Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Hailey's Angel Day

It was nice to be away during Hailey's first Angel day. I really don't know how our emotions would have been had we been home. We would have probably had Thanksgiving at our house like we did that day she passed away. I think that would have been difficult. We didn't want it to be a hard day for the kids. Honestly, I am not sure that they even realized the significance of the day. We tried to make it like any other day for them. I know that I broke down once, but it wasn't for long and I don't know that the kids even noticed.

The hard part for me was the fact that Thanksgiving was not on the same day as last year. For me she will have always passed away on Thanksgiving. That is what comes to mind first. The fact that it was the 26th of November comes almost as an after-thought. So this year when I started thinking on Thanksgiving that it had been a year since my sweet baby girl left this life I had to stop myself and realize that it wasn't until the day after Thanksgiving this year. I almost felt like I had to deal with her Angel Day twice. I guess that is something that I am going to have to get use to because it will usually be two separate days.

Monday, March 7, 2011

Stone Mountain - Thanksgiving 2010

We stayed within the park. It was gorgeous, although very cold. Us Floridians are quite mesmerized by the different trees - not to mentions red and yellow leaves... So beautiful. We took a lot of pictures of nature, but I will spare you all of those and just put in a few. The kids got to play checkers on a giant checker board. I think you can see the pool in the background....they actually swam in that in 30 degree weather.....and loved it. Thankfully there was an indoor pool too where they spent most of their pool time.

One of the first things that we did was go up to the top of Stone Mountain. Nathan really enjoyed climbing on the rocks. I had to work hard to keep up with him. It was a gorgeous day. As we were leaving the top I ran into a friend from Bonita that I hadn't seen in years . Funny how it can be such a small world.


While we were there we also enjoyed seeing the sites and activities in the main village. The kids saw Santa and Mrs. Claus. We rode a train and listened to Christmas music. We watched little plays and enjoyed some hot chocolate. It was a nice get-away. I know that the kids had a blast.

I do have to record our fire alarm experience for our memories. It was Thanksgiving night. We had stayed out at the village for the end of the night fireworks and to see the snow fairy so we didn't get back to our hotel and into bed until about 11:30. I felt like I had just fallen asleep when this loud alarm sounded and a voice over the speaker said, "Emergency! Emergency! This is an emergency! Please go out the nearest exit." So we put some shoes on, gathered the kids (Nathan was out so Aaron just picked him up and carried him - no shoes) and walked out the nearest exit and up some stairs into the parking lot. We ended up staying out there for about an hour. We had grabbed the room key, but weren't smart enough to grab the car keys. Poor Aaron was in shorts and it was cold. Finally they let us go back in and said something about a fire in the kitchen... So we went back to sleep and before we knew it we heard the alarm again and the same warning being screamed in our ears. This time we got smart. Thankfully it was 7am this time, so we got dressed. Got the kids dressed. Grabbed the car keys this time and decided to go drive ourselves to breakfast somewhere. When we got back a few hours later and we were walking back into the hotel a man asked if we were just arriving. We told him we had left for breakfast after the second fire alarm. He told us there had been a third one while he was eating his breakfast. We were grateful we had just taken off and didn't have to deal with that again. The bonus was that they gave us that night's stay for free so it wasn't all bad!

Thanksgiving 2010 (a little late)

I know that I need to get moving with my posts. I have a lot to catch up on and each month that goes by only makes it worse. I was holding off for a while because I really do want to make a video with all the pictures of Hailey's birthday. It may be something that I post on her next Angel day - or maybe her birthday. Needless to say it is not close to being done and I can't keeping waiting, so....

Thanksgiving 2010

We weren't really sure how our emotions were going to be since it would be Hailey's first Angel Day that week so we decided that we needed to get away as a family and do something that would keep us busy. We chose to go to Stone Mountain in Atlanta, GA. On our way up we stayed with our dear friends that Haddocks. We were in the same housing complex with the Haddocks during our time at UF. We had family home evenings with them. We had a great friendship; now we share one more thing - we both have Angels in Heaven. Their little boy Evan passed away a year before Hailey did. I never thought we would join that group - but then again who does? We will be forever tied together and honestly I am grateful that we have such dear friends to go through this with - although, at the same time I wish we didn't.

We also stopped and spent a few hours with our friends the Paynes. They had moved from our ward earlier in the year and it was great to catch up with them.