Remembering Lauren

Today is October 15th, Pregnancy and Infant loss remembrance day. It is the third time we have passed this day without Lauren. Third time since I have been involved in this community of "babyloss".  And so I thought I would write out and share some of the things that run through my mind these days. I hope it makes some sort of sense.
The little ticker on the side of my blog tells me "it has been two years and seven months since we said good bye."   She would be 2.5 years old.  With the passage of time and a lot of work, the searing pain of those first months have settled into a peace and acceptance of life as it is. Of course we miss her. I think of her many times per day. Sometimes I feel I am numb to the grief. Other times I do feel a tangible peace.  I feel that Lauren is often near. There are things that I see, perhaps you would call them signs, but I do believe she is with me.  On the rare occasions I get to visit her grave, I love to do it. It seems funny, but it has become one of my favorite places.  Overall, we are healed, we are happy, we enjoy each day we are given. We laugh, we play, we get frustrated, we work, we learn, we do holidays and regular days and keep on keeping on.
Calvin is now 18 months old, the time when he will go from staying with us all of church, to attending the nursery. For a while we have been taking him in to get him used to it.  As I sit there I see little girls Lauren's age.  I watch them quietly, speak to them, play with them. One in particular is just a few days older than Lauren. She moved into town just after everything happened. I could not look at that little baby, not for months. It hurt too much. And then as time went on, I ended up giving her mother some of the girl clothes I wouldn't be needing any more. And now, there she is, running around, learning to talk, playing.  Do I cry? no.  Is it odd? yes.  I see other families close to me dealing with potty training and see the milestones we are not passing. It is hard in a way, to think of her as a baby as she was, and a toddler as she would be.   Another friend of mine got some of our hand me downs, and I see her wear them often. It doesn't break my heart, but it still feels a little funny.
As we have been mentally preparing to move, I have thought a lot about how we will introduce our family.  How many times we will have to answer the question "How many kids do you have?" How many times my girls will have to also answer such questions and how they will each want to deal with it.  Of course, we have no problem including Lauren in our family, but it depends on the situation, and it is somewhat difficult gauging how people will react, and that can be tough emotionally.  We have been so blessed here in Monticello. The whole community has been so loving and kind and helpful and understanding. They cried with us, and also rejoiced with us when Calvin was born.  That will be hard to leave.
As we packed up some things, I did nearly have a panic attack worrying about moving Lauren's plaster hand prints. We only have two sets and I was terrified they would get broken.  I felt guilty as I took down her shadow box to make the house show better. I miss it being there on the wall.  I wonder what we will do with our rock garden (probably pack and take the rocks with us) and her flower garden...I wonder what the new owners will do with it.  This house is where she lived her whole life, it's also where she died.
I continue to enjoy serving by sewing and doing other things. I am glad that I can help others who are facing similar situations.  I feel like I have learned a lot about grief and life and trials and what's important.  I am still far from a perfect mother, but the deep sense that I would rather be slogging through any given problem or annoyance with my children than not is always there. Each child is an amazing gift that should not be taken for granted. And through it all, never doubting my loving Heavenly Father and His plan. Life on earth can be tough. All of us at some point, or maybe many points will go through difficult things, and that is ok.  I don't believe in a lot of the cliches out there, but I do believe that we are stronger than we think and we have so much to be grateful for. Life is good.
So, although I am often weak, and I have not felt able to express my feelings completely for a long time, and sometimes I get weighed down with the continual loss I see every day as I try to help, and I feel like running away from it all, today I will say something.
I will say thank you, to my wonderful friends and family, for your support and for letting me continue to share our little girl with you.  I  will remember her chubby cheeks and her gorgeous hair and her little toes and fingers. I remember holding her and watching my family hold her.  I remember her little fleece pink polka dot sleeper that I knew would keep her warm as she slept in the cold,cold ground.  I will remember how much good has come out of her short but precious life, and I will continue to work to help those who walk this path with me. I will love her like crazy, because she is my daughter. I know, without a doubt, that she is near and that I will see her and hold her again. And we will play with all the other babies gone too soon, and it will be incredible.

