DISNEYLAND! Picture overload!

We were so grateful for the opportunity we had at the end of February/beginning of March to go to Disneyland with most of Ryan's side of the family. It was so much fun and my kids were in heaven! Where there meltdowns? Yes (some of which by the adults), but it was still the best vacation ever! Well, except when Ryan and I went on our cruise...that was just almost too good to be true...Anyways, enjoy our pictures from the best FAMILY vacation we have ever been on.

There was a lot of video watching (see Carter above) and not nearly enough napping on the ride to California.

This was a common sight on our trip. Grandma had a broken foot so her wheelchair became the napping place for both girls. And grandpa got some serious exercise pushing these lovely ladies everywhere!

Rylee in front of Space Mountain! The girl would ride anything she was tall enough for. She gets that from daddy for sure!

I had to throw in this one of Cam looking less than his handsome self oh and don't miss me eating (of course)!

Rainforest Cafe home of the multi-child meltdown special. I believe all four of the older kids melted down for one reason or another.

Had to throw in this shot of the Modern Family director's chair. They were filming an episode of our favorite TV show while were there. We saw all of our favorite characters and one of us (who shall remain nameless) actually yelled out to Eric Stonestreet who plays Cam and made a complete fool out of themselves.

Christmas

To be honest, I kind of dreaded Christmas this year. It’s not my favorite holiday anyway. I mean I love celebrating the birth of Christ, but I prefer much lower key holidays like the 4^th of July when there isn’t usually a bazillion different places to be and all at the same time and no matter which place you choose, someone, somewhere is going to be mad at you. So ya, not a huge fan of Christmas, but this year I was REALLY dreading it. I had pretty much finished shopping in May. I thought I was so smart! My thinking was that who in their right mind would want to go out during the holiday season shopping with twins that were only a few months old? Jokes on me! So I didn’t have a lot of shopping to do which was nice, but kind of boring and I just dreaded missing our little Easton. I dreaded that so much time had passed that it seemed everyone else except us was starting to forget that he ever existed and that I would spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day doing what I have come to call, “faking it until I make it.” Needless to say, I was feeling mighty sorry for myself. Christmas Eve came and we went to visit Easton’s grave and I had my good cry for the day while we pulled away from the cemetery and drove to my parents’ house for their party. We had a really good time with lots of yummy food and fun games and I was pleasantly surprised how much fun I had. Christmas Day came and my kids were so excited and they had so much fun opening presents, but I have to say the best part was the Spirit we felt that day. The day I had been dreading for months turned out to be the BEST Christmas I have ever had. Ryan and I agreed to only get each other one gift so you would think that for someone who loves to get presents like I do, would be disappointed in such a Christmas, but it truly was a special day. Since it was Sunday, we attended Sacrament meeting and one of the songs was Away in a Manager. This song hasn’t ever really been my favorite, but the last verse really got to both Ryan and I that day.

Be near me, Lord Jesus,
I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever
And love me I pray

Bless all the dear children
In Thy tender care
And fit us for heaven
To live with Thee there

This year, on the Christmas I had dreaded more than any other, I felt what the true meaning of Christmas is. The whole reason for Christmas is to celebrate the birth of our Savior who came to this Earth for the soul purpose of making it possible for us to return to Him and to be able to be together as families forever. Those blessings have taken on a whole new meaning at our house and I am grateful for the teachings of the Gospel that have helped us to see the eternal perspective.

That all being said, Carter and Rylee had a great Christmas and were so spoiled by many! Asher didn’t care much. Sadly, we didn’t take a single picture, but here are some videos…

Moments

Some of you may be wondering when this blog became all about our (mostly my) grief. Well, this blog is about our lives and right now our lives are intermingled with grief. Are there happy moments? Absolutely! In spite of my grief, I have found myself smiling, laughing, and enjoying life. My children (& Ryan of course) bring me such joy and that's the irony of it all. If I didn't love my children so much, it wouldn't hurt so bad. I also have an amazing group of women that I play Bunco with once a month. I don't think they know how much I need that one night a month. I laughed so hard with them this month, I'm pretty sure I almost wet pants. It felt good! Moments like those and many others help me realize that I'm getting through this. A dear friend of mine (in fact one of my Bunco friends) sent this little article to me that she got off of a friends blog. It made sense to me, so I thought I would post it in case it can help anyone else out there.

