It's Summertime!

This is what happens when I am cleaning and CJ gets to quiet. I hear "Mom help!! I stuck!" He has scaled the drawers onto the cabinet and how he got on top of the refrigerator I just don't know!! Sadly, instead of getting him down I ran for my camera!

My kids got a new and wonderful toy from our friend David! Thank you David! We luckly have a field behind our house so it is a safari everytime!!

Mighty, mighty travelers

Summer starts with Memorial Day

Well every summer begins with Memorial Day. BOO! We have done pretty well. I picked out the first set of Memorial Flowers for Savannah's grave and frankly I have come to the conclusion that no flower will ever be beautiful enough, and that is ok. I had the most wonderful honor of running into one of the mom's I met while Savannah was in the NICU at Wal-mart on Saturday. Her baby was born at 28 weeks-(I think- don't quote me!) She was born at 2lbs and had already been in the hospital a month when Savannah was born then moved to that hospital. I remember several nights I sat near her watching her panic when her daughter's SATS were going up and down. I remember every time I heard a monitor I looked up to make sure it wasn't Savannah's monitors going off- every parent did it quote me. It takes months to not hear beeping in your head when you leave that place. I was so arrogant!! I remember thinking. We are so lucky it could be so much worse. "We are just waiting for her to weigh 5lbs so she can have her shunt put in and then when she is 1 they will do a full repair.” We are so lucky. Ha! Well if you know us we weren't so lucky. Well at least not in the way that society considers us lucky. Back to Wal-mart I stood in one check out aisle as she stood in the other when I saw her. I was purchasing the memorial flowers I had finally chosen and she with her beautiful, chubby, eight month old purchasing whatever she was at the store for. We were two mothers with two very different outcomes. She didn't know Savannah had died, and asked how she was doing. I just shook my head no, and turned my attention to her wonderful miracle. She is so lucky so, so lucky. I want to make a confession I still love holding babies. I LOVE IT! What people need to understand in these types of situations is yes, I have lost a baby and on some level with every baby I see my heart hurts a little, but when she is supposed to be 12 I will look at every 12 yr. old and my heart will hurt a little still. While holding babies though I don't need to be watched or pitied because I don't want that baby I want my baby. I will always want mine. ALWAYS. So, worries about me having a chopper outside ready to zoom off with the baby, it's not going to happen because the saying is true "Every old crow thinks hers is the blackest." It's true as wonderful as my friend's babies are they will never be as wonderful or beautiful as mine because she was mine. I miss her like crazy! It stinks that instead of getting to watch her roll over because she would be doing that right now I am finding the perfect bouquet of flowers to place in her vase. I do like Memorial Day. This day is for all the men and women who have lost their lives to fight for our freedom. Our freedom to worship, our freedom to support our government, and our freedom to not support our government I am the first not the latter. I'll keep thatmy opinion of what I think our nation has become for a different blog. LOL! I just want to say I still think Jon and I are lucky, so very lucky. We have 3 beautiful children that are healthy, ornery, and my joy. Jon and I have each other and I live and breathe for him. Besides Jesus Jon saves me from myself most of the time he is my heart. I am so very, very lucky. I can even see through the fog that I have been in and I know how absolutely blessed my life is. Such joy......

I stopped playing the game...

