous around this time so was happy I didn't have to worry about that.  Your Uncle Marcus and Auntie Amy were also going to be there and Auntie Amy was 4 months pregnant with your cousin who would only be 3 months older than you.  I wanted to tell them about you so bad!  You dadda and I decided that if there was a good opportunity that we would tell them, but there really wasn't, so we just looked forward to sharing the news with them in a few weeks.

I ended up having an appointment with Kathrine on October 27, 2010, when I was at 9 weeks rather than 10 weeks, as there was something going on with the midwives during that 10 week time...can't really remember what.  I was originally going to go by myself, but being that the appointment had to change, Dadda had to work so your brothers came along with me (you sister was at school).  They were pretty oblivious during the appointment so I didn't have to worry too much about them realizing what was going on.  We saw Ondrea, one of the other midwives, and had a normal and good first appointment - filling out the regular forms, talking about being pregnant, answering any questions, and then of course a physical exam and checking to see if we could hear your heartbeat.  Which we couldn't.  I didn't worry too much, though, and neither did Ondrea, as 9 weeks is pretty early to hear the heartbeat.  Kathrine came in to say hi at the end of the appointment, and the 3 of us talked about whether we needed an early ultrasound of you or not.  I had them with your brothers as we needed to get due dates correct in case they were born premature like your older sister was, but since they both went full term and I was definitely sure about the timing of your pregnancy, we decided not to have one.  And I was just fine with that since the ultrasound place is about 45 minutes away from our home and then we didn't have to worry about timing and figuring out how to do that.  So we made an appointment for November 18, 2010, when I would be 12 weeks pregnant.  I hugged Kathrine and Ondrea and thought happy thoughts about the care we would get from them during your pregnancy!

Now that we had a doctor's appointment, we could tell everyone about you, right?  Well, your dadda and I went back and forth on this.  We hadn't heard your heartbeat yet, so there was just a part of us that wanted to wait until we heard that sound before we told the world about you.  But on the other hand, everything had gone so well with your siblings' pregnancies that we were sure that yours would be the same so we could definitely tell everyone we were pregnant.  In the end, we decided to wait.  Our next appointment was only 3 weeks away so we could contain our happiness about you for a little bit longer.  Besides, that appointment was right before Thanksgiving, so we started planning on telling our families and friends on Thanksgiving about you by saying that we had an extra special reason to be thankful this year! 

It was getting harder for me to keep you a secret though, just because I was so excited!  But the fun thought of sharing about you at Thanksgiving got me though, as well as one other friend of mine finding out about you by accident.  We were at our friend Amy's house after school the day of your first appointment.  All the kids were off playing and Amy and I were chatting about various things.  Your older brother came to me crying about a bonk or something, and to distract him, Amy asked him what we had done that day.  He told her that we had gone to see Miss Kathrine and that momma had to get a poke.  Well Amy knows Kathrine as she is her midwife as well, and Amy is also a nurse so she put two and twenty together and after he ran off she asked if we were expecting - well YES!!!!  It was so nice to talk about you and Amy was so excited for us!  I told her to keep it under her hat though, as we hadn't heard your heartbeat yet and were going to wait until after our 12 week appointment to share the news about you.  She completely understood and started joking with me that I just needed to come and visit her at work next week and she could sneak the doptone away for a few minutes so that we could hear your heartbeat.  She even checked with her PA sister to see if she had a doptone at home!  I love your dadda, but it was sure fun to share about you with another mom.

The reality of being pregnant with you was really starting to hit your dadda and I and we would spend a lot of evenings talking about you and how life was going to change when you were born being that we would have 4 kids then!  And how blessed were!  And how scary that was too!  Where were you going to sleep?  How were we going to arrange things with your siblings and bedrooms if you were a girl?  And even more if you were a boy?  Was all our baby stuff still good and safe enough?  Would we have to buy anything more?  How were we going to travel places?  How would going to the grocery store work? How would we work things with a new baby?  Oh, and we soooo started looking at names!  That was the hardest decision for us for all of your siblings...we went to the hospital with all of them without a final name chosen.  Your dadda said that it was never to early to start, so we pulled out our book and pulled up a couple websites and started going through names.  Would you be a boy?  Would you be a girl?  These were such good talks and just made us feel more connected to you and excited to meet you and about your place in our family.  This time really was special to your dadda and I...sharing this happy secret of you.  But we were looking forward to Thanksgiving and telling everyone about you too. 

