The memories and still holding on...

I have always been one to take pictures.  I have ALWAYS loved pictures.  I love photographs in the professional way as well as candid shots taken by polaroids, DSLRs, instagrams, whatever.  I love catching the moment for the purpose of preserving it. And….in a way, holding on to it.   Never forgetting it….always remembering it.  No, I can't freeze time, but I can certainly frame it, make it my screensaver or home screen and age myself while i search through photos or starve at it….remembering that time.  In the past, I have been known to take 10,000 photos in one year.  Yeah, probably capturing about 5000 moments, but either way, it's still a lot of photos.  I make a photo book at the end of the year (with about 300 of those photos) to tell our story in a special way and that can be picked off the shelf at any time to reminisce…or whatever.   But that's not to say that I don't ever go back to those dated folders on my hard drive or old printed photos, to search for a specific photo that I KNOW I had snapped.  Like that one year I had a photo of Owen wearing the potato head glasses and thought it would be fun to include photos of each of the kids when they were toddlers wearing those silly things because I knew they all did it and I was SURE I had Captured.The.Moment.

That is just one example.

I have argued with my husband a time or two before about him always looking so far in the future and not enjoying the present while he rebuts I am always looking in the past at old photos and books and then being sad that the time went by so quickly.  I think it's kind of Mars vs. Venus but I don't deny that I enjoy old memory books.  And I do my best creating memory books and boxes for my kids for when they are older and sometimes will initiate a conversation at the dinner table of the memories we made in our first home and their favorite times from childhood.so.far.  I know from my own experience and as a bystander that one's past is comprised of what their memory is of it.  Whether their memory is accurate or not.  If you have an idea in your head of how something happened in your past, unless it's photographed or journaled, there is not really any way to correct the memory if it's wrong, or prove that  it is right.  Just sit around at a family reunion sometime and listen to siblings or parents reminisce and almost always, there is a disagreement, if not argument, on what happened in an old story….who did it, who won, who got caught, who broke what, etc….

As much fun as I have with photos and momentos that help me remember fun moments, like ticket stubs, programs, receipts or whatever, I recently lost a very important momento (that's what I am calling it) to me and I am trying to help myself get over it.  I'm trying to justify the difference between material things and memories…the tangible vs. the intangible.  Since my most plentiful and present moemntos are photos, those are tangible, are they material?  Because I don't want to be a material person. (I know I am but I strive not to be. Don't judge.)  I spend precious time (read: HOURS) making things for my kids to remember their childhood when they get older and for  me to reminisce and even spend money producing these things.  These are the kinds of things I would grab if there were a fire or a natural disaster headed my way.  (After grabbing my children of course) But not because they are things….because they remind me of moments.  Of time.  Of life.  Of our history.  They are what tells our story and proves our memories write or wrong.  They document things that will be forgotten.  Yes, forgotten.  Because we can't possibly remember every little detail and with 10000 pictures per 365 days, there were a lot of details documented, right?

Memories. Details. Things so desperately held on to as our kids are growing up right before our very eyes.  This is kind of a battle I am fighting within myself of how important these things are to me.  Are they too important?  I would rather spend time ON my kids than on looking through all those pictures OF my kids…right?  Actually, I don't regret any of the time I have spent on my memory keeping.  I'm sure not everyone is like me.  But I don't.  I'm so glad I have the finished products of the things I have stayed up late creating.  The momento I lost, though, is not a photograph.  However, it is present in MANY of my photographs.  And though I knew I wouldn't always have this momento to come back to, I never ever wanted to see it go. Or see it gone.  It tells a story all by itself.  Just it's presence and just by looking at it and touching it, thousands of memories are flooded into my mind and the minds of my kids.  I just hate that it's gone.

It's our swing set.  Our old, warn with broken parts, but still lots of life….swingset.  Our renters' kids used the swing set and they have taken it with them. (on our accord--not mine, my husbands).  I didn't know this arrangement had been made so it was a heartbreaker when I laid my eyes upon an empty spot in our yard that once held a piece of our families history.   Milestones were marked there.  Battles were fought and won there.  Treasures were built and buried there.  Flights were landed there.  Stories were made and told there.  The rhythmic squeak of a swing being ridden….all in that spot.  By three of our children.  And a swing set has been what I have missed most for Owen since we moved.

But now that I got my sob story out and it is obvious what that old thing meant to me, I don't want it to be so important.  I don't want to feel this way over something that is material.  But I am just trying to tell the difference, in my heart, between that being a thing, or it being many happy memories that we will have forever.  Yes, we could have still played on it on our once or twice-a-year visits back to this place,  but we can also replace it for that matter.  But there's the bar that Karly used to flip over and the swing that Emma and Karly would jump out of and the slide that Reese would slide down and the sand box that he hid his army men in…where Owen would have done the same thing...

