A Year Later...

In some ways it is hard to believe that a year has past since we lost Brandon's mom, in other ways it seems like yesterday.  This year it was a beautiful fall day.  The kind of day Robin would have spent sitting with us curled up with a blanket.  We spent the day with his family (Brandon's sister and kids were in town).  Brandon had built an outdoor fire (shocker right?!) and we just spent time together.  Amber and I have been trying to put a book together for the kids for a year now.  We have quotes/stories that family and friends shared with us at her visitation and we finally got them complied and added pictures.  Each of the grandkids will get a book all about Mimi with plenty of pictures to help keep all the memories alive.  We are so grateful for the contributions that people shared and it will be a lot of fun to get these books printed and shared with the kids.  There are so many precious memories.  We ended the day with a Fondue.  Brandon proved himself a true fondue guru, as I failed to produce our recipe he went off memory and made one of the best fondues ever.

I truly believe that our loved ones that have passed continue to share themselves with us in unique ways.  The past few weeks Elizabeth has developed some anxieties about school.  It has become a struggle to get her on the bus.  The other day as I was walking the teary eyed girl to the bus stop I spotted a squirrel and used it to distract her.  We joked about this crazy squirrel and we tried to think of words that rhymed with squirrel to give it a name (curl, pearl, Merle).  We watched this squirrel run to the neighbors and get a treat out of a bucket and we hooped and hollered when we saw it start to dart across the street as the bus was coming.  She got on the bus with the biggest smile that day.  As I was telling my mom she said "maybe it's name was Mimi."  And then I smiled, because Mimi would have done something crazy just like that squirrel to make Elizabeth smile.  It is hard not having Robin here with us but it's awesome to know she will always be looking over us.