Although at times it seemed like it would never come, before we knew it, November 18 came and it was time for your appointment!  This was going to be super special because Dadda had the day off so he was going to come with as well as your sister and brothers.  We had originally decided to tell everyone at Thanksgiving, but the more we thought about it, it was going to be a busy holiday for everyone so we changed our minds and decided to tell your siblings on the way to the midwives' office and everyone else after your appointment.  I had lists all ready of who we were going to call and who we were going to email that night!  On the way to the appointment, we decided to see if your sister could guess our news about you.  We asked her where we were going..."Miss Kathrine's "...and what does Miss Kathrine do?..."take care of momma "...and what else does she do?..."catch babies "...so do you know why we are going to see her?..."ARE WE HAVING A BABY?!!!!! "  She was so excited to find out about you and so were your brothers!  Your smallest brother didn't really get it, but he had fun being excited with the other two.  


We got to see Jessie today.  I did ask if Kathrine could stop in so that your dadda and the kids could say hi to her.  The appointment was going just fine with the normal talk and questions about how I was feeling and what was going on, which everything had been normal and I had been feeling great.  Kathrine came in then, and after talking with her a bit, it was time to get on the table for my physical exam and checking to see if we could hear your heartbeat.  The physical exam was fine, but Jessie couldn't find your heartbeat.  This made me a little nervous, but Kathrine assured us that it was still early.  But she got on the phone to make an ultrasound appointment for you anyway, just to check things out and make sure everything was ok.  The ultrasound office (in a separate building ~10 miles away) was able to get us in right away so we said our goodbyes, loaded everyone up, and headed over.


The ultrasound rooms are always pretty small, so rather than cramming all of us in there, your dadda waited in the waiting room with your sister and brothers, and was going to bring everyone in after they had all the official measuring and checking done so that everyone could see the ultrasound of you at the end.  I was still a little nervous, but was sure that once we got the ultrasound of you that everything was going to be fine.


It wasn't.


There was no heartbeat.


You were already gone.


This was such an incredible shock to me and I wept.  The tech still had to take all sorts of measurements and I kept waiting for her to say that she had made a mistake and all of a sudden find your heartbeat.  She was very nice, but didn't say too much other than she was going to call in the radiologist to go over everything.  I asked her to get your dadda too, I knew I couldn't handle hearing any more without him.  Dadda and your sister and brothers came in the room right away and your dadda could tell something was wrong right away when he looked at my face.  The tears were flowing and your sister could also tell something was wrong, but we had to wait to answer her questions as the radiologist came in then.


He was also very nice, but had awful news for us.  Something happened to you and you died right around 8 weeks gestation.  He assured us over and over that there was nothing that we did that caused this.  It didn't look like there was anything wrong with me, it just happens sometimes.  He asked if we had any more questions (which of course we couldn't think of at the time), and told us he would call Kathrine to get a hold of us as far as what would happen next, and that we could take as long as we needed in the room.  The technician gave us a few pictures of you that she printed out, and then they both left.  


Dadda explained to your sister and brothers what had happened and we all clung to each other and cried and cried.  Your sister was so so sad, we all were.  Your brothers were still pretty little and didn't really understand, but they cried with us.  We then prayed.  Even though we didn't understand why God let this happen, we knew that we had to go to Him, and that you were with Him in heaven already.

Kathrine called us back right away and was so sad too.  She had to tell us about what was going to physically happen next though.  I was going to miscarry.  We could choose to let my body do it naturally, which she said would take about a week or so, or we could choose to go into the hospital and have it done surgically, with a procedure called a D&C.  We decided to let my body do it naturally as we couldn't bear to think of having it done surgically.  Kathrine told us to keep her informed about how everything was going, and also about when the miscarriage happened.  Then there was nothing else to do but go home.  


