California

We have been SO busy this summer - I keep thinking of things that I want to blog about but I never seem to have a long enough stretch of time to devote to sitting in front of the computer.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our California trip - since I never got around to posting them when I said I would!

@ Joe's Crabshack in Pacific Beach

In front of our hotel with Taylor and Brit

Kurt with Clint Eastwood's handprints

And, Kurt at the beach in Santa Monica

This was the first vacation I've ever been on where we didn't travel to visit anyone, and we got to be in charge of the plans. Usually, I'm with my parents and they have things all planned out, or last time I went to CA it was to help Kurt move so there wasn't time for very much. We went to one beach or another pretty much every day, did some sightseeing in Hollywood, visited sea world, and spent time with some very good friends in San Diego. The weather was perfect. It was a wonderful trip, and after the year we've had, a much needed vacation.

In Hollywood, Kurt bought this little License plate for Olivia. I thought it was so sweet of him to point it out, and ask me if I thought we should buy it for her. I love when I can tell that he's thinking about her too. I know she was with us everywhere we went.
(Sorry for the low quality, it was taken with my phone in our dim hotel room)

More later!

dragonflies

This is such a cool story, and I feel like I just have to share it with you guys today.

Shortly after we lost Olivia, I received a sympathy card in the mail from one of the girls at work.  The card had a dragonfly on the front, and in it she wrote me a sweet note, explaining the waterbug/dragonfly story. I had never heard it before, so I got out my computer and googled it.

In short, two waterbugs are swimming in a pool. One of the waterbugs climbs up a lily stalk, and promises to come back and tell the other one what it's like up above. What the little bugs don't know, is that once you leave the water, you turn into a dragonfly and can't return. Even if the dragonfly could return to the colony of waterbugs, they wouldn't recognize her in her new body. The dragonfly realizes that she has transformed, and lives happily flying around with her new wings, knowing that her family will understand someday when they, too become dragonflies. It's kind of cheesy depending on which version of it you read, but I still think it's a sweet way to explain a baby who leaves its parents to go to heaven, and gets her (or his) angel wings, instead of being able to come back to her (or his) family.

The link to the story is here.

Anyway, I shared the story with my mom, and so did a friend of hers who lost her son this winter. My mom and dad's first daughter, Katie, was stillborn in April of 1986 when my mom was about 37 weeks pregnant.  I was born just a little over a year later. Our loss of Olivia was especially hard on my mom because while she's been grieving the loss of her first grandchild and having to watch Kurt and I go through so much pain, it's also brought back a lot of the feelings and memories from when they lost Katie.

On Memorial Day, my mom and sister went to the cemetary in Iowa where Katie is buried.  Originally, I had thought about placing Olivia next to Katie, but the cemetary is an extremely old one and there aren't any plots left. Anyway, mom loves the dragonfly story and we have talked about it more than once.

Mom was having a particularly tough time that day - she told me that she did a LOT of crying at the cemetary. While she was sitting there, she saw a dragonfly flying around a short distance away. She said it immediately made her feel a little bit better, and she was just excited to see it flying around.

Then, she and my sister watched it make circles above Katie's grave. It landed in the blade of grass that was exactly above the center of her gravestone, so that when it landed, the blade of grass bent forward and he was directly above her marker. After that, he landed on the stand for the wreath that they were about to place on her grave.

I don't know if ya'll believe in signs, but our family definitely  does. Mom said she was already crying, but then when the dragonfly came along she knew it was a sign from Katie to help her feel better. It made her cry more, but in a happy way... She texted me the short version of this story while we were in San Diego, and I could tell how excited she was about it.

I love this story - mostly because I really, honestly believe that my sister was sending my mom something to comfort her, but also because it's been 24 years since Katie passed away, and my mom still loves her just as much and cries for her the same way she used to. She doesn't cry or get upset very often - but she still does. One of the biggest fears I have (and one that I know a lot of my fellow infant loss mamas worry about too), is that I will someday have more children and that they'll take over Olivia's place in our family unintentionally... or that I won't remember her the way I do now. Talking with my mom about Katie always helps reassure me that that won't happen.

Abbie's Graduation

My little sister graduated from high school last saturday! She has grown into such an amazing person and I can't wait to see the amazing things that she'll do with her life. We are so proud of her!

Congratulations Abbie!

Marker

Kurt and I left for San Diego the day before Memorial Day (I'll post about the trip later!), so we visited the cemetary on Saturday to take Olivia some flowers. Both of our families visited her on Memorial Day, and when my sister texted me a picture (I forgot to save it!), it looked so beautiful. SO many flowers for one little girl.

I am so glad her marker is finally in. We ordered it in the beginning of February. They drew up what it was going to look like, and mailed a sketch of it to us so that we could approve the spelling. At the bottom, where it says "too beautiful", they had written "to beautiful". So needless to say, we had to mail them back a corrected version and that pushed things back a bit. I called them about a month ago to ask if we would get a phone call when her marker would be placed, and they said yes. A little over a week ago, Kurt went for a motorcycle ride and stopped by the cemetary... and when he got home, he told me it was in. I think it was a Friday evening so I thought I would give them the benefit of the doubt and thought maybe they would call on Monday. It's been a while now, and still no phone call. I'm just glad we go often enough that we caught it ourselves. I think I would have been a nervous wreck if one of our parents had gone to take flowers for Memorial Day and called us while we were on vacation to tell us it was there. I really wanted us to be the first to see it, and I'm so happy we were. I think it's perfect, and I love the little angel holding the lamb.

Anyway, I realized I hadn't posted a picture of her marker to the blog yet, so here's a picture of it from last saturday. As you can see from the flags and red white and blue pinwheels, her Marine daddy wanted her spot to be very patriotic for Memorial Day!