I am a Child of God

 Aubree loves taking care of Jared.  She is such a good big sister.  She is always looking for ways to help me and asks me what she can do to help.  

 Travis is just now potty trained (it has taken way too long) and he loves to put his underwear on himself.   We got him some Spiderman and other super hero underwear, and they all  have the characters on the bottom/back of the underwear.  Anyways, Travis wants to be able to see Spiderman when he is wearing them, so he is just used to wearing them this way.  We now only have one kid in diapers.  It is the first time since Tanner was born.  I miss changing Andrew's diaper.  He would not lay still.  We would have to figure out ways to distract him and keep him busy long enough to get it changed.

 Been practicing more photography. 

 Jared is not just satisfied by breastfeeding anymore, so we started feeding him rice cereal with fruit/veggies this week.  I took these pictures after his first taste of prunes.

Even with those cheeks, chin, and his many rolls, he still acts like he is starving all of the time.

 Today is 2 months since our Andrew died.  It still seems unreal.  He is so missed.  We have been blessed with so much love and comfort.  The kids each got the nicest Valentines package from with their own specially made church books by my great friend/college roommate.  We constantly talk of him and watch videos of him, so we can keep his memory strong.  One of the hardest things is feeling like we are forgetting all the little details. 

My baby sister, Leslie, just got engaged to her own Tanner.  He is from Virginia and they plan on getting married at the end of April.  

Our great friend/neighbor made the kids a book with pictures of Andrew and the words to "I am a Child of God" in it.  The kids all love looking at it and Travis loves singing with it.  I love how he tries to sing with vibrato at the beginning.   Thank you Deb!

ANDREW MEMORY (by Sara): Andrew loved taking drinks from big cups, even though most of the time he would just drink too fast. It would spill over his shirt and he would make the face like he just got dunked in a swimming pool. When the cup was empty, he would bite it the edge so that he looked like some animal or little donkey. Then I would put a cup in my mouth and we would pretend to ram each other and he would laugh so hard he couldn't hold the cup. 

5 months old!

 Our little Jared is 5 months old today.  I can't believe he is already that old.  He is so fun and smiling all the time.  He looks so much like Travis did, but just with blue eyes and blonder hair.  It is weird to have two kids that look similar.  Jared is sleeping, uninterrupted  from 7 to 7 every night and takes 3-4 naps a day.  For the last 8 weeks, he has been such an amazing tender mercy to us.  The timing of his birth and having a baby to take care of has made it so I have to get up and go everyday.  I am so grateful Heavenly Father blessed us with our latest miracle.

 Love him!

 Aubs ran in from the garage telling me Tanner put wood glue into his hair.  Sometimes I am not sure what he is thinking.  Maybe he thought it looked like gel.  It was fun to clean out of his hair.

 Happy Valentine's Day to everyone.  Here is "mine" after his workout.  He is so so wonderful!  Eric has been my rock, my best friend, and my strength.  I appreciate Eric so much.  This last week he had 6 exams and 5 quizzes and I would've never known.  We can never tell when he is stressed, he always is kind and makes all of us feel so important.  Eric is my perfect husband and dad.

 It was pretty nice this last week and the kids played outside a lot.  Aubree is pulling Tanner around in the wagon.

 Tanner is so fun.

Aubree got a locket for her birthday and added a picture of Andrew in it all by herself.   Whenever she gets "dressed up," she wears it.

Woodland Park Zoo

 When I have the older three kids at the zoo, I bring our single stroller and the kids take turns walking and riding.

 Aubree holding the hand of an orangutan. 

 Cute Aubs

LOVE this picture.  Andrew would've been 16 months old on Saturday.  Things are still pretty unreal.  We got the results from the medical examiner on the cause of death.  He said it is SIDS.  Every organ checked out perfect, all the toxicology came back normal, there is no known cause of death, so they call it SIDS.  Andrew fulfilled what he needed to here.   I am so grateful for the time we had with Andrew in our home.  He is such a blessing to us and I am so grateful his birth mom blessed us with raising him.  I wish that I would've gave him a huge hug that night, looked him in the eye and let him know how much I loved him and appreciated him.  I love him and miss him sooo much!

Families Are Forever

 

This Thanksgiving we were in Wenatchee, and one of Eric's moms friends has a vinyl lettering business. I had been wanting to get lettering on our wall for a while, but since we have been moving yearly, I hadn't done it.  With this last move, we knew we would be in Seattle for almost 3 years.  I figured that was enough time in our house to make it worth having the lettering done.  Anyways, I picked up the lettering while we were there for Thanksgiving and put it on our wall right before we had our family pictures done.  I had our last name with Families Are Forever (see on the wall above the fireplace in picture above).  It is pretty amazing how comforting those words are to us are now.  I'm so grateful to have that constant reminder on our wall.

Andrew had the same look on his face in all of the family pictures.  He wasn't sure what was going on.  

I found some more pictures that were on my mom's computer of Andrew.  

 I am so grateful for the chance that I had to be this perfect little boys mom.  He's so special.

 Andrew at the hospital when Jared was born.

 I had never seen this picture.  Andrew is smiling.  He is so cute!  I miss him!

 Our niece was getting baptized in Coeur d'Alene this weekend, so we gave Eric some good study time and headed towards Spokane.  We decided to spend a few days in Wenatchee with Eric's family on our way.  We were able to stop by Andrew's grave a few times.  They aren't able to set a headstone till the spring, so the only way we knew where Andrew's grave was because we found his binky(pacifier) that Aubree had left for him when we'd visited right after his funeral.  We cleaned up all of the old flowers and got a flower windmill that would last better than fresh flowers in the winter.  We also got a balloon from each kid that they would "give" to Andrew.  

Trav watching the balloons for Andrew.

Aubree LOVES her cousins.  She has got to spend lots of time with Leah and Claire. 

When we were in Wenatchee we got to watch Eric's sister, Kirsten in her basketball game.  She did great and even made a free throw.

I couldn't get my camera's settings right, so this was the only one I got of Leah after her baptism.  We are grateful for Leah and her good example to our kids in getting baptized.  She is our buddy!

 ANDREW MEMORY:  Andrew was such a funny boy.  Whenever we would feed him (especially yogurt) he would bite down the spoon and get the biggest grin on his face cause he thought he was pretty funny for not letting us pull the spoon back out.