STEVEN KALAS: When you lose a child, grieving is a lifelong experience

My address is titled "The Myth of Getting Over It." It's my attempt to answer the driving questions of grieving parents: When will I get over this? How do I get over this?

You don't get over it. Getting over it is an inappropriate goal. An unreasonable hope. The loss of a child changes you. It changes your marriage. It changes the way birds sing. It changes the way the sun rises and sets. You are forever different.

You don't want to get over it. Don't act surprised. As awful a burden as grief is, you know intuitively that it matters, that it is profoundly important to be grieving. Your grief plays a crucial part in staying connected to your child's life. To give up your grief would mean losing your child yet again. If I had the power to take your grief away, you'd fight me to keep it. Your grief is awful, but it is also holy. And somewhere inside you, you know that.

The goal is not to get over it. The goal is to get on with it.

Profound grief is like being in a stage play wherein suddenly the stagehands push a huge grand piano into the middle of the set. The piano paralyzes the play. It dominates the stage. No matter where you move, it impedes your sight lines, your blocking, your ability to interact with the other players. You keep banging into it, surprised each time that it's still there. It takes all your concentration to work around it, this at a time when you have little ability or desire to concentrate on anything.

The piano changes everything. The entire play must be rewritten around it.

But over time the piano is pushed to stage left. Then to upper stage left. You are the playwright, and slowly, surely, you begin to find the impetus and wherewithal to stop reacting to the intrusive piano. Instead, you engage it. Instead of writing every scene around the piano, you begin to write the piano into each scene, into the story of your life.

You learn to play that piano. You're surprised to find that you want to play, that it's meaningful, even peaceful to play it. At first your songs are filled with pain, bitterness, even despair. But later you find your songs contain beauty, peace, a greater capacity for love and compassion. You and grief -- together -- begin to compose hope. Who'da thought?

Your grief becomes an intimate treasure, though the spaces between the grief lengthen. You no longer need to play the piano every day, or even every month. But later, when you're 84, staring out your kitchen window on a random Tuesday morning, you welcome the sigh, the tears, the wistful pain that moves through your heart and reminds you that your child's life mattered.

You wipe the dust off the piano and sit down to play.

********
Feb. 26, 2006
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling and Wellness Center in Las Vegas

Easton's Christmas

We wanted to somehow include Easton in our Christmas celebrations this year (and every year) so we decided to start a new tradition. Every year on the first Saturday in December, we are going to decorate a tree at Easton's grave. We also have a little treasure box we decorated that is Easton's gift box. Inside of it, we each wrote our own promise to him of something we will do in the next year to make ourselves better people. We put the notes in the box underneath his tree and then decided to put the box underneath our tree at home. It was a freezing cold day, but worth it to make us all feel a little closer to our baby during this time of year that is so focused on family and being together.

We love our littlest munchkin and can't wait to be with him again one day!

