Going to the Chapel

I got married yesterday.  No, Abe and I aren't having problems and I didn't run off with someone new.  Abe and I got married.  Let me explain..... Farrah has always thought for some reason that every time you get married you have a baby.  So those Duggars with 19 kids... married 19 times in her eyes.  And as a parent, of course you want to foster the idea that babies are equated with marriage so we never corrected her.  So as our way of sharing some special news with her we threw ourselves a weddin'!  As Abe said, it's not a wedding it's a weddin' because we're using paper plates.
We sent her an invitation

And then we got hitched!

And then we told her that she is going to be a big sister again.  I was so excited to see her face.  She had literally been praying to be a big sister again.  It was so hard not to tell her but we wanted to wait a while just to spare her any heartache if we told her too early.  Her face was priceless.  She was so excited. She kept asking if it was real or if we were pretending.

We kept the party going with a present for Farrah to open.  Inside were either pink or blue balloons.  We were all finding out together.  Before we opened it she started praying.  Don't know what she was praying for but she seemed happy with the results!

 Team Blue!

We went outside to send some balloons to heaven per our tradition to let Kellen know he was going to be a big brother.

So while October of 2013 brought us the biggest heartache of our lives when we lost our son, October of 2014 will give us some of our joy back when we welcome a new son to our family.  God is good.

A huge thank you to our friends for being the "photographers/officiant/planners" of our big day :)  

Mother's Day

Mother's day is quickly approaching.  I'm not sure how I'll feel on that day.  I honestly hadn't even thought about it until it was brought up at the last support group.  I could see how painful it was for many of the mothers there.  I do realize how blessed we are that we have our daughter and that we are able to have more kids if we decided to but it doesn't make it easier.  I read something once that an angry grieving mother wrote when someone had so lovingly told her "at least you still have your daughter," and her response was "tell me which of your children you could live without?"  So that's the limbo that I'm in.  Happy to be a mother to my beautiful daughter but still heavy in my heart that he's not here.
I did some more going through his toys to see if there was anything I wanted to keep.  The hard part isn't the sorting process, it's that every single toy has a memory.  Every block I tripped over, every ball I found under the couch.  Everything reminds me of my sweet boy.  I found this little foam square that had his teeth marks in it and I just kept running my fingers over the marks.  Back and forth, over and over.  One of the few physical pieces of him I still have. 
If there's one thing I will always remember about Kellen it was what a mama's boy he was.  He was a permanent fixture on my hip for most of his life.  So on Mother's Day this year, when I think of Kellen, I will try to focus on that.  That he loved his mama and that she loved him. 

Mommy's boy from Krista Naldjian on Vimeo.