[i carry your heart with me]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Moving update

So, it has been a while since we announced that Scott was transferring to Ephraim,UT.  I thought I would update the news here and answer the questions we get the most:

Why are we moving?: Scott works as a Law Enforcement Officer for the Forest Service. He covers the Manti-Lasal National forest, which is near Monticello\Blanding, and also the Lasals near Moab. It also has a large section near Manti (hence the name). These areas are 3 to 4 hours apart. There used to be an officer closer to Manti, but he has left. There have been quite a few officers leaving, and they are not hiring any new ones to back fill because of budget issues and a hiring freeze. So when anything goes on in a huge area of the state, Scott has to respond. The more people who leave, the more acres Scott is dealing with. This is a ton of travel time and is not fun for Scott to manage.  We are in the very bottom corner of the state.  The transfer to Ephraim will put us in a much more central location. There are also some complicated political things that will be better in the new area. Scott will be doing the EXACT same job, just with a different office location. He will still cover the beautiful Monticello\Moab area as well.  For the family, it will allow the children to make new friends, and have different opportunities while still staying in a small town setting.  But this small town is just over an hour from family, "civilization" and many other things, like BYU sports games.  There are a few more options for shopping and dining, and Snow college with a lot of great activities there.  We LOVE Monticello and we are sad to leave. But we feel it will be best for our family at this time.

When are we moving?: Because Scott is not changing jobs, just locations, we have no timeline to get up there.  The only thing we are waiting on is selling the house.  Once the house is sold, we will move.

What is happening with the house?:  Once we found out we were probably transferring, I began decluttering and cleaning out the house. When we decided to put the house on the market we cleaned up a lot and packed up a lot to make the house show well. We spent most of the summer cleaning, fixing up little things here and there and showing the house quite often. We had a good response, but the market in Monticello is unique. And our house is unique as one of the few larger, new homes in town.  So we were very hopeful. We have had some ups and downs and maybes, but so far no serious offers.  I try to keep things low key, since we never know what is going to happen.  We had truly hoped to be out before school started. When that date passed, it did take off some pressure and we are happy here living our lives. When school started the showings also slowed down, so we are just waiting now.

How are the kids doing?  The girls are pretty positive about the move still. They will miss their friends and the area, but they are excited for new things...like a Chinese restaurant close by and a pool that is open all year  :)  They have been troopers helping me clean and playing with Calvin so I can get things done.  It is hard for them to be in limbo,though.

What about Ephraim?  We did find a great house in Ephraim. We had been looking and looking and checking all our options. We looked at downsizing to a smaller home, we looked at building and some lots there. All along we kept saying we wished we could just pick up our house and bring it with us.  Then we found one that fit the bill. Abby and I were able to go see it on our mother\daughter birthday trip and we loved it.  Scott went up a few weeks later with the paperwork so we have an offer contingent on the sale of our house. The owners actually do not want to move until after Christmas, so they have been super patient and great to work with. I don't talk about too much,either,though because I am afraid it won't work out. It is pretty stressful not knowing. They could sell it to someone else, or we could just not be able to sell ours and lose it. I would feel  terrible if that happened and we had taken time away from them. So that house is very likely a version of the floor plan we built here.  It is very nice and hopefully we can post about it later when it's a sure thing.

We know things will work out the way they are supposed to. We have been through a lot in our marriage with jobs and potential moves and house hunting and selling. I am glad we have those experiences to keep us sane during this process.  We never know what is in store for us, but we trust that our family will be in the right place at the right time for the right reason. And that isn't always what we have in mind.  So we continue to pray that the right things will happen, and we continue to put in our efforts to move forward with this move.
Hopefully that helps!! We appreciate all of you!!

                                                              Our house

Ephraim house

Wall of W's

I found this idea on the same blog as my Painted Wallpaper, here is the post she did. I started collecting a few W's months ago, and today I finally got them put up. It will be a work in progress, as I would like to add more and have a few ideas I am still working on, but we'll see how it goes, and how interested the little guy is in them if they are within his reach. I made a bunch of them yesterday, and had the girls help me. I did not take pictures of that craziness,sorry. 

 Here is the pile of W's.

 I laid it out on the floor to get it how I wanted it, and it sorta went up that way. I pretty much eyeballed it, and drove in nails for each one, hung them and went on to the next. Here are some of the individual letters:

 This is a cardboard\paper mache one I got here at the scrap booking store. I wanted to add a pop of color to our green\blue\beige\white thing we have going. I tried to do ombre, not sure if i love it but I can always change it later.

 I had a pile of old chalkboards like this that I got for free. I had 3 of the girls write with chalk, then I painted on top of that.

 Watercolor W. Printed out a cute font from Microsoft Word, traced it on and followed these directions. It was so easy and I really love this one. Frame is from WAAAAY back, used to be Scott's before we met.

 Couple of Hobby Lobby ones, on sale, yay. I think they were a dollar or two.

