10 years

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A beloved friend in Arkansas – Meghan --  sent these photos to me three days ago.

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I was glad to see that it still has the little bunny and candle lantern and bird that we had placed there on our brief visits in the past couple of years. Also some of the shiny rocks. :)

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I am so grateful that 10 years have passed. Ten years have changed the pain I felt at first – like I could cry for years and years and still have tears that needed to fall – to a deep but softened longing for the time when we’re together again. I know that in this life I always have something of greatest joy to look forward to. Someday I will hold this sweet baby boy again and get to enjoy the time of watching him grow and then a forever with our family all together.

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It’s interesting but since Exacto has been on his mission, it has felt less painful to me to not have the family together. It’s like I have two sons on missions and although I miss them both I am grateful they are where they are and doing what they’re doing, and I know the separation is temporary. For the last 10 years there has always been a gap in our family pictures and a gap in the phrase, “our whole family.” Now that gap is just a little bigger and easier to explain.

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That tree is so gorgeous right now! How grateful I am that Meghan could go take these pictures when she did. How grateful I am for a friend like her to remember me at this time! I haven’t seen her for 4 years. I know there are several dear friends back in Arkansas and also in other places who always remember. True friendship like this is precious indeed.

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So grateful for loving friends.

Grateful for a beautiful addition to our family 10 years ago.

Grateful for the Plan of Happiness that promises eternal families.

Grateful for our Savior Jesus Christ who makes it possible.

Liebe Mutti, Unsere geliebten Freunde zu Besuch kamen.

1/1/14 ~ I’ll be working over the next couple of weeks (thanks to DC’s amazing Christmas present) to catch up your Dear Mom posts on here. . . .wish me luck! Below is one I started on time but finished today. :)

Week of November 11 - 17

It was a very busy week, getting Fluffy and DC ready for a chilly campout, and also preparing for our beloved German friends the Wingens to come. We had such a wonderful time with them and feel very honored and loved that they would come just to see us! (Well, Andreas had a conference in Denver, but still they rented a car and drove up to Fort Collins. Sie sind überaus nett. :o) More to follow. . . .

Rosebud has lately loved the book Saint George and the Dragon, and has been trying out a knight persona (much to DC’s chagrin when a plastic sword blow to the head caught him off guard!) She is cracking us up!

Here she is as a Princess-Swimmer-Knight in pj’s and a sweater. (Note the plastic shield :).

 

Hummer gave a lovely FHE lesson on gratitude and spent literally hours cutting out leaves and preparing this tree. He is super awesome.

 

I’m pretty partial to these ones, too. :o)

 

 

We had a Relief Society Mother-Daughter meeting (did I tell you one of my callings is to be on the RS meeting committee?) and when we went that morning to set up Fluffy made himself the hero of the day by playing with all the littlies in the nursery room.

Rosebud was SO excited to get to come with me that evening. (And, truth be told, it had been my idea to make it a mother/daughter because all these years I have looked forward to one of these. :) Here we are with our cookie dough truffles for the cookie exchange.

Fabulous recipe here.

Doesn’t she look sweet? We had the best evening. My favorite part was making an ornament with her and it was her favorite part, too. <happy sigh>

On Friday we sent off these two brave souls to camp in the chill at Carter Lake. I am so glad DC could go with Fluffy this time! They had a great time, and even texted to reassure me they weren’t freezing like little popsicles in their tent.

Meanwhile the rest of us cleaned and organized and prepared with excitement for the Wingens to arrive, which they did Saturday morning just as DC and Fluffy got back.

They had never been to Colorado before, and we had never been to Rocky Mountain National Park, so we thought that sounded like a great plan. Due to September flooding we had to take a longer way to get there, and it was snowing once we got into the park, but we still got to see a herd of elk up close and have an impromptu snowball fight. :)

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Here’s from when we tried to drive further up. . . .we gave up and decided to play. :)

We explored some lovely shops at Estes Park, then headed home. I loved riding in the car with Andrea and Andreas and talking about Christmas traditions here and in Germany and all kinds of other things.

The next day after church we had a lovely dinner together.

Then, since we live in Fort Collins and not Estes Park (not that we’re biased). . .

. . .and it was gorgeous weather. . .

. . .we went to the park! :)

It was a great ending to a wonderful visit with them. Hope we can see them again soon!

