Saturday, July 30, 2011

Too Tired

Too tired to post much tonight- spent the day painting Max's bathroom... I learned I don't like painting bathrooms... Too much prep work and too many awkward things to paint around and perch precariously on. So I'm going to recover on the couch and just be thankful I didn't break a leg or arm today while trying to reach all the nooks and crannies in the bathroom!

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Remembering July 30th, 2010

8:08 am: Peanut liked to get up early with Daddy, and then right after breakfast was ready for her morning nap. This morning I decided to just let her nap on the Boppy on the couch. She sure loved her blankie!

Max watching a little "Ming-Ming" (Wonder Pets) while Mommy put Ellie to sleep...

6:11pm: Ellie playing in the living and sitting up like a big girl!

 Max playing with Ellie's bouncy seat in the hallway

Friday, July 29, 2011

Getting Settled

We've been very busy around here trying to get settled in our new place. Today we closed on our old house, and it's strange to be done with that place. I feel ok with it, and am happy we are here. But the old house will be always be Ellie's place in my heart, and for that reason, I know I'll always miss it.

I talked to the hospital today, and we have finally reached the point where we can start preparing memory pouches and hopefully within the next two months, we will be able to deliver them to the hospitals. The hospital asked us for some photo printer photo and ink cartridges for their end-of-life care patient/ families to use, so we will be purchasing that and getting it to the hospital ASAP. I'm anxious to start doing something with all the money we've raised.

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Remembering July 29th, 2010

I took the kids over to a friend's house, where another friend met us. All three of had babies within three months of each other. Here is Ellie checking out on of the other babies. As you can see, she was loving it. A little social butterfly for sure!


Little Missy was teething so I thought we'd try the frozen bagel thing. She tried it for a couple of minutes and then gave it the heave-ho over the side of the high chair!

After dinner, Dave played with the kids outside on the patio while I made some baby food. Shortly after Ellie was born, we bought a BabyCook, and I loved it! I could steam veggies, take some out for Max for meals and puree the rest of Ellie. It was also really nice to puree fruit, Ellie especially loved the fruit in popsicle form.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Good Morning Baby Girl

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Remembering July 28th, 2010
6:51 a.m.

This is the "I-just-woke-up-so-get-the-freakin'-camera-outta-my-face-and-gimme-something-to-eat" look.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

The Cake and The Cup


I hope everyone has someone(s) in their life that knows just when to show up with an armful of bread, brownies and cake. And a cock cup.

Yes, my night was made exceedingly better by chocolate cake and a chicken cup that not only says "cock" on it but it actually gives a little "cock-a-doodle-doo" when you pick it up.



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I've been a little neglectful of pictures lately- makes me a little sad... so here's little catch-up...

Remembering July 22nd, 2010

An afternoon of playing on the porch...
Not really sure why, but she did this with her arms a lot!
 
gnawing on a purple bean from the garden while Mommy makes beans for dinner

 ~Remembering July 25th, 2010~
He actually fell asleep eating spaghetti!






 ~Remembering July 27th, 2010~
I'm pretty sure she thought her feet were a second pair of hands!

 She can sit!!!!!!! The day she started sitting up by herself!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The last four weeks

I feel like a tornado swooped into my life four weeks ago and since then, I've just been tossed around inside of it. And now, it's plopped me down in a new house, and in the middle of a big 'ol mess of confusion and chaos. I seriously don't even know where the last month went! Here's the overview...

A visit from some very important new friends! Noah's Mom (Jenna), Stevie's Mom (Kristin), Juju's Mom (Tiffany), River's Mom (Deanna) and Aiden's Mom (Natasha) and I were able to hang out, in person! We had a lot of fun painting pottery, eating out, visiting the Mall and just talking. It was so nice to finally these people that have been such a great support to me since Ellie died. It was nice to be able to talk about our babies and know that the others were understanding, completely understanding!
Our finished products!
Natasha, Deanna and Jenna
Kristin and the Tiffanys
Ellie's Light event. This thing took over my life. And our house. Of course, I enjoyed doing it, especially since we did it for Ellie. A lot of people had fun at Ellie's event and we raised a lot of money to use to do good things in Ellie's name. That is awesome. However, it was stressful, required a lot of time and energy, and it was never far from my mind that we were only doing Light Up the Lanes, because Ellie wasn't here anymore. No matter what we do to try and honor Ellie, that fact will always remain. A voice in my mind will always be saying, "yeah, this is great but, I'd rather have my baby." Here is the post about Ellie's event, Light Up the Lanes...

This weekend...