Your sister and brothers had random questions for us now and then, but played really nicely the rest of the day and your dadda and I were able to hold each other and try to process what had happened.  It was so hard to imagine that you were really gone, because I didn't feel any different than I did when I woke up that morning and thought everything was fine with you.  Sometime that afternoon I ran across the list I made for who we were going to call and tell about us being pregnant with you.  I lost it.  How would we even begin to call everyone and tell them what had happened?  I didn't think I could handle it.  And your dadda said we didn't have to right then.  We could take our time.  The more we thought about it we didn't know how we were going to tell people that you had died, but that I hadn't had the miscarriage yet, so we would have to call again after the miscarriage happened?  If the miscarriage was supposed to happen within a week, we would wait until after that happened and then tell everyone.  But some of the truth was is that I didn't want to tell people either...it would hurt too much and make losing you more and more of a reality.


So once again we were keeping you a secret, only this time it was a so much worse.  It wasn't a happy secret.  You were gone.  How could you be gone?  How could this happen to us?  I have known many people that have had miscarriages, including a dear friend and many church friends too, and I have always felt so bad when I heard about their miscarriages, and thought I was being so empathetic, but I had no idea what they were going through.  No idea until now.  The pain of losing a child at any stage or age is so much worse than I could have ever imagined, and I was overwhelmed with it every day. 


You would think that we would have been mad at God.  You, this little child who we wanted so much, were gone.  How could God do this?  But our faith and trust in God was really the only thing that got us through.  It didn't help the hurt at all, but knowing that God is in control of everything and that this had to happen for a reason at least gave us some peace.  We know that our lives, no matter how long or short, have purpose.  God’s plan is way bigger than what we can comprehend.  So all we could do is trust and hope, and rest in His almighty hands.  Because goodness knows we couldn't handle going through this on our own.  


And God gave us the strength to make it through one step at a time.  It was not an easy process though.  The actual miscarriage wasn't fully complete for almost 2 months.  One friend told us that we love our kids so incredibly hard and that we just loved you too much to let you go right away.  Oh and we did love you so much!  My body didn't miscarry naturally like we hoped, so after almost 3 weeks we had to go in to the hospital for a D&C.  That process was awful too, not so much physically, but mentally.  But we thought at least there would be closure.  There were some complications afterwards, so it wasn't as quick as we were hoping. It was hard to have the ordeal be so drawn out, but we were able to process each part fully before having to deal with the next and I think that is the way God knew we could handle it.  

Kind of the same way we handled telling others about losing you.  We couldn't bear telling everyone right away so we only told your Uncle Jeff and Auntie Christy, as well as our friend Amy, because we didn't know if we would need help when I miscarried naturally.  Then we told your Uncle Marcus and Auntie Amy because they visited us for Thanksgiving the week after and we didn't know if it would happen while they were there.  Each time we told someone it hurt so incredibly much, but we know that each person that we told loved us and prayed for us which helped.  Then, when things weren't happening physically a week or so later, we told a few others at church.  I was having such a hard time emotionally, and your dadda is so wise.  He said I needed to talk to other ladies that had had miscarriages, so I turned to two church friends.  I have a very close friend, Melissa, that had recently gone through 2 miscarriages, but I couldn't bring myself to talk with her yet because it hurt too much.  Talking with others who have gone through this horrible ordeal was therapeutic, as well as my appointment with Kathrine to decide on getting a D&C.  Kathrine spent over an hour talking with me and I couldn't have felt more cared for after that appointment.  We told most everyone else in our extended family and church family when we scheduled the D&C.  It was so hard, but after we did, there was more peace and we could feel the prayers holding us up through everything.  And everyone was so sad to hear about losing you, especially your grandparents.  Pastor Sawtelle came to visit us after the D&C, and we had a good talk with him.  He listened to your dadda and I talk a lot, and he also shared Psalm 34 with us, a scripture message that really hit home for us about the Lord's care for all His children.  Cards, and hugs and meals and talks and help from all the people who love us, and love you, really helped us in the months following.  


Time heals, but it does not forget.  And it still hurts today, baby, so much.  So we wanted to share your story because we love you.  And your story is a part of our family's story, and also a part of His story.  We know you are in a better place, and we can't wait to meet you and hold you one day.  We still miss you, but we know God is holding you and us in His hands.


All our love,
Momma and Dadda

roses your dadda bought you today...