Ok so if I haven't talked to you in a while I get to enlighten you on why in the heck I took down my site. It is the long drawn out high school drama crap that I was so giddy to get away from when I graduated! In our continued journey to grieve the death of Savannah we have had a lot of people tell us how they fear for the way we are grieving. I have really struggled talking about this, but I am beyond frustrated with people telling me I am not grieving right, watching every move or action we make; and having the nerve to be irritated that we don't want to hang out it just makes me sick. I have three kids I am lucky to get to hang out in my own bathroom by myself. I have never been one to keep a notebook of things that I have done for people so when a fight brews there is an arsenal of things that I can use against the person I am fighting with. That is not truly giving its just providing ammo for future fights. In our weakest moments we have had people we love kick us while we are down. We have been psychoanalyzed, judged and even ridiculed to the point that shutting down and staying in our home seems to be the best option! Then, when we finally have the nerve to say "I refuse to play this game with you" we are called crazy, irrational, and bitter because we lost our daughter. Let me admit that at some point I have been all of those things but do you blame me?! I went to the cemetery last week because I had not been in two months, and the first thing I see is bird poop on her headstone. That made me a little bitter. Let me let you know I know that she is not there and I don't stay more than 5-10 minutes because what is the point? I realize I am talking to a rock, but I go because that spot is what holds my wonderful moment. Savannah's spirit is with Jesus and I won't get to know her until after I meet Jesus myself, but the body I held, the strawberry blonde hair I ran my fingers through, and the cheeks I kissed are in that spot in the ground and that is the closest point to where we are still together. I have realized how completely powerless I am, so bring on the craziness!! It has nothing to do with the stone, but I know how much effort Jon and I put into our children's name. We picked the name for each one of our children. Madison was going to be Madison Paige, Savannah Brooke, or Peyton Louis (I believe that we changed Peyton in the end but THANK God we had a girl!) Andrew Nicholas, it was such a strong name and it was perfect for him. Christopher Joseph, (CJ) was picked by Jon and I agreed. All of them sound really great when I have to yell them out the back door! Honest to goodness I HATE seeing her name on that stone and it is still very surreal to me that " I lost a baby." I don't know if the pain in the pit of my stomach will ever go away when I see her name.
That is it it's all that is left of her other than pictures. Honestly my patience has shortened and having friendships that our conversations were only about persons we trashed on that day just made me feel like a "plastic" and I hated myself and wanted more. I wanted depth, and encouragement in a way some people cannot provide for me anymore. So, when the confrontation happened I became the person to be trashed. It is not a place I want to be and the inner scrapper in me had come out again. I had to stop playing the game. I had to take down my last page so I could be hidden from those people and talk to the people I was really on myspace for. I want to be able to write about things and not have certain people believe it is about them! Frankly, I really just think of myself right now and how in the world am I going to shove my pain down enough to clean my house, or take care of my kids the way I used too. My worst fear is to have my living children when they are grown ups tell me "well after Savannah died you just didn't love us or take care of us the same and we feel jipped." That is a therapy session I never want my children to have. With our world the way it is the last thing they need to worry about is whether they were loved enough as children. I am trying to find real, encouraging, in love with Jesus friends that will love me for me and I can do the same for them. So, now that I have spilled my guts my load feels a little lighter. Thank GOD I am not who I used to be, and forgive me if you can't see my heart right now, but I am so humbled by what has happened in my life and I am not the person I use to be or even the person I was 6 months ago, and I plan to prove that for the rest of my life. Thanks for hearing my rant… Sarah

A Little Venting Never Hurts

So I haven't written in a while on this site so I figured I would sit down and write a little. I am doing pretty good right now. I have stayed really, really busy. Most of the time good, but sometimes to my detriment. Lately, I have had a lot on my mind and I am over thinking. Thinking is way overrated. LOL! I remember being in high school and my day revolved around what people thought of me and really it killed me to not be liked. Now, I think I have grown up and my attitude is "well this is it and if you don't like me like this you probably never will." I really like this line of thinking now, and frankly I am trying to accept it. Sometimes it is easier said than done. I am just really confused right now. I have had best friends through the years and I really enjoyed being their friend but it always involved more than sadly I wanted to give. I grew up wanting and demanding to be the center of attention, but now I would like to be as far out of that circle as I possibly can. I have tried to not talk out of both sides of my mouth but it has happened. I admit it, but I just don't want to do that anymore. Today was not a good day, it was long, not a lick of sunshine, and a lot of rain. EEH! My daughter said something to me the other day and it is shocking to me how fast a girl learns to cut you right to the core. She said I wanted to stay at Grandma's house because her girl cousins were there and she didn't have a sister to play with. Whew! How do you respond to that? 1.) because you know she is cutting below the belt 2.) I never had a sister either and I know exactly how she felt? 3.) Buckle and let her win. I told her I fought with everything I had in me to not let her sister die it was just bigger than us and we had to accept that, but we weren't going to hurt each other in the process. I worry about Madison because I grew up with two brothers. I don't deal with girls very well. I never understood the smooch, smooch, screaming. love, love crap that some of my friends dished out.(most of the time fake) *eye roll* Maybe because I never trusted them enough to believe what they were saying. I don't like being told one thing and then their actions speak louder than words. I hung out with guys in high school, and I was always the friend, never the one they all wanted to be in love with. EEH so irritating!! haha! I just felt more relaxed and honest to goodness I think every girl says this. LOL I am just learning to have friends because I am not really good at it. I love God, my kids, my husband, my family, and my church and nothing else really matters. Honestly, I am an adult now and pleasing friends that aren't family isn't a concern for me anymore. My sister in law is one of my best friends, we have had rough moments but bottom line we would be there for each other. Jon is my best friend in the whole world and part of the time I just want to kick him in the face for acting like he is better that EVERYONE!!! but I love the crap out of that man. I hang out with people right now I never in a million years thought I would and I like it . I guess I have just wiped all the crap off my shoes and moved on and I am content. It's a good feeling