It has been an interesting process trying to coordinate Elsa's Utah grave marker from Oregon. After Elsa's funeral, we quickly picked one of the generic designs and then rushed to make the big drive home. I was really wanting to leave Utah as quickly as possible since being there bleeding and dripping milk for naught were reminding me all the more that I was only in Utah because my baby died. They were such sad days...but with continual peace and comfort from our Savior.
This is the grave marker that we chose for Elsa in a rush to leave:
Before we left for Oregon however, we took one quick visit back to Elsa's grave and looked around at the other baby graves near Elsa's...we noticed that almost all of the graves were generic layouts and only had the baby name and date on them. Furthermore, just a few graves down there was another baby with the same exact graphic on it. And I realized that the graphic was pretty strange and creepy looking. That did not sit right with me.
When we got back to Oregon and they sent us this prototype, we stewed over it for weeks. Finally I asked if we could choose another graphic and change the wording a little bit. Our baby is so very special to us that we wanted her grave marker to be special and stand out, just like her name stands out and is unique, expressing some of the loves that we have in this life.
So after weeks of searching out new graphics, playing with wording and such, the good folks in Utah have sent us this prototype:
...which we have approved.
The fonts are not exactly my first choice, but it is so very difficult to communicate these things back and forth over email when we cannot sit in the office with them and a brochure with the font choices in front of us. And they have gone above and beyond by letting us send them a bird graphic, which they had to re-draw in order to adapt it for the grave marker. We are just so happy with the little bird and the changed wording, which means so very much to us.
Now they will make the marker, and they will have to wait until Spring before they can set it in over her grave. But that's ok with us. We are not going to go back to Utah before the Spring anyway.
So dear Elsa...we will see you in the morning [of the first resurrection], and that is the hope, faith and knowledge that is keeping us together in these times.
We had a little get-away to Seattle last week. It was our first trip EVER without kids (7.5 years). Normally we love having family adventures with our kids, but we REALLY needed this trip to get away and think/talk and reconfigure our lives after Elsa's death. It was really good and relaxing.
First we stopped in
Tacoma:
We found the house where Brent lived for the first year of his life. Pretty neat!
Some cool pictures for Brent's family who may remember living there:
Then we drove over to Point Defiance (in Tacoma), which is one of the coolest parks in the Northwest. They have a Japanese Garden, a Zoo and Aquarium, miles of trails, beach, an old fort, canoing/kayaking, etc. Fun! On this day we did some canoing in the Puget Sound:
Mt. Rainier (through the clouds)
The water was SO pretty
woah...I didn't realize how long my hair had gotten
Nature watch:
As we were paddling back in, we saw JELLYFISH everywhere! There were thousands all around our boat. So cool! We also saw seabirds and a sea lion poked its head out a short distance from us. We were paddling against the tide on the way back and there were eddies all over the place. It was one of the best paddles ever!
After canoing, we drove along the park and we saw raccoons EVERYWHERE! They were all over the roads. Crazy!!
Next, we drove up to
Seattle and checked into our hotel, the old
Camlin downtown.
here is our car with the canoe on top in downtown Seattle. The funny thing was that the hotel told us to bring our canoe inside so they could store it in the basement for us. So we took it off the car and carried it on our heads into the fancy lobby of this posh hotel. Then it wouldn't fit down the stairs so we took it back out to our car. One of the other guests saw us taking it out and said "what? It didn't fit in the pool?"
Then we found a really delicious sushi happy hour at the hotel across the street and had a wonderful evening:
Last and best of all, we were goofy and laughed about everything (that's a good sign right...I'm acting goofy again). Brent likes to tease me about how I hold my burritos and sandwiches/burgers when I eat. I like to put my index finger and my birdie finger on the top and put my ring finger, pinkie and thumbs on the bottom. So consequently, it looks a little like an alien grasp. So for Brent's sake I held my water glass with the three finger alien grasp. It was a good photo op...
The next day was great! We jogged all over downtown Seattle hitting all of the tourist attractions that we usually can't enjoy when we have our kids with us. We went to Pike Place Market, past the Seattle Art Museum and went to the Seattle Underground Tour. That was awesome! There is so much interesting history involved in the city of Seattle. Seattle's old business district was built on a floody tidal plane. When the tide would come in, it would overflow the pit toilets and leave raw sewage everywhere...so when the city burned down they decided that they were going to regrade the business district so it wouldn't always get flooded. The businesses, however, could not wait for the regrade to be done before they rebuilt their shops (too much lost money)...so they went ahead and rebuilt. The buildings were built with three stories, so that eventually when the city came in and raised the roads, the orininal ground level then became the basements. The roads were all filled in, but the sidewalks were only covered...so underneath the sidewalks of Seattle are blocks of tunnels: the Seattle Underground. Cool! The tour takes you around three of the underground blocks.