Moving. Several months ago, we decided we needed a change and we sort of spur of the moment sold our house and bought a new one. This weekend we finally moved in. Moving is always stressful. But leaving Ellie's room was WAY harder than I anticipated. I cried a lot. I continued crying on and off for the entire weekend.
Max helping pack up Sissy's room by bringing in empty tubs
A couple months ago, I noticed that the previous owner's kids had left their little mark on the house before they moved. I thought it was so cute, so the other night I added Max and Ellie's name to the house too!

The total chaos and disorganization that comes with moving, drives me insane! I like things organized, neat and orderly. Yeah, that our house right now. I know it will take time, but in the meanwhile- drives me crazy!
Max packing up his books
Max in the empty porch with his most treasured things. It's amazing that there is a picture of him not screaming from moving day..
 Poor Maxer... he is so attached to his schedule and routine. I knew that moving was going to majorly upset him. And I was right. He screamed, not just a spoiled brat scream, but this high pitched totally stressed out whine/ scream. It's mind-numbing. It's frustrating. It's sad. You can't do anything about it. Nothing helps. I tried to prep him as best I could, we had two seperate social stories to read him, we let him help pack some boxes, we visited the house many times before... But in the end, it's a change. And that's just not something Max can handle well. He fixates on little things (such as the front door- which had a screen door we could look out at the old house, but not the new house). He's not like other toddlers that you can distract and they will forget all about it- he doesn't forget it. Hopefully in the next couple weeks, he will get a little more adjusted and there will be less screaming...

Wedding. My cousin, Ang, got married this weekend and it was so amazing to see how ridiculously happy she was. Even though the one year old flower girl, made me cry on several occasions, it was good to hang out with some family that we don't see very often. Congrats Ang and Josh!!
Keep 'em coming!
Cousins!
The beautiful bride!!!

My brother and parents
Ellie's Nine Month Angelversary. I can't believe it's been nine months of missing of my little girl. Nine months of wishing this was all a bad dream and that we could just have our old life back. Even if all the distraction of moving, the wedding and Max, the 24th still got to me. I was super crabby and missing Ellie like crazy. Nine months. That's unbelievable...

My heart hurts for her...
And my reward for surviving the last month?? A sinus infection.
Hopefully the antibiotics will kick in quickly, because this house isn't going to straighten itself out. The doctor told me to get plenty of rest (that's funny...) and drink lots of fluids- does wine count??

Monday, July 25, 2011

Light Up the Lanes & Ellie's news story

We couldn't have been more thrilled about how our Light Up the Lanes event went on July 12th. We had about 205 people in attendance, which was about two more times than we had planned for! In the end, we raised about $6500 for Ellie's Light. This money will go towards supporting families who have a critically ill child in the PICU and those who are experiencing the loss of a child. We are hoping to get memory pouches made in the next couple months!
Our event included bowling, a silent auction, raffle, photo booth and face painting. We had so many friends, family members and strangers at the event, and it was so great to hear so many people saying Ellie's name and looking at her pictures. A local radio station, 93X not only supported us with many silent auction and raffle items, but advertised Light Up the Lanes on radio. Also, a news reporter from KSTP, our local news station, came to our house and interviewed Dave and I, and then came to the event. Ellie's story aired later that night on the 10pm news... Here is a link to the story:

http://kstp.com/article/stories/S2195990.shtml?cat=0

Supreme Images Photography was nice enough to take pictures of our event and run a photo booth for the guests. I got the pictures in the mail today and it nice to see what was going on while I was running around. Here some of the pictures from Supreme Images and some that I took...

Silent Auction Items
Raffle Items
Information about Ellie's Light Projects and a poster of Ellie's pictures
Individual Raffle Items
KSTP Channel 5 reporter Jennifer Griswold doing her story on our girl!
The Balloon Pop with the beautiful blocks for Ellie made by Natasha!
Missing our girl!
 Favors for the guests: Ellie Lights (candles) and Ellie's Little Cards of Joy (Pay it Forward Cards)
Court working hard!
Court and Lindsey!
Jenna (Noah's Mommy), Natasha (Aiden's Mommy) and Tiffany (Juju's Mommy)- so glad you girls were able to be at Ellie's event!
Ellie's Ma and Grams
Dan, Lo, Uutes and Dustin
The Menard's
Josh and Ang
My cousin Kaelin and her friends
The DeRoma's  

Tina, Mariah and their friends

We released all the balloons for Ellie at the end of the night!
WE LOVE YOU ELLIE!
Check out our facebook page for more pictures!

Thank you so, so much to everyone who donated to or attended our event! It means so much to us! Thank you!