A Very Merry Christmas

Sometimes it's hard to remember to be good, to be grateful, and to know that the world does not revolve around me. This Christmas was one of the first times I was able to keep these things at the front of my mind and to have my head and my heart in the right places this season. Going to church and remembering the "reason for the season" (but this time, for the first time, for real) reminded me to be patient and to try my best to be kind and unstressed and to think of others. This was the best Christmas ever because I was finally in the right place, spiritually, to ENJOY it for the right reasons. I feel SO blessed to have such a fantastic family and wonderful friends and to know that I have God's love and guidance to help me through hard and scary times. I feel like I will always have love to give and receive and will never be alone. Things may not always work out how I thought they would or how I wanted but I will always have love and friendship to help me through. I hope and pray that all of my friends and family will have an amazing upcoming year full of love and good times, too.

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Family Weekend

On Friday, I went with my mom to pick up my aunt Patty and cousin Kevee at the airport.  It was fun getting to hang out with my mom; we had coffee while we waited and we browsed around at a cute (and overpriced) shop at the airport.  Then we took Patty and Kevee to lunch and had a great time.  Later, we went to my aunt and uncle's and hung out with my grandma for a while.  It was the kid's last day of school; and, of course, Taryn's birthday, so everyone came over to our house for a bit after I got the kids and then we all met up with my aunt Becky, uncle Dick, and cousin Steph and her boyfriend Ryan for pizza later.  (Pietra's... YUM!)  I got Taryn a chocolate, whipped cream, and oreo cake, and managed to fumble the piece she wanted and dropped it all over the table (much to her dismay, oops!)  Despite that, I'm pretty sure miss Taryn had a good 8th birthday day (even though she was upset that her teacher forgot to pretend spank her) : )

On Saturday, Taryn had a party at her karate school, and was joined by a few of her closest girlfriends and Ryan's parents and sister Kate and her new husband Eddy.  My brother John (Taryn's bestie) came, too, which was nice.  The kids got to run around and burn off a TON of steam, it was fun to watch (I kinda wish I had participated in some of the activities!)  Taryn got to cut her cake in half with a samurai sword (PRICELESS facial expressions!)

And she got lots of cool gifts, including a black watch with skulls (too cool), a seashell jewelry making kit, and a Justin "Beaver" (UGH) shirt, which she loved!  Right after that we headed up to Evergreen (so pretty!) for Trent's boy scout holiday party, which was held at one of the leader's parent's ranch.  It was chilly (it was held in a barn), but there was lots of good food, a visit from Santa, and the kids got to go "sledding" (there wasn't much snow, so some **brave** grown-ups pushed the kids down a little icy path on the sleds).  We headed home around four for a little r&r, but that plan was thwarted by a call from my mom, wondering if everyone could come by and watch a movie and hang out.  That sounded like fun, so I straightened up the house, dug out a bunch of boy scout popcorn (some I still had from LAST year-yeesh), and was interrupted by the door bell ringing half an hour EARLY.  WTF I thought.  Turned out my mom had been trying to call, and everyone was going to Steph and Ryan's, instead.  Oh, well, at least our house was clean (for a day, at least).  We decided to pass, and instead had an early dinner, then went to see Tron.  It was TOTALLY AWESOME!  (Even for the fifty bucks it cost for the 4 of us to go).  BUT, my poor little lady crashed within 10 minutes of the movie starting : )  She slept through the entire movie in my lap (awwwww!)

On Sunday, we had plans to meet my mom, grandma, Patty, and Kevee at church, but my aunt Pam (Patty's twin, and Steph's mom) had flown in that morning (the weather was too bad for her to come on Saturday, like she had originally hoped to), so Patty and Kevee went with Steph to get her.  We met up with Ron and Becky (my in-laws) and my mom and grandma, and I was glad that my mom enjoyed the service.  It was a good one-- a Christmas message about king Herod being threatened by baby Jesus' birth, and how we still are threatened by Jesus because if he is in charge, if he is king, then we are not.  It was a good lesson about control, and struggling to let Jesus lead our lives and be the one in control.  Afterward, my mom, grandma, Patty, Pam, Steph, and Kevee came over and we hung out and chatted for quite a while.  It's always a crazy time when my mom and the twins are together (my mom is only 15 months older than them), so it was great to see them together, telling wild stories.  At five, we all met up downtown and had dinner at cafe Rialto, which was totally yummy, and then we headed off to see The Nutcracker ballet.  The Colorado Ballet does a great performance, and we've started to make it a yearly tradition.  2 years ago, my mom, Taryn, and I went; last year, the 3 of us plus Trent (who WANTED to go, who'da thunk it?) and Pam went, and this year there were NINE of us!  (I wonder how many will go next year?!)  I felt bad for not thinking to invite my mother-in-law and her mom, and my sis-in-law, Kate. : (  Trenty gets a BIG kick out of the male dancer's tight tights, it's fun to tease him about for weeks to come!  Unfortunately, Pam, Patty, and Kevee all are leaving Monday morning, so we bid them good-bye after the ballet, but it was really awesome to have such a nice weekend filled with fun and love from much of our big, wild, family.

My Baby Girl

IS EIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe it!! Happy birthday, sweet little lady!

