3rd Annual Parker Family 5k!

Some of today's highlights in photo's...

Starting at 12 o'clock: Nana Shelly and Isabel - in the shade, on the walk, by the sign

2 o'clock: Team Sammy! Nanny Shelly, Cody, her daughter A, Linda and Isabel.

3 o'clock: Isabel showing us how to get started in a race (or learning to transition from sitting to crawling position!)

4 o'clock: the crowd, it was hot.

6 o'clock: Team Sammy by the sign! It's good that it's super small because then you can't tell my eyes are closed. Everyone else, looking (at least) and smiling...me...can't keep my eyes open in the sun.

7 o'clock: Linda and Isabel soakin' up the sun with Sheryl Crow

9 o'clock: Rachel! Her daisy's anyway...saw them along the walkers route and had to take a picture.

10 o'clock: A posin' like a high school senior in the tree...too cute, love my new camera!

11 o'clock: Cody and A running across the finish line!

yeeeaaaahhhhh buddy

Pre-walk thoughts

yippeee skippy! We made the goal! $1020. Seriously people, I'm not making it up. And that doesn't count my personal donation. No one can tell me God isn't in the details. I swear I did the calculations 2 nights before the last donations rolled in.

17ish (if the rumor was correct, I'll find out today) kits provided for families facing the loss of their baby. My Sammy is helping out 17 families. Love it (and hate it at the same time, ijustwannaholdhim).

Amelia's birthday hit me kinda hard. I blogged about it early before school and spent the evening cuddling baby P and talking to my friend Jessie about her itty bitty E who was born Monday 5 weeks early! 4 itty bitty pounds! And I've been trying to get in touch with Dave's co-worker who lost her precious Jasmine Elizabeth shortly after she was born. I'm excited to be a resource and have someone to "help" if she wants it. Not that I have much to offer except a listening ear...

All that to say, I *may* have been trying to avoid some of the emotional nature of my life these last couple weeks. That ='s one blubbery crying Friday. Talking about Sammy's birthday and heading off to this race to honor my baby (who I wish was alive) had me in tears before work yesterday. SMH and I was that crying lady on the airplane again last night.

So today should be interesting. I wonder if anyone has every walk/cried for 3 miles. I wonder if there are crying mama's at these events. Well. I might be the first (but I'm guessing not).

Oh - I sent every penny of my paypal account to String of Pearls a few minutes ago. If you still want to donate you can go directly to their website and make a donation there. They offer these kits free to anyone who contacts them, such a blessing.

HBD Amelia!

It's been back to work this week. I forget (probably on purpose) how all consuming I let my job become and how much it wears me out. We don't even have kiddo's yet! It's just planning and setting up the classroom.

Happy Birthday Amelia! I bet (if they cared) heaven throws the best birthday parties. They have a most beautiful stuffed butterfly toy at one of my favorite boutiques and Sammy would be bringing it to you if he could (and if that made any kind of sense...cause I wouldn't know your mama if it weren't for ya'll being in heaven together). Baby girl, one year ago, my heart broke as your mama was the first one I watched go through birthing and saying good bye to her anen baby. She was so graceful and peaceful I didn't even wanna read her blogs because the place of pain I was in couldn't reconcile grace and peace at such a horrible time. But your mama, you, and your birth, gave me hope. Thank you baby girl.

As of this morning we're at $950!! Totally gonna make the goal. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to every one who has donated and spread the word. About 1/3 of the people that have donated I don't personally (or internetly) know. What a blessing you all will be to String of Pearls and some (wait while I go do the math the spread sheet does the math for me) 16 families. I heard a rumor it costs about $60 to put one of those kits together so $1000 is 16.67 kits. If we just so happen to raise $1020 that is 17 kits. :-) (thank you excel)

Thank you, people like ya'll made a kit possible for me and ya'll are making kits possible for other people to remember their babies who were gone too soon.

woo hoo!

$875!

$125 to go to make my goal.

Go String of Pearls! Go Team Sammy!

Walk update

Woo hoo!

As of this morning ya'll have donated $775! So exciting. I kept meaning to write that I am hoping to raise $1000 and then a couple more donations came in and we're dangerously close to my goal!

I'm so excited for Saturday! I get to see the family and walk in honor of my baby.

the aquarium is my kryptonite

SMH

I really had no idea. This is a trigger I would not have predicted.

Last time I went to the aquarium was on a field trip. One of those days when my co-workers could sense my unease before I did. Babies and families everywhere! Lots of school children too but shoot.

