joy amidst the sadness

The thing about grieving is that the world around you just keeps moving on.  When your world seems like it's come to a complete stop, or at least you feel like it should, there are still kids to take care of, laundry to fold, snow to shovel, appointments to go to and the list goes on and on...  Here is a little peek into some of the "normalcy" that we're trying maintain around here...

The meadow below our house was completely frozen over and the boys had a blast playing on the ice...
 Buddies...

  You can see our little row of three houses on our street in the background.  I love this place that we call home!

We took a fun family adventure to the See Science Center in Manchester and the boys had a blast...

 The awesome Lego replica of Manchester back in the day...

My 33 week belly (3 weeks ago)!

Now that I'm not spending every waking minute with my Dad, I'm trying to turn my attention and love to little Baby Goose.  Here's her crib that she'll probably never sleep in if she's anything like her brothers who just want to be next to Mama...

We had a huge snow storm the weekend right before my Dad's service...and he LOVED snow, so we got outside and enjoyed it!  We went for a walk into town together for donuts at the start of the storm...

 This is what we woke up to the next morning...

We celebrated Camden's half birthday!  Have I really been a Mom for 4.5 years?!?!  Crazy.

Camden wanted to dress like Daddy for church last week...My Carhartt boys!

Grieving, laughter, family, sadness, joy, adventure...all part of our day to day life right now. 

A Wintery March

Well, now that it's March, winter has decided to arrive.  We had lots of wintery adventures this last week - Camden's first time on ice skates, watching a sled dog presentation up at the local college and playing on the foot of fresh snow that recently dumped on us.  Luckily, spring won't be too far away - it's supposed to be in the 50's this week!  I figured we needed to enjoy the snow while we had it!

We bought Camden his first big boy bike at the LL Bean outlet last weekend!  Gotta love the lifetime guarantee!

 Camden's first attempt at ice skating!  He was very nervous at first, but really figured it out pretty quickly! 

 He was pretty excited!

 Holding a hockey stick...no offense hockey playing/parenting friends, but I really hope my boys don't want to pick up this sport!

 We're pretty lucky to have this great rink right on campus!

 Watching the sled dogs...

 Nan joined us for the fun!

 Snow angel!

 Giving the dogs some treats...

 Yummy!

After a couple days of snow and clouds, the sun broke through on Saturday afternoon and the temperatures rose quickly.  It definitely called for some backyard fun...

 Camden had fun jumping off the sides of his snow fort...

 "Sleeping" in their "bed"...