 Old frame I had from the Eagle Mountain crafty Super Saturdays. Grabbed some burlap, taped it to a piece of cardboard. Printed and cut out another W on cardstock, set it on the burlap and dabbed paint around it.

 Isabel's creation: Bubble painting and a chipboard W.

 Sara's on the left with a mermaid with a ukulele,singing and fish.Whitney's on the right with flowers with glitter centers and smiley faces. Old frames we had.

 Abby's drip painting on canvas.

An old frame I had, sprayed it gold, which we also had in the garage (I have no idea why, maybe Scott does macaroni art on the side that I don't know about) The nature paper is actually left over from our wedding invitations we made ourselves, and the W is twigs from our neighbor's pruning pile.

 All of them up on the wall

I have really enjoyed this project and I like how it turned out. Now go make your own monogram wall! :)

Painted Wallpaper

I have done a few painting projects in my day....

Stripes in the little girls' room

 Woodland nursery

and Chevron for the big girls.

In the basement I decided to do an accent wall. I looked up all kinds of ideas and nothing was catching my eye. I thought about wall paper but I can't shop for it here and online is hard. Also it is not cheap and I have never hung wall paper myself. So....I finally found a blog with a cute idea for painted wall paper, and found out a friend of mine had used it with wonderful results so I went for it. The project took lots of time, but was basically free. Awesome. 

Now, I made a lot of mistakes and this was one of the hardest accent walls I have done. First I chose a pearl craft paint which ended up being not right and too translucent. The tutorial says just use a pencil but that paint wouldn't cover it at all. So I tried to erase it. No go. I started tracing and the template was a little off and my first ones were crooked. There is a lot of eyeballing in this. I decided to restart behind the door, and then found some chalk to replace my pencil. I made the mistake of starting from a different part of the wall, and the pattern did NOT meet well in the middle. UGH. So I finally just painted over the pencil, and restarted entirely. I also ended up mixing the pearl paint with some other white paint and it ended up not shiny like I wanted, but still pretty. I probably spent 8 hours on this first series of mess ups. 

I had to rework the template after the one printed from the blog failed, and this one was symmetrical! I had a paper one I could use at the top and bottom of the walls and around corners, and a cardboard one for the rest.

Chalk outline. Tracing this pattern took HOURS and HOURS. I could not believe how long it took. On the bright side, I got some quiet time alone at night with my iPod, but trying to work on it around Calvin's schedule was difficult. Also I had a million things to do to get ready for Sara's birthday and baptism so me sitting in front of this wall all week was bad timing, but we were trying to get done before family arrived (didn't happen). The hardest part was going in order so I didn't mess up again, some I was on a step ladder, some I was sitting on the floor, you kind of have to go in a diagonal pattern and just eyeball it all the way along so you don't make any big mistakes. But you also have to accept little mistakes. There is no "groove" to get into or way to speed it up because each one is relative to the one next to it and above it. I was shocked how sore this old shoulder could feel from just holding up a piece of cardboard. Painting it was a little quicker, but still took quite a while. After days and days of working on it, I could finally wipe off the chalk lines and see the result. I think it is really pretty. I may hate it a little right now but I that's ok. We will make up soon. And I thought the chevron wall was bad.....

 I have some things to hang on the wall and we have baseboards to install but yay for being done!!

Basement:paint,doors and electrical

Priming took us one REALLY long day, it was a lot harder than painting. The mud sucked up so much primer so it was very tedious. My job was cutting in all the corners and the detail work. Scott with his tallness did the ceilings, and then we both rolled. We had planned to do two coats but ended up using about 7 or 8 gallons of the 10 we had. We did one very thick, thorough first coat and called it good.We both felt old and sore afterward. The girls were good to kind of take care of themselves, but Calvin was another story. It was a juggling act with quite a bit of whining involved.We let it dry and then took a trip to Durango for paint. I had a coupon for Sherwin-Williams and it is my favorite paint. Scott picked out his man cave Bracing Blue, and I picked out Rainwashed for the family room. We got beige ceiling paint to match the rest of the house, and put up two coats of that.All in all, it was another 10 gallons.We had to get extra just in case since we live so far from the store. I started again with the cutting in, which seemed to take forever. 

 Scott in his closet

 The corner where the wood stove is going, slate for the hearth

 Family room with all the painting stuff

 It is hard to see the color, but it's there

 Painting the kids' playhouse was fun, it is pretty cramped and I ended up with primer in my hair from hitting the ceiling a few times, but by paint I had a system worked out. Two coats of each of the colors. We extended the color into the little hall that was already finished when we built the house.

