Today I am exactly 16 weeks pregnant! We are thrilled that God has blessed us with another quick conception and a safe and healthy first trimester. Our excitement for this baby's arrival grows each day as it becomes more and more real. I've experienced some minor morning sickness, haven't really gained any weight (mainly due to a battle with dysentery after my trip to Haiti) but do have a cute little baby bump that people are beginning to notice.

I have been feeling much better emotionally than I expected. Before getting pregnant I was really fearful of how I would emotionally feel this time around, but God has given me peace. This may sound weird, but not necessarily peace that everything will be fine but peace that we are exactly in His will and in His perfect plan. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. That is not to say that I think something will be wrong with this baby or pregnancy either. It's just to say that I am at peace knowing we are in God's will and that He is the author of our Story and our children's story.

Psalm 139:13-16

We are thrilled that so many people love and pray for our family regularly and are so excited to be able to share our wonderful news and the progress of our latest journey!

Emotionally on the other hand, I'm not so sure. Daylia has been nothing but excited about school, she's beyond ready, but as I put her into bed tonight she hugged me and said, "I'm not sure I'm ready for school tomorrow (mind you she too "knew" school was starting Wednesday, so I kind of threw her off too!)" I asked why not and she replied, "I thought tomorrow was going to be my last day to snuggle with you in the morning, now today was the last day." Oh my did I have to choke the tears back. This coming from my not so snuggly child. I held it together enough to tell her that's what Saturdays and Sundays are for! She seemed to be okay with that answer as she was now more interested in looking at her book. So I kissed her goodnight and left it at that.

I think I've finally decided how Daylia is getting to school tomorrow. It's been a tough decision that I've gone back and forth on. Now, for my southern friends, I can hear you saying, "why is there any question how Daylia would get to school, of course you would drive her." To you I say, "It's not that easy." See here in the North we do things a little different. There is no such thing as a car rider line. There is no such thing as a rear view mirror tag with your child's car rider number. The vast majority of kids ride the school bus! Shocking, I know! But it's the way I grew up and while I got very used to the car rider idea in my 9 years in the south, I remember my first year teaching in Bluffton, SC, how shocked I was at having to do car rider duty! I didn't even understand the concept. The car rider thing wore off on me like many other fine southern cultural differences and so thinking this summer about putting my 5year old on the school bus has been difficult. We have decided, however, that Daylia will ride the bus. It just makes sense. We are a one car family and Hazyl doesn't get up that early in the morning and it's nap time during dissmal. So unless Daylia wants to ride in the bike trailer and catch a ride with her Daddy on his way to work (which I'm sure we will do plenty of times before the snow comes) she's going to ride the bus. But what about the first day of school? Three days ago, I was taking her, yesterday she was riding the bus, tonight I'm taking her! We'll see what the morning brings. I think I've convinced Milo to let me take her on the first day for memories sake. Pretty sure I could regret not taking her, but it's doubtful I'll regret taking her. However, she will take the bus home and Hazyl and I will be at the bus stop with huge hugs ready to greet her.

I'm excited for my sweet Daylia to start this new adventure in her life. She will grow and excel in so many ways. She is so ready for this, just not so sure I am!

I put together a couple of things. The first is obviously pictures of the girls and the family, then their handprints. That one turned out cute. I have some really great pics of the girls without being a professional photographer! The other is Josiah's t-shirt that one of our nurses at the hospital made for Josiah and had him "wear" on father's day 2 years ago. I put some pictures of Milo and Josiah in there and then matted the frame with one of Josiah's blankets. Boy was it good to open and dig through the bins of Josiah's things for this project. It's the first time I've opened them since we have moved here. I just kept taking in deep breaths of his blankets. The last frame is a picture of a magazine we received in the mail the day we made the announcement at Ridgeview that we would be leaving to move to Buffalo. I think I'll share the significance of that magazine in another post.

