Four months.

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It has been four months today.

This is just going to be a quick little catch up. Things have been so busy at work lately that by the time we get home and go to the gym and have dinner, we're wiped out and basically just sit and do nothing haha. I need to get better! I want to either continue working on one of these two novels I've started, or get going on a new one, but some days, between everything going on emotionally and physically, I just don't have it in me.

We kicked off birthday week by going to have cupcakes with Carter at the cemetery. It was freezing, and snowing decently too, but the one thing I knew I wanted to do for my birthday was to go up and have a cupcake with my little man, so we did! We cleaned up the flowers that were there from a couple weeks ago, but had to dig them out from under the snow. Logan has been pounded with snow this year. I feel like every time we go up there is fresh snow on the ground; it's crazy.

After hanging out with Carter for a bit, we went and visited with my friend Jennika, then had lunch with Brandon's siblings and wives. We didn't have anything else going on that afternoon, so we just hung out for a bit. I met Chelsea and her husband at the cemetery a little later, and I meant to take a picture of the things they bought for him but I forgot!! Chels bought him a cute blue little bunny, and Sam bought him a tiny tractor and said "every boy's gotta have a tractor." How cute is that? I love that my friends love Carter so much.

Sunday we did some shopping and tried to just chill. I wanted some quality time with Brandon before I leave for a girls trip on my birthday! 

I don't know what the weather is like everywhere else, but it has been snowing here literally all day and I'm so ready to put my sweats on and watch the bachelor! Happy Monday!

 
 
 
 
 
 

The kindness of strangers.

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A few weeks before Christmas I got a message on Instagram from a lady I didn't know. She had attached a drawing she had done of someone else's baby that had passed away, and asked if she could draw Carter for us. She said she had stumbled across one of my pictures on her search page. I don't know what prompted her to click on it, but I'm so glad she did. The drawing came in the mail the other day, and I am just so grateful for this kind stranger and the wonderful thing she does for parents like Brandon and me.

 
 

I like the view from up here.

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After we lost Carter, so many kind people gave us special gifts with so much meaning behind them. All the material things we've been given make me so happy, because it's just one more thing to hold or to look at that reminds me of Carter. 

We have a few airplane ornaments for him that we put on our tree at home: one we bought at Hobby Lobby, one handmade by a good friend of mine (it's a clear glass ball with whispy white feathers at the bottom, and a little blue airplane hanging from the top; it's my favorite), and red biplane ornament given to us by a friend of the Robbins family. When we were taking the ornaments off the tree, I wanted to put the red plane back in the box it came from. On the flap of the box, as I was closing it, I saw that it says "I like the view from up here."

The creators of the ornament, or at least the phrase on the box, probably didn't intend for the airplane to represent a child that was lost too soon, but the words were a tender reminder to me that Carter isn't suffering. He's watching over us, and he is with us in everything we do. Even though he wasn't there with us physically while we took the ornaments off the tree, he was watching us, and apparently liking the view.