 Tile arrived on a big truck all the way from Georgia. I had looked online, at Home Depot and debated a lot of options. We knew we didn't want carpet down there. I pretty early on was set on the wood look tile. It is relatively new and I just loved it. Totally durable, safe for basements and gorgeous. Then I had to pick out a color, and at that point we had no paint or anything else to jump off from. I found the tile an a website called BuildDirect.They will send you 5 free samples and have very good service. So we got the samples a while ago.

                   The samples we got, so hard to use a tiny square to imagine 900 square feet!
Kept looking and then they were nice enough to send five samples of the same tile we liked most so we could see more of it. Unfortunately there are not many pictures on their site with finished rooms. I just decided to go for it. Usually the thing my eye is drawn to first ends up being the best anyways. But it was still a little scary to order that much stuff without actually seeing it. They called to set up a delivery time and it went really well, we were home and ready.

 Our friend\contractor went and got a forklift to help, but then it died in our driveway. So they got another forklift and I guess it died,too. So the men were out in the cold fixing forklifts for about an hour, fun! But there was the tile finally! I got a box and took it down to check it out and I really, really love it. It has texture and looks like barn wood. It is grey and brown and just gorgeous. What a relief! Tile will start going in Monday.

 We got 2 foot lengths and 3 foot lengths and hope it goes in like hardwood.

 Scott got wooden doors for his man cave, and we picked out stain on our Durango trip. It turned out just the color we wanted, they are really pretty  manly looking.

 Doors are now hung and have one coat of polyurethane.

 Scott installed the lights and got them hooked up to switches which is so awesome! We were working in the dark a lot and had to use a flashlight to get food or anything out of our storage room. We have the can lights as well as a few fixtures I picked out. Nothing fancy but they are pretty and Scott doesn't hit his head on them, so yay.

 We even got face plates on them! Not a big deal to some, but to us it is so nice not only to have this part of the project completely finished, but to have the basement electrical the way we want it after so many years. Now the trick will be getting used to all the switches!

 We were working with ONE plug in the basement this whole time. We had a power strip running the TV, DVR, DVD player, sprinkler timers, and then had to plug and unplug for the air hockey table or to vacuum or whatever. We had run an extension cord from the outlet, up into the joists, through the holes and down again to our deep freeze. Now the deep freeze has its own outlet! and we have outlets everywhere and they work. It's a good thing.

 We re-installed the little door to the kids' area

 It has a dead bolt on the outside. We only put in this door for ease of access to clean,etc, but generally will not use it.

 Another problem was how to light the playroom. We didn't want a bulb that could get hit or broken during any craziness. We also didn't know where to put a switch, and no matter how much I gently remind, kids do not turn off lights well. So we got an indestructable (hopefully)LED light that is wired into the wall, and a motion detector switch. We mounted it so it won't go off if you walk past, but if someone goes in there it goes on. After about 4 minutes of no motion it turns off. We are so happy with it. So far it is green in there, I plan to add chalk board paint after the tile is in and the paint has cured a bit longer.

Another little annoyance that happened when we built and were not here to supervise, they moved the furnace and changed this closet in the girls' room to a weird monster size. It was super dark in there, so while we were wiring anyways, I requested a light for them. We took a light from the storage area and moved it here. It is also awesome.  We are so grateful we have been able to make this happen with a ton of work by us and friends and family. February 1st is coming quickly and hopefully we will be all settled back into the basement by then. I am definitely ready.  Can't wait to see the tile go in next, then just trim and the wood stove and moving furniture!

Merry Christmas 2014

 Our sweet neighbor Sister Jack is kind enough to do all kinds of fun things with the girls. They made gingerbread houses this time.

 Isabel, the happy side

 Isabel the sick side. We just love that girl's personality.

 The school Christmas concert, with kids from one end of the gym to the other K-6! Abby started band this year and chose flute.

 Whitney

 Sweet Sara

The tree hunt. We had no snow yet so it made it a lot easier but a lot less fun. With little man there it was good it was kinda warm. Sara really fought to get this tree, and it has turned out just great.

 Carrying it back

Tying it on the back of the car. It got home a little dusty but intact.

 Christmas Eve homemade pizzas, then we went caroling which the girls loved. We practiced the songs on Monday for FHE. Now they want to do it every year.

 Christmas jammies with the girls

 Calvin can't resist hair...

 The cuteness!

 So close to sitting alone, Scott only had to prop him back up 5 times.

 See the blurry leg...that's the speed he's at 98% of the time.

PRESENTS!!!  Should be fun in the morning! Merry Christmas to all our friends and family, we are feeling very blessed this year.