Five Beautiful Blessings Between Heaven & Earth

For new years eve we had a great family party.  Both sets of Grandparents came over and Grandma Smith and Nannie and Papa came too.  We had homemade pizza's and after pizza's we played Apples to Apples,  Aaron had so much fun he was so excited to play a grown up game with all the grown ups!  And he did awesome!  He beat us all hands down.  Sadly were kind of a boring group so at about 9:30 everyone went home and we all went to bed.  How fun is that?  Well we thought it was a pretty fun night even if none of us made it to midnight! 

I finally got my fairy tale finished!  And in time to give as Christmas gifts.  I'm so excited I love them.  A huge special Thank you to Kim for doing the illustrations for me,  I could not have made this come together with out you!   and here is a peek at what they look like on the inside.     I am so happy to have them done!  Now to finish Colette's other book. :)

So I thought I would update a little on what everyone got for Christmas this year.  Aaron got Roller blades from Santa (and he's so excited!)  a new sleeping bag, a digital camera (that has not stopped snapping photos sense then) and a guitar!   Bridgett Got a toy kitchen, A cabbage patch doll that she promptly name "baby Colette"  and I sewed her a new bedspread!  and even with all her fun toys she spent the 4 days after Christmas walking around asking "Where's my pink guitar???"  I guess Santa was a little off with Bridget's gift this year. :( Dusty got a nook to read all his digital books on.   And I got a salad shooter!  I know it probably does not sound like fun but It's really what I wanted and I'm so excited to get it!  I also took some of my extra cash from Christmas and Birthday  money and bought myself a fabric cutter.  Let the quilting begin!  I'm so excited I can't wait to try it.  Anyway that ...

We have some favorite ornaments and I just wanted to journal them so our family can look back and remember what they were and how much fun we had looking at them on the Christmas tree. This one we bought especially for our tree to remember Colette   Colette's first Ornament from Santa.  This one Aaron made fore me at school,  I LOVE IT!   This one matches the ornaments that we had on the wreath that we made for Colette.  It's kind of fun to know that we have the same ornament on our tree as she has on her decorations.  this little angel,  Grandma Wendel gave to me I think when I was about 13.  Funny how now it has a whole new meaning I opened it up out of the box and Aaron asked me if it was Colette.  I personally love her little wings.  This one the primary made for us and delivered a few days before Christmas,  What a darling idea I love the picture of Jesus behind him.  This one Grandma and Grandpa Chadwick bro...

We have a new tradition.  I thought long and hard of a Christmas tradition that involved Colette.  I wanted something simple and easy yet, fun for the kids and even practical.   I had lots of friends who have lost loved ones share their new traditions at Christmas and I thought and thought and thought...  Some of them felt ok,  some of them didn't feel right for us and some felt half right... So this is what I finally came up with.   Our new tradition is that when Santa come on and fills the stocking he leaves a little ornament in Colette stocking for us to hang on our tree to remind us of her.  Aaron loved knowing that Santa left something for him in Colette's stocking.  I loved having another ornament for our tree and we all loving having one more thing to remind us of Colette.  This is a tradition I don't mind carrying on long after Santa stops stuffing our stockings.

Look Santa Came!  oh but first let's talk about what I was doing ALL NIGHT LONG... It's Christmas Eve and all through the house not a creature is ....  oh wait what's that?  Why that's Bridgett who instead of sleeping quietly so that Santa could come, had woken up feeling so crummy she was almost hysterical.  Poor thing sounded like she had croup!  I ended up taking her out onto the front porch to let the cold air help clear her lungs.  It helped so we opened the window in our bedroom and she sat next to me on our bed.  Poor thing felt so crummy she would not even let daddy back onto his bed.  So finally a little after 1am I finally got her calmed down enough to go back to sleep,  Sadly then the alarm going off at 5:30 am felt WAY to early!  But enough of that.  Look Santa came! Sadly we had to wake up Bridgett... poor thing did not like that but once she saw that Santa had come she was a bit more excited to be up.  ...

Today for Christmas eve was a pretty mellow day,  which is good the house is clean the goodies are baked and the party starts at 5pm.  Aaron is so excited!   We played Santa Bingo which was a gift from one of our neighbors and the kids had great fun playing.  Bridgett was more into eating her m&m's than using them for markers but it was fun.   Right before the family party started at our house I let Bridgett and Aaron open their Christmas eve gift.  and this is what they found.  They were so excited have matching jammies.  and in case you can't figure out what that print is... here is an better view.    Yes we are all about the lego Starwars at our house.  They decided they liked their jammies so much they wore them through the whole family party.    At five Grandma Cindy, Grandpa Roy, Grandma Teena, Grandpa Ken, Uncle Kyle,  Grandma Smith and Nannie and Papa came and we had build your own hogg...