I Wish I Could Say

"Fuck you!"  When the response to, "who'd like to start" (ordering) is, "the pregnant one!"  It's not a stranger's fault, but it is just too soon to have it in my face ALL. THE. TIME.  Especially when "the pregnant one" looks to be about as pregnant as I should be.  That's all, just griping.  I know I shouldn't be so bitter.

I Hate to Admit This

I just realized that 2 days ago marked 4 months since we learned our precious baby was not going to join us.  And I am ashamed to admit that I didn't even think of it on Monday.  : (  I knew the date (we had like 50 things going on), and it didn't even hit me.  What the hell is wrong with me?

For ME?!?!?!?!

The LOVELY Katharine (check her out!!) has graced me with a blog AWARD!  I am so happy, but I have to break the rules of the award (a little), because I don't follow many blogs.  BUT!! Look how cute the cherry on top award is!



The rules of this award are:
1. Link back to the person who gave it to you
2. Pass it on to five (or more) other blogs
3. Leave them a comment telling them about the award

I know many of you who read my blog (and there are more than 4 of you, but to those 4, thanks for officially following), also read Katharine's blog, Grow Baby Grow, but if you never have, do!  She's the mother to 2 little girls in Heaven:  Hannah (who was due this August), and Audrey, who would've joined us in March, like Taylor.

Unfortunately, I don't keep up with 5 more blogs regularly, so here's my pledge to do so!

I, Alex, pledge to check out more blogs, I DO enjoy them!

Here are the blogs I pass this award on to (in no particular order):

1.  CarlyMarie.  Ok, so it's not like this award from me is going to even probably be noticed, because Carly Marie Dudley is HUGE!!! But seriously, with all she does, how can I NOT recognize her?!  She is the AMAZING woman behind To Write Their Names in the Sand, amongst so much more to the baby loss world.  What an absolutely phenomenal lady!!!!

2. I don't know if this is legal, but I'm going for it anyway:
Love Reign Over Me.  This is Carly's old blog.  I love it for several reasons though, one being that it came to an end.  Hold on! Let me explain...  I guess I never thought of a blog as being finite.  Some people write forever, things change some, but it's basically indefinite.  Some probably just get deleted when the person is done.  Some people maybe just give up and the whole thing falls by the wayside.  Not this one.  She wrote for a reason, and she ended the blog to start somewhere new and fresh.  I think that's beautiful!  I can't link back to it, because it is open to readers who are invited only, but I still think it counts!

3.  Forget-me-not, Oh Lord!  is written by Jamie, and although she's the one who (kind of) got this whole ball rolling (to me, at least, by awarding Katharine, who awarded me), she's most definitely worth mentioning here!  I looked back through her journey and it touched my heart that she, like me, was able to see her baby's heart beating on her birthday, which was the day before mine : )  Also, check out the pic of the 8 week old baby on her blog.  It's so beautiful!!!  If there's any doubt about when a baby "becomes" a baby, the pic she posted should squash that!

4.  Kate, at Busted Plumbing, most definitely can be described as awesome!  Why?  Because she can laugh!  And sometimes, you just have to.  I love her attitude, it is so inspiring : )

And, that's all I've got, folks.  Hopefully soon I'll be following so many blogs, I won't be able to just narrow it to only five (or four, or well, technically just 3, I guess).

Church and Music

So...
I randomly decided to start attending church again.  Ok, it's not really that random.  It's been on my mind for a while now I just didn't know where to go.  Last week I went with Ron and Becky (my in-laws) again, and I found that what they were saying there was exactly what I have been needing to hear!  We went again today (Ryan came, too, he works every other Sunday) and again, another great message that helped give me a new perspective on things that have been bothering me lately.  One thing this church does yearly is host a Christmas tea for the women of the congregation, so I attended that with Becky and Gloria (her mom) yesterday.  The theme this year was "simply Christmas," yet ANOTHER message I needed pounded in!!  I am happy to have reminders of 1.  The real reason for the season (no, it's NOT going in to debt, stress, and presents!) and 2. to keep things simple and ENJOY.  I wanted to share that!

As a side note, I would love to thank Jenny and Jenn for suggesting their churches to me, as well.  And to both of these lovely ladies, I still would love to come with you sometime!! I'm sure if you like your church homes, they'll have something to offer me, as well.

And just a quick note on the music.  I tried to add some a long time ago but it didn't really work out, partially because I was not able to come up with many good ideas for what would be appropriate on my own.  SO, I cheated and googled "songs for miscarriage" and simply added them to the playlist.  This was a good route for me because it really did give some great ideas for songs that I never would have listened to otherwise.  A lot of these songs really spoke to my heart about the topic of loss, so I hope you'll enjoy them, too!

<3

Pangs

It happens all the time:
I'm minding my own business, and then BAM! a comment, a question, a baby, a belly. 
I know it is no one's fault.
I know people don't know, and who doesn't just LOVE pregnant ladies and babies?! (Me, that's who)
"She's having a girl in March," I overhear.
"We need to feed the kids" says a dad, patting the mom's belly.
And even, "I just saw a cute baby over there, mom."
No, I am not mad at how "mean" and "insensitive" people are; everyone has something bad and I'm a big fan of "get over it," "move on."
It's not even like a stab from a knife anymore.
Just a little pang of hurt.
It's usually unexpected.
I don't know if it will ever stop.