Christmas

My most favorite picture of Christmas this year.

 I love it.

(My cute fam talking to Jay)

grahm cracker mansions and snowcaps

So hopefully we end up doing gingerbread houses every Christmas time still- but our annual Gingerbread house making extravaganza will probably be toned down a bit because of the lack of supplies next year. 

It's a bitter sweet thing because we want Jory to get a job as a principal- and if he does we won't get all the gingerbread making supplies that we get every December (and all the giftcards and treats that I may or may not regift because it's just so exciting and awesome to get stuff from Jory's students- really, it's like a pre-christmas for me.) But it will be everything that we have hoped and dreamed for if he gets this job... so I guess we can sacrifice the unlimited candy and treats this time of year. 

So Jord and Ash came over and we built and decorated our guts out. Jory's so good at this it's ridiculous. I never thought I would be jealous of my husbands creativeness. But it's okay, I've come to terms with it. My peppermint house turned out alright.

 Jorys

 

 Cute Ashley and Jordons

best looking snowcap house ever

 

Some of the "finished" houses

The mess

what might have been

After another negative pregnancy test I felt like all my desire for life was slowly ripped away from me. It feels like I have to re live our loss all over again.

It's interesting how it plays with your emotions, and sucks the life out of you for just a short bit. It clouds your thoughts and nothing seems clear- all your focus is on what might have been, and it's really, really hard. But time heals. Even hours heal. So that's good. It puts things into perspective and you realize, that you're okay, your life is good. Now I'm sitting here with Jory enjoying a tuna sandwich and drinking a diet coke. Thinking about tanning and getting into a hot tub.  Things I was positive that I would have to be missing out on for the next 9 months. Turns out I can enjoy them for another month. : )

When I got to work this morning my eyes were swollen and I was tired and urning for new chapter in my life, a new leaf. I checked my fax folder, and I had a excerpt from a book, from a friend who thought of me and thought I should read it.  What would we do with out friends? It made me want to listen to every thought that inspires me to do something for someone else. Because you don't know what you doing for them, and why in that moment you should act- it's probably because it's when they needed it the most.

An excerpt from Shauna Niequist's new book, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way.

Today all I can think about is what might have been. It’s a Saturday, bitter cold and bright, harsh, splintering. We’re doing normal Saturday things, and since we recently moved into our new house, “normal” includes unpacking the remaining boxes, assembling furniture, making endless Target and Ikea lists.
Today is the day that would have been my due date, had my pregnancy been a healthy one. Nine months ago, the world was so different. I was so different. The concept of pregnancy was so different to me, so innocent. Of course I knew women who had miscarried: my mother, my cousin, my friends. But like anything, when it happens to you it’s like waking up to a conversation you’ve heard before and only now grasp, and you realize entirely anew what they were talking about, what they were trying to find the words to describe.
So that’s today, the day of what might have been. Someday we might have another child. But we’ll never have a child born on January 31, 2009. The baby I found out about on Memorial Day weekend, the happy secret I shared with Aaron on the phone, standing outside the Phoenix Street Café, the baby I carried inside me to Fiji to visit Todd and Joe on the boat — that baby will never be. And it seems worth stopping for today, just for a moment.
For me, as well, the specifics of the miscarriage changed me from one kind of mother to another. It’s a broad sisterhood of women who don’t have easy conceptions and pregnancies, but to be honest, I liked being in the other group. It was so deeply moving to me that my body nurtured and nourished Henry, delivering him safely into the world, whole and healthy, and this miscarriage and its aftermath have forced me to ask some questions: Did my body fail me? Did I somehow fail it? We’ve had such a tenuous relationship in the past, my body and I; was this a breach of trust?
I went to a wedding six months after the miscarriage. The wedding was absolutely perfect, the first of my ten small group girls to get married, a sweet celebration on a hot Austin night. Christel was gorgeous, all eyelashes and happy tears, and we all danced together and took pictures and laughed. And then for a little while, Kristin, another one of the girls from my small group, left, walked to the front of the old house alone, stood on the sidewalk, listening to the music in the distance, heart heavy with what might have been.
Kristin does this at every wedding. She dances and laughs and hugs and smiles for pictures, and then, at one point or another, she slips away and lets a few tears fall for the maid of honor who will never stand at her own wedding someday. Kristin’s sister Laurie ended her own life four years ago. They were stepsisters and best friends. And then when they were both twenty, Laurie chose to end her life in a heartbreaking, confusing tangle of hurt and accusation and broken friendships. I remember the first everything — the one-month mark, the first birthday after she was gone, the one-year mark.
Kristin, of course, remembers Laurie all the time, but the ache is never more acute than at weddings, because when Kristin gets married, the sister she dreamed about weddings with for years won’t stand with her on that day. Weddings, more than anything else, bring her to what might have been.
And now Kristin and her fiancé, Sean, are getting married, and she’s thinking about how to walk through the months of her engagement and the day of her wedding without her sister. The ache for her sister has deepened in the season before the wedding. Kristin decided she won’t
have a maid of honor, so that no one will stand in the place of Laurie’s memory on the day that the two sisters had dreamed about for so long.
The night Sean proposed, Kristin started to cry in between phone calls to friends and family. Sean asked her to dance in the living room, surrounded by the flowers and candles he’d set up for the proposal, and as they danced, she realized the one phone call she still wanted to make was to her sister Laurie. Kristin felt both angry and sad in that moment, remembering Laurie’s exuberant phone call to her just a few months before her death — “I’m engaged!” Kristin wanted so badly to make that same call to her sister and best friend that night, and it felt deeply unfair that Laurie wasn’t there to pick up the phone.
If you’ve been marked by what might have been, you don’t forget. You know the day, the years. You know when the baby would have been born. You know exactly what anniversary you’d be celebrating, if the wedding had happened. You know exactly how old she’d be right now, if she were still alive. You’ll never forget the last time you saw your child, or the last time cancer was a word about someone else’s life, or the day that changed absolutely everything. It makes the calendar feel like a minefield, like you’re constantly tiptoeing over explosions of grief until one day you hit one, shattered by what might have been.
On most days, for me, it’s all right. We’ll have another baby someday. I hope we do. But for today, for a minute, it’s not all right. I understand that God is sovereign, that bodies are fragile and fallible. I understand that grief mellows over time, and that guarantees aren’t part of human life, as much as we’d like them to be. But on this day, looking out at the harsh white sky of a Chicago winter, I’m crying just a little for what might have been. . . . No one might ever notice January 31, and what it means for me. But I’ll always know.
I don’t know what date it is for you — what broke apart on that day, what was lost, what memories are pinned forever to that day on that calendar. But I hope that, like Kristin, on that day you leave the dance floor and hold yourself open and tender to the memories for just a moment. As one who grieves today, I grieve with you, for whatever you’ve lost, too, for what might have been.