Yesterday I was invited to go to the aquarium with a bunch of my favorite people, Leigh, Jodie, Melissa, and their daughters. First of all, Sammy would have loved being the lone boy in that bunch. Second, I couldn't get over that fact that I *could* have had a stroller to push around (or baby to wear) in an alternate path if this had been a choose your own adventure life. Maybe one day I'll be one of those "spiritually mature" people who can say I would not change a thing but yesterday...today...not that day.

The aquarium is my kryptonite. I miss my baby.

his feet

I feel like I might have posted these before but not with my super new camera...that I don't really know how to use yet...so here are Sammy's foot molds. You can see the wrinkles that he had on his feet and his tiny toe nails! String of Pearls, the foundation who's 5k I am doing on July 30th, sent me a kit that included the gel to cast his feet and then the compound to put in the cast and make these molds. (I'm just throwing these words around, I have no idea what it's all called really. But that down there is what we made from what they sent.)

I know I've shared the ornament before...here is the photo book we received with ornament and molding kit. That blue clay looking glob is just that. Only you can kinda see his toe prints on it. I think we're supposed to bake it and have a foot print but since it's one of the last things left that we have unchanged since Sammy touched it...my other pictures showed the dust that has accumulated really well.

Ya'll, if it weren't for String of Pearls I would have none of that stuff. They sent me a kit, I gave it to my mom and sister in law to take care of after Sammy was born. Time honestly stopped when Sammy was born. Before his birth I couldn't plan past it and I feel like I'm just coming out of a fog. I love our memento's but my mind could not have planned any of that in its state a year ago. We were so concerned about getting a "hand print" that it didn't occur to us to just dip his little fist (that we couldn't keep straight) in the gel to get a fist print. *sigh* That would have been cool but my mind - wasn't thinking about all that.

It is our first event as Team Sammy. I totally dropped on the ball on t-shirts - next year, I swear, the t-shirts will be amazing. I just booked my ticket to Colorado and then received another donation in the mail today. (In that order, I paid for my own ticket. 100% of donations are going directly to String of Pearls.)

Don't forget to donate - up there on the left, under the CHEEKS! picture if you want to support an amazing organization that helps families remember their babies.

today i wish...

it would stop raining. seriously, this is not monsoon season

the sun would shine so I could play with my new camera and some fantastic natural light

the packing fairy would come pack up my house

this was not my last Monday of summer

life was easier!

I had a picture of Isabel's new teeth and my nose piercing! Our new additions :-)

my heart and the bad

Another baby! Baby P was born yesterday at 4:40pm. SHE - *I totally thought she was a he for the last 5 months in utero* - is a big ol' thing with a double chin already. We went to visit last night and I went back today and got to hold her for a bit.

Being around these 2 new babies lately has gotten me thinking...and feeling...pregnant women don't bother me, I can talk with them about pregnancy and birth. Being around new babies and new mama's? Hard. I didn't read up on how to care for a newborn and don't have any practical experience. On some level I want nothing more than to be a mother of my own living baby. But I know that will not provide me the satisfaction that I think it will. It's just an emptiness that I have now...

I've been reading old journals. We're getting ready to move and have unearthed a couple boxes that have been tucked away. I'm tempted to throw them away... The names have changed, the prayers haven't. 7 years ago someone pointed out the issues in my heart, my actions were seemingly negligible but my heart...rotten and threatening to infest my whole being.

My heart. These days I feel like it isn't capable of anything. Constantly filled and emptied. Maybe that means it's capable of a lot. Maybe I'm trying to fill it with the wrong things. What if it has to stay empty of all the bad so that the good can flow through?

The bad...this summer I have been challenged to discern "the bad". Guess what? Often the bad is not something that most people would consider harmful but I'm finding that I place too much importance on innocent things. Translated - the bad is not drugs or alcohol, you know, obvious, the bad is shopping or food. It might even be just spending money, even on other people...I find myself looking for some satisfaction, some way to fill the emptiness. But all of these things provide no satisfaction. They are a finite fix to my infinite empty.

Thus says the LORD, "What injustice did your fathers find in Me,

That they went far from Me and walked after emptiness and became empty?

Jeremiah 2:5

Jesus said to her,

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,

but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:13-14

numb again

9 months was a numb milestone. Other people pointed out to me that his time alive was now shorter than the time since he's been gone. It's been such a crazy year.

