Change Bandit!

Gillian's school is raising money for the VT Children's Hospital which is something that hits home for us. That is where Gillian was as a preemie and all her follow up care for the first 4 years of her life was done there. So I spread the word that we had a bandit and she collected change from everyone...$110 worth! I was so proud to have to drive Gillian to school so that she could hand in her change (she insisted she could take it on the bus but she struggled to hold the one jar in the picture).

Happy Birthday Ava!

Tubing

We wanted to have a family day because it's not always that Craig is off with us on the weekends. So we made plans with the Prell family and all headed to go tubing. What a blast! I'm pretty sure the adults had as much fun (if not more) as the kids.

Happy Valentine's Day

Death

Tonight I explained to Gillian why people die, their bodies are too sick/hurt to continue and she immediately said then they get a gravestone and I said yes. We discussed that everyone has a spirit that either goes to heaven (good people) or hell (bad people) and that your spirit is similar to a ghost but not scary. Spirits that go to heaven are angels; they get there with their wings. All dogs go to heaven (we discussed Peanut). Your spirit is the memories that your loved ones keep of you when you are no longer here that makes your spirit live on. We discussed Emma Grace’s Daddy and when I see Emma Grace she reminds me of her Daddy that brings memories which keeps his spirit alive. Then we needed to discuss that Gillian has Daddy’s eyes and Mommy’s nose and lips and they remind others of us through her (she was very intrigued on what she gets from where). We also discussed how we have Gabriel watching over us because he is an angel. We aren’t sure where the question came from; Gillian brought it up and was curious. I didn’t want to scare her or have her worry about people around us dying but I also wanted to be as truthful as possible.

Ice Castle

Most years for as long as Craig and I have been together we have gone up to the ice castle. A couple years back we started taking Gillian. It's always a fun time. This year Craig couldn't come as he was working both weekends that it was going on. So Gillian and I asked Emma to join us. It was a very good time with the exception of when they took off and for 3 minutes I thought I had lost them and was stressing right out. I found them had my super angry parent moment and we went on with our trip.