everybody get's 1 miracle

I had this one professor in college, I will never forget his story about his miracle. His ONE miracle. He was always so annoyed about this miracle story and repeatedly said that he wasted this miracle and wished he would have used it on something else. 

But... we don't really pick our miracles, so we shouldn't be choosy. I mean, we're lucky to even have these miracles happen to us, right? Well, I've had a few "miracles" lately that make me wonder I really should have been a cat who had nine lives or something. Because I keep using up my dang miracles on bizarre things.

1st Miracle

Well, we have turtles. I'm sure some of you know that. 3 of them to be exact and their names are Petrie, Toby and Gunther. Well, when we want to feed the turties we put them separately in tupperware containers on the table, and leave them for a few hours to make sure they get full. Sometimes we get lazy and and leave the poor souls on the table in their tupperware over night because we are too lazy to put them back into their tank. Well, it was Petries turn to get neglected and we left him on the table all night long. I of course completely forgot and went to work the next morning not even noticing our green friend on the table. OR dotdotdot NOT ON THE TABLE.
Jory was the responsible man he is and realized our babe wasn't in the tank, and was most definitely not on the table. Crap. We had a turtle on the loose and had no idea where it was!!

When I got home from work we tore the house apart looking for Petrie. Nothing. Nowhere. He couldn't of gone up the stairs so we ruled that out thank goodness. We were totally shocked and couldn't believe that we couldn't find him. I was thinking it was going to be one of those mysteries that you wouldn't find out until the after life or something.

Well, to shorten this long story. A WEEK later, Jory about fell over because our dear friend Petrie scared him by just sitting there, in the middle of the tile in the kitchen. Staring up at him... all dried out and eyes sunken in. The poor thing! So Jory grabbed him and plopped him in the tank... Well. Yep. That was our miracle. Our water turtle lived for a week out of water with no food. When, honestly, we were planning on getting rid of the little guys, but now we feel like we can't because he's, well, a miracle turtle!

2nd Miracle

I love to cook. And I love to multi task. Makes me feel like super woman and it's super good for my mind and all that. Well, I run into big problems when I cook while multitasking. Because usually water runs out of pans and pans burn and our house fills up with smoke and pans get ruined, food burns and then Jory as nice as he can tells me that I need to be more careful. and I do it again. It's a terrible scenario but it repeats itself quite often.

Well, the most recent endeavor was trying to make potpourri. Which, seriously Sarah? That's asking for a disaster. Leaving a stove on for hours with liquid that will so easily evaporate and then burn your pans! So yes, of course that happened. So Jory felt like he had to step in and tell me that I could NOT do that anymore. Which I kind of agreed. But then didn't hesitate when I thought up a yummy concoction of vanilla bean and oranges. And did it again.

And all I remember doing last... was turning the burner up. Then we went dinner. Then drove to my grandparents. Watched a football. Took a dip in the hot tub. and. 4 hours later, on our way home... I remembered.
It was the longest drive of our lives.
Jory got in his mad mood where he doesn't say ANYTHING and it just made the whole car trip worse. We drove in silence picturing our house... fire trucks surrounding, smoking billowing out of the windows and flames eating our perfect little home. We pulled up- no fire trucks. no flames. I jumped out of the car, flung the door open, no smoke. I ran to the stove... and... Sarah's done it again. I turned the wrong freaking burner on! So that I guess could have been dangerous too- but it just acted like a space heater and pumped money out of pockets while staying hot for 4 plus hours. But halleluiah I turned the wrong burner on!
So that was our second Miracle. And yes, I consider it a miracle.

3rd Miracle

I'm sick of typing, so I will make it short.

My Dr.'s office didn't pre-auth my last emergency surgery. Which means they are penalized and the pt which is ME! doesn't have to pay the beautiful remaining balance of 554.09. So, they wrote it off. And me and Jory did a happy dance.

So maybe those aren't true MIRACLES but, we're pretty glad they all happened. Or...didn't happen?