2016 Recap

The year 2016 was a year of chaos and change for me.

On January 16, 2016, I had a small stroke. I was fortunate that it didn't leave any residual effects, but it was definitely a huge wake-up call for me. I realized I needed to make some changes in my life.

March 25th was the 5th anniversary of Caleb's death. For the first time, we did not do a balloon release. I just couldn't. I didn't see the point in continuing to focus on the day he died. I wanted to celebrate his life, not his death.

Camp Sol - The Beginning

The other day as I was cleaning out the notepad on my iPad, I ran across my notes from our very first visit to Camp Sol in 2012. It was almost one year after Caleb died when we went for the very first time. I went back through the blog and realized that I never posted these notes. I find it fitting that I found the notes just before we are ready to head to our fourth year of Camp.

Happy 10th Birthday, Caleb

On August 20, 2005, I was blessed to witness the birth of a beautiful baby boy. I was privileged to cut his umbilical cord. As the doctor handed him toward his birth mom, she pointed at me and said, "Give him to her. She's his mom, not me." It was the most selfless act I had ever seen. 

A New Beginning (a.k.a. Caden & Football)

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to share this for a few days now. It’s a bit of a long story. I’m still not sure how well this will come across, but I’m going to try anyway.

Let me start by saying I had no idea what God had planned for us when I took Caden out to eat lunch on June 29th.

A Final Note?

For the past three years, we've released balloons to Caleb on the anniversary of his death. Usually, we do it in the evening after Richard has gotten home from work. This year, due to other things already going on in the evening

1st Day of Kindergarten

Today was Caden's first day of kindergarten. This was a day I have been both looking forward to and dreading at the same time, but maybe not for the reason

Happy 9th Birthday, Caleb!

Wow! It's still so hard to believe this is your 4th birthday away from us. I got up this morning and had a hard time realizing you weren't here to enjoy your special day. So, I decided I would spend the day with Caden doing things you liked to do and some things I think you would have liked if you were still here.