But it's all just stuff.  And I don't need to be so emotional about it.  And I'm trying not to be.  I'm just bummed.  I didn't expect it to be gone when I rush Owen around the corner and told him to "Look at what you get to play on!" and then find nothing there.  He hardly noticed as he ran off and played in the dirt.  No big deal.  He doesn't remember that thing.  And I didn't expect him to.

That's why I took all those pictures.

MIssing you...

Chase,

We are spending time together as a family as much as we can this week.  It doesn't make it hurt less that you're not here, but it does make it more bearable.  Leaning on each other is what we do and what we do best at times like this.  I spent the day at your daddy's side and we talked about you and shared you with each other.  We miss you with every breath we take and that will never change.  THank you, though, for the gift you have given us and continue to give us.  We struggle to see them at times, but we are searching for you always.  We love you little buddy.  

Hurting for you today,

mommy

5 Years Old....Happy Birthday in Heaven sweet boy...

Mama misses you.  I can't ever say enough how much I miss you.  There are not enough words in our vocabulary to describe the love and loss I feel for you.  Today you would be 5 years old and I would be teary-eyed thinking about the last of your pre-kindergarten days.  I would love to have that right now.  I would give it a thousand times over if I didn't have to live this life on earth without you.

I hope you have the most wonderful of birthdays up in Heaven my sweet boy.  I know you know we are thinking about you and celebrating you today and always and hold you closely in our hearts.  You live within us each day as I see you in each of your siblings.  I see you in the beautiful signs of spring and in all the signs you send us.  I miss you sweet boy. Happy Birthday.

Love,

Mall Scavenger Hunt birthday party....I survived!

I have written about this on both the girls' blogs so that they will have (my version of) a little bit of detail to come back and reminisce on....But I wanted to include this on my blog, too.  This was a very important night for me.

My girls are 6th and 8th grade.  That's 12 and 14 years old.  They are mini adults.  They are making bigger and bigger decisions all the time.  They are growing up and I have nothing to do about it.  Except make memories while it happens.

When they were little I went all out with birthday parties and the planning that went into them.  We did princes  more than a few times, we did spa parties, cooking studio parties, fancy tea parties, bowling parties, roller skating, horses, safari scavenger hunt....the list goes on.  We talk about them every year at their birthdays and try to remember the theme to each one.  But the last couple years, they kind of dwindled.  Or were replaced by bigger gifts like summer camp or expensive concert tickets (great memories!).  Moving from NM to CO also factored in because it has taken a while to build up their friend base which is what a party is really based on.

This year Emma did a little searching on Pinterest and decided she wanted another scavenger hunt.  And though the Lion King 5th birthday party was pretty awesome, she wanted to do one in the mall with her friends.  And oh yeah, it has to be, like, hard mom.  Okay?  For 14-year-olds.

Great.  No pressure.

In the meantime, as kind of a long time wish of mine, I talked Karly into joining us and combining her party with Emmas so both groups would be in the hunt.  Karly's situation is a little different as her friend base is pretty volatile (read: inconsistent).  It changes quite often.  But as the time neared, she was able to formulate one of the four teams that would be in our Scavenger Hunt Party.

I got a lot of my ideas off of Pinterest but here are pictures of the stuff I ended up making...I did two versions.  Turquoise for Emma and Pink for Karly.  Everything else was the same for each girl.

Invitation and envelope, goody bag, water bottle, hunt rules and scoring sheets.

Again, I found these on Pinterest but instead of purchasing them, I made them myself in Photoshop.

For the "credit card" I used business adhesive 3M card protectors.

The goodies were big size candy bars and some candy from the candy store, beauty items from Forever 21, glass bottle of soda and straw, and face mask/mud from Forever 21.  

The party was from 4-7pm as the mall told me it starts thinning out in the mall after 5pm on a Saturday.  I had asked the stores (and the mall) that I was including on my hunt before hand if it was okay to send my girls in.  There were a couple stores that said no so I steered them clear of those.  The hunt part was from 4-6pm.  Then they came back to the food court and ate, had cake and got their prizes.  I learned a lot from this experience and unfortunately, I wouldn't have know if I hadn't tried it this way.  But the girls loved it and we talked about doing it every year.  I had a lot of fun with it because it was a fun "girl" thing to do. 