The picture on the left is what the sidewalk looks like from above ground...while the picture on the right is the same sidewalk from the underground. Skylights! Really OLD skylights.
Here is another funny Seattle story:
In 1899 a group called the Seattle "Good Will Committee," which was comprised of "leading Seattle Citizens" stole a totem pole from a Tlinget Indian village in Southeast Alaska, while the tribe was out fishing. They brought it back to Seattle and put it up in their town center. Several years late it burned down, so the city went back up to the Tlinget village and asked them to carve them a replica. The tribal elders remembered crime that had occured and told Seattle they would gladly send a replica if Seattle sent $500. So Seattle sent the money and the tribal elders told them "thank you for paying for the stolen totem pole. Now if you sent another $500 we will carve a new one." So that way Seattle payed for their mistake and they were forgiven.
Thank you historylink for the picture of the totem pole in front of old Hotel Seattle (before Hotel Seattle was torn down and 'the sinking ship' parking garage was built in its place).
The other interesting thing we learned about Seattle was that it was the "Gateway to the Klondike", the goldrush that occured in Alaska/Canada at the end of the 19th century. We found that particularly interesting since we just learned all about the Klondike while we were in Alaska last summer. So Seattle got rich off of selling the prospectors the 1 ton of food and supplies that were required to make the trek up the Chilkoot Trail to find gold.
Later that evening...
we met up with some really old friends for dinner:
Marianne Svae was my childhood best friend. We met in second grade (that's how old Joshua is now??!!) and we did everything together until she moved to Seattle in 9th grade. She and her boyfriend made dinner for us and her sister. It was yummo-and so fun to laugh and catch up...and sorry I still look pregnant...remember I just had a baby 9 weeks before. Blah! The belly takes forever to shrink up.
Here is us posing with our 3 alien fingers, for Brent's amusement...
The last day:
We had lunch at the Space Needle and that was about it...but boy oh boy was it totally AMAZING! That is a must-do in life, I'm telling you. The food was delicious and the view is amazing!! The restaurant is so cool...every table is situated to look out at the panoramic view, and the whole restaurant rotates every 47 minutes so you can see every view a few times before you're done eating.
Lake Union in the background
The Puget Sound
The downtown buildingscape
baby E...always on my mind
and...us taking pictures of each other, taking a picture of each other...out on the observation deck :-)
Good old Seattle...one of my very favorite cities to visit.
Now about the insights involving the 'reconfiguring' of life after Elsa...
We discovered a few very helpful ideas on this trip about our healing journey:
1) A have a friend whose sister had a stillbirth and she told her to tell me that it takes 3 months for life to get back to normal. At first when she told me that I was like, 'huh, what? life will never get back to normal,' but I discovered what she meant. Life will never be the same as it was before Elsa, but after 3 months (or I think in our case it is 2 months) you start to get used to the reality that you are living...the reality in which you planned for nine months on having a baby and then you suddenly and mercilessly have her taken from your life. And believe it or not, that realization actually makes life much easier. Just knowing that yes, ok this is my life and it will go on.
and 2) While yes, it does HURT to see every little girl out there, and it hurts to see others close to me having their baby girls...we discovered that I don't need to be jealous. In fact, if anything YOU ALL should be jealous of me (haha!). I mean, I have a perfect spirit daughter. She is around me all the time and I don't have to try to function with the crazy lack of sleep from night feedings and she won't go through teething and the terrible twos and I won't have to worry about her in this scary world. When I get to raise her, everything will be much easier. But in this life, I will go on to have other kids and most likely at least one other girl...and I will be the lucky one. I will be the mother surrounded with crazy earthly children with a lovely, perfect spirit daughter watching over us. When I realize this, I am truly NOT jealous of others but completely and whole-heartedly grateful for my life.
and 3) I am SO baby hungry. I've never experienced this before. I often scoffed at other women who said they were baby hungry I didn't mean that...it was too harsh. What I mean is I love my babies...once they're born, but I was never dying for one before I got pregnant...true story. Well, now I am really wanting one...and there you go!
I am finally finding myself happy almost all of the time again. So have a great week! I know I will. ;-)
P.S. I added a new song to the playlist. "Sympathetic Vibrations". It was the soundtrack for our trip.
autumn time, fresh air, walk through the woods, leaves, fun boys, rain boots in sploshy mud puddles...these are a few of my favorite things
our pretty little town from across the river
Other updates:
Joshua's recovering from the flu.
I'm enjoying my new iTouch! Here's to a more organized and well planned year!