-A heart that holds on

We had such an amazing time as a family camping. It was so nice to get away, relax and enjoy God's creation. Stony Brook is a beautiful place that I grew up enjoying with my parents and brothers. It was a treat to take my girls there. We left on Thursday after Milo got home from work. By the time we set up our tent and I got around to making dinner it was after 9pm! So we ate at the picnic table enjoying chicken fajitas by lantern light (thanks to my uncle Mike who dropped by our house earlier in the day with a lantern for us!). It was great! The girls stayed up for a campfire and then fell asleep in the tent. Milo and I stayed around the fire for awhile enjoying each others company and good conversation. I love my husband so much!

The next morning was filled with cooking breakfast on the camp stove and a big hike in the gorge. We took our time to throw rocks in the creek, splash in the water and head a little off the trail at times.

The hike certainly wore the girls out and they both crashed in the tent for an late afternoon nap! Milo even fell asleep in the hammock. Doesn't get much better than that!

Spent the evening cooking dinner over the campfire and making s'mores!

I promised to write about the way we spent January 24th, the 1yr anniversary of Josiah's passing. It's taken me a little longer than I expected.

We spent the day together just the four of us. We told the girls what day it was and what that meant. Hazyl still refers to it as the day the nurses flew Josiah to heaven in the helicopter. The last time the girls saw Josiah was January 7th when they watched him be loaded into the helicopter and taken back to Charleston from Greenville. So Hazyl's description of how Josiah got to heaven makes sense.

We love to spend time outdoors. I always feel God's presence more out in His creation, hence the reason we went camping on what would have been Josiah's first birthday. So we were hoping to do something outside, like take the girls skiing, but it was a bitter cold day. It was about 4 degrees so that was out of the question. We did manage to go out for a little bit and make snow angles and write Josiah's name in the snow, as I wrote about previously. We took the girls to our favorite restaurant for lunch and then to see "Tangled." We simply had a nice time together cuddling with our girls. We had some friends offer to bring dinner over to us, so we had a very nice dinner with them.

Our big plan for the day was listening to Josiah's memorial service after the girls went to bed. We hadn't done this at all and didn't really remember too much of what was said because that day was such a blur to us. I hadn't listened to his memorial service yet partly because I wasn't ready and partly because I was angry over his service not getting video taped. It was an accident but Josiah's service never got taped and I didn't find that out until 3 months after Josiah had died. I felt like I had so little left of Josiah and couldn't understand why that piece of him had been taken from me too. We do have the audio just no video. Anyway, a year later I have dealt with my anger over this (which was never at any person but over the situation) and was ready to listen to his memorial service. So we invited two couples over to listen to it with us and just share in this sweet but emotional time. The night before I decided it might be awkward for the six of us just to sit and stare at nothing for over an hour. So I thought I would try making a slideshow and put his service as the audio behind the slideshow. I knew this was going to take a lot of pictures so I decided to pretty much put every picture I have of Josiah and our family during those 8 months in the slideshow. I got done moving them all over and it was 924 pictures. So I started doing the math… 924 x lets say 5 sec per pic =4620 secs. 4620 secs divided by 60 sec/min = 77 mins. So I went over to my itunes to see how long Josiah's service was and guess what IT WAS EXACTLY 77 MINS LONG! How perfect is that and my project was done! So Milo and I and our four friends listened and watched a very rough slideshow of our 8 month journey with Josiah. It was an awesome way to remember the life of our son. And we actually made something very good out of what was a huge disappointment. I think it was much more meaningful to watch all the pictures of our family during that time rather than just watching the people who spoke at Josiah's service. God usually does have a better plan, it just might take us a while to realize it!

So we thought we'd share the video with you (not that I expect anyone to listen to it in it's entirety, but maybe a little each day for the next few days or weeks!). We have since, done a little editing to it to make it a little better (so it's not 77 minutes anymore, now it's only 73 minutes).

We also did one last thing for the day that we plan to make a tradition out of. All four of us slept in the same bed together! We never ever do that, but that's what I wanted, to cuddle with my husband and my girls and cherish each moment with them.

A heart that holds on