Love,

Michelle

P.S. Hummer made this to add to the Benjamin name-collection. I love that he remembers his little brother!

Dear Mom, I’ve got love like a river.

Week of October 28 – November 3

So, this week.

Here’s how it all went down.

This was an exciting event. haha! Here’s to 177,777 more! (Our other car has about 50K more than this. I’m thinking that’s one of those “significant, subtle blessings” Elder Bednar talked about.:)

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A new niece safely arrived! Congratulations to my beloved sister Becky and her family! I can’t wait to meet her.

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Rosebud had the honor of having her artwork exhibited at a community college here, thanks to a pretty neat library program. They had such a nifty little reception, with refreshments and everything. It was fun.

 

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One of those magical peaceful moments when everyone’s getting along. I love that I can take a picture of it, and it’s like it’s suspended and can’t change! ha!

 

I already mentioned this walk, but can’t help posting a couple more photos. . . .it was so lovely!

C is for Corn-husk Dolls (and candles and cocoa and cozy. And curry. And candy :).

Way harder than I thought! I’m super impressed with whoever came up with these to begin with!

On All Hallow’s Eve—as Fluffy has taken to calling it—we went to Mt. Everest Café and partook of Himalayan cuisine. It was yummy! We also went to the store and let everyone choose a smallish bag of candy, then came home and shared it all.

Friday is when everything suddenly fell into place for our temple trip / balloon release. A couple more photos from that wonderful day. . . .

Again, so grateful for Suzie-Q and others who helped make that possible!

We came back home and had his "birthday breakfast” for dinner (this recipe’s a keeper! I subbed ww flour and they were still amazing.)

 

Sunday was so peaceful and just what I hoped for. DC, Fluffy and I went for a walk to the same place as on Wednesday (I wanted to show DC how beautiful it was.)

We had Benjamin’s traditional birthday dinner and invited a few sweet friends over.

The best parts of the day were the emails, phonecalls, texts, etc. from the people in my life I am so blessed to call family and friends. I especially loved getting to talk to you on the phone for a long time while sitting in the car in the garage (so I could hear you :).

Isn’t it amazing how deep and far-reaching a mother’s love can be? I feel yours here just as much as I did in Florida and as much as I do when I’m with you. It is so awesome to also be on the other side of it now and feel that towards my children.

It is awesome to see that even after 6 years of not being physically together, I still love my Benjamin. Yep.

And even more awesome is to think of how that compares to Christ’s love for all of us.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

Isaiah 49:15

Love,

Michelle

Day 64 – { eternal families, balloons }

This day turned out to be so beautiful!

Thank you so much for comments and emails on my post asking for ideas on how to remember Benjamin here in CO. We decided go ahead and try for a balloon release in front of the temple, and my sweet friend Suzie-Q offered to watch the littlies so that DC and I could go. This was an answer to prayers – I had felt like things weren’t coming together at all, and then, all of a sudden they did.

The work we did in the temple was so healing and strengthening. We helped to seal families together – husband to wife, son to parents, daughter to parents – people who are deceased who never had the chance to receive those blessings in this life. It was such a special, heavenly morning. One tender mercy was that in our group was an older couple who had lost twin girls in 1981. The mother was so compassionate to me, sharing some beautiful stories that I now hold close to my heart.

 

 

We were even able to go and meet Exacto and Fluffy in the temple baptistry – their faces were bright as we came out with them, even radiant.

I left the temple rejoicing that Heavenly Father has made a plan for families to be united eternally, and also wanting very much for our family to have more peace and harmony so that we can feel Benjamin with us more often.

 

Suzie-Q met us there with Hummer and Rosebud, and my awesome sister-in-law Daniela came over on very short notice with her Italian mother and the two sweet little ones. And so the celebration commenced, at the Denver Temple instead of Pinecrest Cemetery in central Arkansas.

We all wrote notes on the balloons and then sang Happy Birthday.

 

As we released the balloons we sang I Am a Child of God. Then we watched them until we couldn’t see them any more. Hummer lay out flat on the grass and watched the very longest.

 

I think of the temple as a bridge between heaven and earth. It really was a perfect place to sing to Benjamin and celebrate his place in our family -- which hopefully will be forever, if we can just be faithful now!

Tomorrow we’ll celebrate his “real” birthday, but I am so grateful for the beautiful day we had today at the Denver Temple.