I put out Thursday's post and didn't think too deeply about it. Today I revisited it and see the conflict that I am facing. Love hurts but it is impossible to fully live without it. I wouldn't trade the love I have for Sammy for anything, even the absence of pain as milestones pass. I guess the love is greater than the pain it causes.

Isabel and I both have additions to announce, I'll have to get her mama to take a picture so I can show them all off. Today is my last day in Colorado! And then it's home to Lindsay having her baby! And packing...we're moving. Just across town but to a little bit bigger place.

I think we have 9ish people racing for Team Sammy! And no t-shirt put together yet *rolling eyes* Sometimes I am a slacker. But sometimes I finish 4 flour sack towels in a week. And sometimes I have a grateful attitude...

Oh Henri

Living gratefully requires practice.

It takes sustained effort to reclaim my whole past

as the concrete way God has led me to this moment.

For in doing so I must face not only today's hurts,

but the past's experiences of rejection or abandonment or failure or fear...

...grateful people learn to celebrate

even amid life's hard and harrowing memories

because they know that pruning is no mere punishment, but preparation.

When our gratitude for the past is only partial,

our hope for the future can likewise never be full.

Henri Nouwen, Turn My Mourning into Dancing

What if he's right?

9 months - love hurts

"Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams."

-Dostoevsky

"love hurts"

-Nazareth

Today is nine months in heaven baby boy!

I remembered the morning when I told Sammy about the people he would meet in Heaven. I don't know when his little soul went to heaven but I felt the need immediately to tell him about the man who would hold him first. I just assume Jesus greets everyone upon their entrance to heaven *shrug* It was my first shower after the diagnosis and I washed my belly and cried...I didn't know if Sammy could hear me, if he would ever hear me. But I felt I needed to start telling him about Jesus.

It's oddly reassuring on days like today to know that my boy is chillin' with Jesus and all the people (maybe? who really knows?) that have gone before him. My Grandma Scrabeck, my great uncle Jim, a family friend Jim Brooks, my uncle Steve, my great grandma Culbertson...maybe he's found some of my friends little ones who have gone to heaven recently. I don't really know how it works but sometimes it's helpful to think about.

"What is hell?

I maintain that it is the suffering of being

unable to

love."

-Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov

who's that lady?

Talking to the baby in her cart like she's about to answer back? It was me. And I only cared a little that no other mama's seemed to talk to their children...

Target was a success! *sad smile* so much fun with Belle Bell, I saw a double seater cart and almost stuck her in it for a picture to post how I felt about being there. I did try to imagine how I could have jammed 2 chunktastic babies in the seated part of the cart...

And we got home and she napped her heart out while I made baked potato casserole and 2 apple pies. There was only a little fire from where the pie baked over the edge. I made all that yummy food for my BFF from college Terri, who just had her baby boy Caleb! He's a pea-nut. 7 lbs! He's tiny tiny tiny. I only cried a little while I held him. I gave fair warning "I'm gonna cry but I'm ok."

It's that kind of week I guess. I spent some time yesterday crying at a picnic when I talked to a mama who's been so supportive and very involved with String of Pearls. They are Team Larson and she told me about their shirts yesterday.

I got another donation from a sweet coworker on Sunday! And my bro and new-sis-in-law are definitely coming so we're at 7 people on Team Sammy. Kinda of a great number if you ask me *wink*

menagerie

I wanted to recap the last few days since I'm sure you're all *so* interested in how I spend my time.

I'm in Denver! Drove out Sunday with my brother John, his new wife Lisa, and Ditka, Nola, and Puppy the cat. That's two large dogs and a cat and a car full of wedding gifts and luggage. They bought a new car while they were in Minnesota...new to them. *smile* Doesn't much matter about the car for this story...

Herding the Cat, while trying to get a Frisbee away from Ditka while she sat in the front seat

The End.

Details seem a little boring when the title to my story says it all. It will be great story fodder for my kinder babies next year. Shoot - now I gotta figure out how to draw dogs AND cats.

Isabel is so tall! And she tries to laugh at me! Two weeks ago she was an itty bitty (20 lber) who sat up and smiled when you talked to her. Now she's a tall, I-can-pull-myself-up-on-stuff, laughing big girl. SMH

We're off on an adventure today. Can Auntie Sissa wrangle-a-7.5-month-old-while-grocery-shopping,-Targeting,-and-making-a-meal-for-my-BFF-from-college-who-just-had-a-baby-boy-that-I-get-to-see-tonight? Whew - I'll let ya know about that...excited to try for sure.