Katalin

Today is Christmas Day and I am glad to be home to celebrate it with my wonderful husband, children and brother. I got in yesterday afternoon after several blessed events that got me into Salt Lake much earlier than I should have originally arrived. We've had a great Christmas morning and a relaxing day. It has been so nice.

As many of you know I lost my sister very unexpectedly exactly one week ago today. Katalin passed away after giving birth to her first child. Even though, technically, Katalin is my stepsister she and her sisters have been a part of my life since she was a baby and I never refer to them with "step" in front of "sister" because I just don't think that way.

Right now I am still very numb. Sometimes, over the last few days, when there has been a lull in things to occupy my hands and mind despite my efforts to keep myself constantly busy; I find myself wondering how it is that life outside of this tragedy has continued to go on? When I think about it I don't understand how it is that the world around me has not completely ceased to function. I know, of course, the answer to this question. I have people in my life that still need me, that need life to continue as normal. Just as everyone does. We all need that and now there is someone else in my life that needs that too. Katalin and Oscar's son Benjamin is doing well and needs his world to continue even if it can't include his beautiful, caring and vivacious mother.

I know these thoughts are so random and may not make any sense but I feel I need to say something, I need to get it out.

While I was in North Carolina trying to be of some help to my family during this difficult time I was privileged to be able to create the video slide-show that was displayed at Katalin's viewing. It was not easy to look at all those pictures and remember her and then realize that I would not see her again for a long time, that she would never get to see her son grow up and I almost couldn't finish it. But I knew everyone was counting on this so I had to find some way to make it through it. I decided I had to see those pictures and remember the wonderful things about her and think about how her son needed to see this someday and know as much as possible about his mother and know without a shadow of doubt that his mother loved him dearly.

Here are a few pictures of Benjamin. He is still in the NICU but is doing well and the night that I left Wilmington I got to hold him! I didn't have my camera with me at that visit but Oscar and Christy took some pictures for me so as soon as I get those I will post them. Here are some pictures that I got of him a few days before.







I thought I would share the video with you. It's just a very simple slide-show but it shows how beautiful my sister is and there are a few pictures of Benjamin at the end but for some reason I can't get it to upload so I will keep working on it and post it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, isn't Benjamin beautiful?!

Playing Catch Up!

Well, I have been just horribly neglectful of the blog for the last several months but it really is time to make it up. So I'm going to play catch up in a little bit of a different way.

CAMPING TRIP
Back in August we took the family camping to this great camp ground in Idaho! I was SO excited! It has been FOREVER since the last time we went camping! This camp ground that we went to is very close to where Rich's grandparents used to live and when Rich was young and they would go visit his grandparents they would sometimes camp there. It closed several years ago but has just reopened again. It was a very lovely campground. We had a nice large campsite big enough for the kids to have lots of room to play. And the biggest highlight is their pool! They have a pool that is fed by the natural hot springs in the area and it is awesome! So even early in the morning when it's still pretty cold you can go swimming and it's pretty awesome because the water is SO nice and warm! I thought it was very nicely priced and we really did have a lot of fun!

While we were there we visited with one of Rich's Dads cousins and his wife. They live on a farm and it was such a treat for us! They pretty much live in the middle of nowhere in this hundred year old farm house. They were so nice to us and gave all of us a hayride! We had such a great little family vacation! It was a great way to spend our 12th Anniversary!

Here are some of the Pictures we got from our Camping Trip, enjoy!



Brenna's Birthday, Halloween & Rich's Birthday

My baby girl turned 4 back in September! I just can't believe it! Shortly after that we have Halloween and we had a blast this Halloween going trick or treating with cousins! It was awesome! A few days after Halloween is Rich's birthday. Here are some pictures from all of those events, hope you enjoy them!

We are Family!

Have I mentioned that I love my new job? Well, I do! It is so much fun to look at pictures of all of the Weddings and families and Brides and kids. Of course, my job is not ALL just sitting around looking at pictures but it is one of the nice perks! Well it's been well over 2 years since we've had a family picture done so I thought... what a perfect opportunity! We have a lot of great photographers at work so I asked Sarah to do our pictures. She is so fantastic and I thought the pictures turned out great! Hope you like them as much as I did!

Sawyers Pictures!

So here is the final installment of my kids portraits for 2009. I can't believe how big he's getting! It's so unfair! Hope you like them. Family pictures coming soon!

My Pretty Little Girl!

Well, as you can tell by the last few posts it's picture time again at my house! I got some pretty good pictures of Brenna over the weekend. I know which one is my favorite! What's yours?

Kaiden Portraits '09

Here are some of my favorites from Kaidens pictures this year. I think they turned out pretty good! Hope you like them!