Still Climbing

This is seriously my new favorite song. I have always LOVED Hillary Weeks, but she really hits it right on with this song. The song is about having your life planned out the way you wanted it to be and then finding a "mountain" in the middle of the road. Wow! She couldn't have summed up my life any better than that. The rest of the song is about climbing the mountain and realizing had that mountain never existed, you wouldn't be able to see such a beautiful view. Losing Easton has definitely been the biggest mountain I have ever found blocking the "road" on the route I want my life to take. I honestly feel like there has never been a mom in this world more excited to have twin boys as I was. But, I am climbing that mountain and one day I hope to be able to feel like the "view" from up there is better than it would've been had I not faced the "mountain." Right now I am still in the process of climbing and sometimes I even slip down the steep cliff a little bit and sometimes that is for days at a time. The things I have learned on this climb so far have been hard and amazing all at the same time. One day I know I will be able to accept that this is truly the way it's supposed to be for me and my family. I have learned that losing a child the way we lost Easton is difficult (as I am sure any way of losing a child is). It seems sometimes that people feel we should "get over it" and "move on" because we never really (in their opinion) got to bond with this child (which any woman who has ever been pregnant knows is false, the bonding begins with the first positive pregnancy test). Or that by remembering Easton and honoring him we are "dwelling" or giving ourselves a "pity party" when really all we are doing is giving him a small portion of the attention he would've gotten from us had he lived and grown up like his siblings. We will never see him take his first steps, say his first word, play baseball, go to school, get married (in this life anyway). Part of my "climb up the mountain" is to learn that most people haven't and never will experience what we have experienced and so they really can't understand what we are going through. I have learned that this isn't something you get over, it's something you get through and sometimes you get through it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time, sometimes one minute at a time but you just do what you have to do and hope that you reach the top a better, more insightful, less judgmental person than you were before. One of the biggest things I have learned on my journey so far is to be more compassionate towards others, especially perfect strangers in public. I had an interesting experience with this just last week. I was in Target and just had Asher with me. There was a Grandma pushing a cart with two darling twin boys in it (they actually ended up being 2 out of 3 triplets). I told the grandma how cute I thought the boys were and then I had to walk away because I was getting all teary-eyed. I was about to burst so I started walking as fast as I could to get to the checkout so I could just get out of there before I did burst. Well, I had Asher's car seat wedged in the cart making it difficult to see what was ahead of me (the tears weren't helping either). In my hurry, I accidentally ran into another lady's cart. I looked at her and told her how sorry I was and she was so rude to me!!!! She said something to the effect of "ya right you're sorry!" and rolled her eyes at me. It hurt me so badly that she would treat someone she didn't even know that way. There was no way she didn't notice I was crying and she still acted like that. When I got out to my car I realized that yes, she may have judged me and been harsh on me when she had no idea what I was going through at the moment, but I was doing the same to her. Maybe she was so rude because she found out a loved one has cancer, or maybe she had just had a miscarriage, or whatever. So my goal right now is to try and remember that we never know what others are going through and that I should treat others as Christ would. Hopefully at the end of my climb I will find that I am a more compassionate, Christ-like person.

Halloween!

We had a very fun and eventual Halloween weekend. On Saturday we had our ward's Trunk-or-Treat and chili cook off. The kids loved it and it was fun (even though I ran out of candy in like 15 minutes). On Sunday, we took Easton's pumpkin to his grave and left it there with a little battery operated candle in it. We wanted it to be lit up, but we didn't think it would a good idea to burn the whole place down :). Then came Monday. School was out so I was faced with entertaining two very excited kids all day. We went to Chick-fil-A and Target. Very exciting, but it seemed to entertain the little munchkins. My mom and dad had us over for yummy chili and rolls for dinner and then it was time for Trick-or-Treating. Ryan took the kids and they had so much fun. I gotta admit, I'm kind of glad Halloween is over and now we can focus on one of my favorite holidays-THANKSGIVING!!!!!!

Cute Ballerina and her buddy Dracula! Rylee wanted to put her arm around Carter for the picture but he said "Draculas don't do that!"

Twins forever!

All four kiddos!

Now we are going to play a little game. Carter, Rylee, and Asher have all been the same thing for Halloween when they are babies and they have all been roughly around the same age. Can you guess which one is which????

Give up???? 1st one is Rylee, 2nd one is Carter, and then Asher. I think they all look alike don't you???

Fall at the Lloyd's

We've had a busy couple of weeks here at the Lloyd house. Fall is my favorite time of year. I love wearing hoodies and seeing all the pretty leaves and carving pumpkins with the kids. Last week we headed to Black Island Farms with Grandma Lloyd. It was so fun (even with two meltdowns and a tractor driver who may or may not have been drunk). The kids loved it and Grandma and I even had fun (we were WAY tired by the end though).

My little Asher friend is 3 1/2 months old already... Can you believe it? I can't. He's getting too big too fast. He is such a sweet, smiling baby. I don't know what we ever did without him.

Monday for FHE, we carved pumpkins with Grandma Lloyd, Grandpa Lloyd, and uncle Cam. It was so fun especially since they will be gone visiting Jen in South Dakota for Halloween.

Carter (AKA: Mowgli the man cub) insisted upon being shirtless during this activity. He LOVED using the knife. Almost too much...

Rylee and her finished product (actually Ryan's finished project that Rylee claims as her own)

Carter with his finished project.

The whole family of pumpkins. Left to right: Ryan's, Asher's (done by Cam), Jaimee's, Carter's, Rylee's, and Easton's.

The crazy crew minus Asher who had finally fallen asleep in the swing and there was no way I was waking him up for a picture.