As my girls get older, I see them growing into the adults they will soon be.  I am absolutely loving talking to them and spending time with them as they grow.  They are such cool, neat little spirits. They are so much like they were when they were 5 and 3.  In some ways they haven't changed a bit and I just smile to myself when I think about those times.  As I get older and my kids reach the age that I wished I had done things like this, my brain sends me back to that time in my life.  The things that my parents did or didn't do to make my childhood the way I wanted it to be.   Teenagers usually go through a phase where their parents "ruin their life" and I expect that.  But I fully intend to make the best of my time with my "big girls" now that they are old enough to do things that I like to do (and wear the same clothes, ha!).  Our relationship is growing with them.  We are learning from our mistakes and they know I will make mistakes, too.  I have already shown them that.  But I have owned up to it and admitted where I went wrong and how I will try to do things differently next time.   We talk about the decisions we make and how they affect the rest of the family.  About being happy with who you are and what you are doing.  And this all goes for me as well as them.  As long as they know I'm not perfect but I'm honest and am not hiding things from them, I think I have a little less chance of ruining their lives forever.  ;-)  Things are well right now.  I  know there will be ups and downs.  But I intend to make it through those times and come out holding hands on the other side.  Or I will die trying.  Here's to the many more memories we will be making.....

A new birth

My sister had her baby and we welcomed this little guy into our extended family yesterday but it has been bittersweet.  Though not in the way I would have expected.  His little body, so fresh and new, to tiny, is a reminder of my sweet little boy.  But I can look at this little one and separate him from Chase.  I don't hold him in place of what I'm missing.  We've had Owen and been through this stage with him and we are beyond that.  And that was a huge, very huge part of my healing process.  I think an hospital, and any baby ward I walk into will always bring back first my memories of Chase, and secondly, my memories of birthing my other children as well.  I wish it wasn't that way because my healthy births are the happiest moments in my life and and I wish those were the first images in my mind when I see those things.  But that is not my life.

What is bittersweet about the welcoming of this new little soul is my niece and nephew.  I look at them and I see my own kids and that is when the sadness rush in and I struggle to hold back tears.  Beckham is almost the exact age (within a couple months) of what Reese was when Chase was born.  That is so hard to believe because we see my nephew Beckham, and Owen, as the babies and they seem so little compared to what I "remember" Reese being five years ago.  Reese just seemed older and it's one of those thoughts that I really try to push away when I think of losing Chase.  That Reese was still a baby himself and that he had to comprehend death and carry those feelings in his little heart that day and those days after.  The questions he had…I remember holding him next to me during Chase's funeral and Reese listening so intent to the preacher and then looking up at me and asking me if it was Chase on Jesus' lap in the picture and if he was in Heaven now.  He was too little to have to bear that and go through all of it.  It wasn't fair.  And when I see Beckham's eagerness to see his new baby give him his present and hold him, I see Reese and what should have been happening when Chase was born.  And  my niece Gracie is just a year younger than Karly was when Chase was born and it seemed like Karly was so much older.

I don't know why our minds trick us this way, maybe to protect us.  I want to believe that they were "grown up" and old enough to handle what was dealt to us--because they did and the were all amazing through it all and they still are.  But the truth was they were just babies themselves.  They never should have had to travel the paths they did.  Children should not know that kind of pain and tragedy.  It breaks my heart today just the same as it did five years ago.  I failed them because as the parent I am supposed to protect them.  And not only did I not protect Chase that day, I watched them get hurt, too.  It devastates me.   I am so sorry.  As parents, we make mistakes and I think we realize we're not perfect.  But this was something that was never supposed to happen and I couldn't fix it.  And I never will be able to.  And I don't think they look at their new cousin thinking these things, but I can't help myself.  My kids were hurt.  All of them.  And that's the worst feeling in the world for a parent.

April is knocking on the door and I know I'm getting emotional about that already.  I can't believe how the years are flying by and I feel like Jan to the end of April are full speed downhill ride.  I don't want these years to fly by.  I want to enjoy them and while I'm trying to do that with Owen, it's just as important I do with the older kids.  I want to remember these elementary and middle school years as fun and amazing.  I love them all the same, regardless of age.  I hope they know that.  April is just a reminder to when our world shattered into a thousand pieces while we watched everyone and everything else go on around us as if nothing changed.  But we had.  We had to pick ourselves up and start over, at the same time we continued on with our lives as best we could.

So I look at this new birth as a beautiful miracle….but also as a reminder that we all were kind of reborn.  Not in a beautiful, everlasting, enlightening kind of way but in a you-have-to-keep-going kind of way.  And we made it.  We are here.  But we will never forget our little boy.  He is deep in our hearts and there he will stay.   Missing him more today than yesterday and feeling his presence in each other and in our beautiful surroundings.  I love you, little man.  Until we meet again….