It's 3 in the morning and I've been awake since 1am. Sleep seems to be harder and harder to come by the closer I get to Colette's 1 year anniversary.  Today she would have been 11 months old.  My heart is full and broken at the same time.  How is that even possible?  For my baby I still miss her so much that at time my army physically ache for her.  But I am so grateful for my Savior and his birth that we are celebrating this month.  For the gift of Eternal Life that he has give that makes it possible for us to have faith and hope that we can be with loved ones passed on again one day.  I am so grateful for those around me who have shared their babies with me and allowed me to hold them and helped me to heal a little each time I've held their babies and dreamed of that day when I get to once again hold my baby Colette in my arms again.  There are times when I feel Colette so close to me that I look up and am shocked that I can not physically ...

About a week ago I opened our front door to find a package on our porch.  I checked the label knowing that Dusty had said he was expecting something to be coming for him and not to open it because it was my Christmas present.  This didn't come from where he said it would and it was addressed to me not him.  Confused I called him at work and he told me it was not what he had ordered so after I got off the phone with him I opened it.  To my surprise inside I found 5 bubble wrapped little boxes.  To my delight as I took off the bubble wrap I found 5 glass ball ornaments one for each member of our family.  Including Colette!  You can't even imagine how happy this made me!   They came from my wonderful friend Shay, whom I met because of our mutual loss of our daughters.  She lost her beautiful Isabella a few months before we lost Colette.  She has been such a blessing in my life and I am so grateful to Heavenly Father for allowing us to ...

So.... remember the wreath that Aaron and Bridgett put up in the cemetery for Colette?  Mom and drove past Colette's headstone on the way home from the grocery store today and it was gone!  At first I wondered if it had blown away but looking around I realized that not only was the wreath gone but so was the heavy shepherds hook that it was wired too.  looking at the wreaths around where her's had stood and the flimsy poles they were held up by, my heart sank and I knew  it hadn't blown away,  someone had stolen it.  When we put it up I had some heavy wire that Grandma Smith had given me to secure the wreath to the hook,  Of course I had forgotten  to bring some wire clippers so I just kept winding the wreath to the pole over and over again.  I have no doubt that when whoever took it could not get it off of the pole they just took the whole pole right out of the ground.  Can you believe that?  I was so angry!  Who would do that...

 Bridgett loves to call Church clothes her "pretties"  even Aaron has "pretties"  according to her!  The week before Thanksgiving I let her wear her Holiday "pretties"  because it was so cold and it was the only long sleeve dress that she had.  Of course I had to take a photo of my children in their "pretties"  and I'm glad that I did!  Since then Bridgett has had the flu then Aaron had an ear infection (which he kept calling an Aaron Infection)  and then Bridgett herself got an ear infection.  And since then they have not been able to wear their "pretties" :(  Here is to hoping that we will all be well an healthy for Church next week!

We have a family tradition that every year at Christmas time we make a gingerbread house and it sits in the middle of our kitchen table all through Dec.  This is the first year that anyone has show any interest in helping me to make the gingerbread house. Making a gingerbread house is never as easy as it seems!  Here's how it goes.    The Mission is to turn this...   into something cute with a good enough foundation to stand on it's own. Meet Challange . Construction worker number 1   (she's cute but watch out she's fast!  And she has stealing candy and knocking down gingerbread walls down to a science!  Trust me I speak from experience) Meet Challange construction worker number two.  He is fun and can be far more helpful than helper number one but he has been known to have lots of energy and often wants to do every thing and all things :) Well together my helpers and I worked and worked and worked.  Sadly I used a differ...

Today after Bridgett and I picked up Aaron from school we went to put up Colette's Christmas Wreath.  I wanted to do it last weekend while Dusty was home but it was freezing and we didn't think it was a good idea to take the sick kids out into the cold.  So we did it today and Daddy stopped by on his way home form work to see how it looked.  You can't see it but we put Solar Christmas lights on her wreath,  Aaron was concerned that she would not have Christmas lights so we did the best that we could at fixing that.  It seemed to please Aaron that Colette would have a piece of his fav part of Christmas with her.  We will have to go back one night and see how they look.  The kids helped me to decorate her wreath,  it has red and silver balls on it with red snow men.  We saved a snow man ornament to put on our tree so that we can have a little bit of Colette's wreath at our house too. After we got done putting up her wreath I looked around the...

Perhaps this will sound weird but after loosing Colette I didn't want to decorate Christmas the same way that we always have.   It just seems like when something so big as loosing a child changes your life you just can't bare to do a lot of the same things the same way.  It's almost as if you doing it the same way you always have is saying "life is the same this year as it always is"  And it's not!  I knew that the holidays were going to be hard,  and there have been moments that have been very painful but I also knew that with two other little ones in the house it all still had to be done.  And so it does but it does not have to have done the way it's always been done.  So this year Christmas is different in many many ways but even in the decorations.  We usually just have a little 4 foot tree that sits on the table in the piano room and this year  we borrowed Grandma Cindy's big tree,  and instead of doing the blue and silver Chri...