Our Christmas Card 2010

We wish you are your family a very Merry Christmas!!! 2010 has been a good year for us. The picture on the far right bottom of our card is Callie holding a necklace of a metal heart with Gracie's name on it. She is not forgotten.
Christmas 2008, Taylor kissing Gracie (our baby Jesus! :) in our little family nativity on Christmas Eve.
We think of our Gracie even more during this time of year, we miss and love her so much!!!

Celebration of Life Monument

Gracie, January 18, 2009

I had a dream the other night that I was in a room with Gracie and she was alive. She looked just like she did when we had her. I knew in my heart that it wasn't really true but held her as tight as I could and cried. Then it was as if I went from room to room and one minute she was alive and with me and the other minute she wasn't. I just remember waking up feeling like I had cried all night long but luckily, it was only in my dream. I was crying with happiness when I was with her and holding her and then crying in sadness when I knew she had passed away. Luckily, I don't have dreams like this very often because they are too draining. It has been 19 months since Gracie passed away. Time is flying by.

After all these months, we have another wonderful way to remember/honor her with the Celebration of Life monument. My husband and I stopped by to see the monument on our wedding anniversary a couple weeks ago. It is located in downtown Salt Lake City, and is a place to honor organ donors. (Gracie was not only an organ donor recipient, she was an organ donor herself after she passed away) We knew Gracie's name had been added but had been unable to go see it until then. When we saw the endless list of names, we knew finding Gracie's name would be like finding a needle in a haystack. There were hundreds of names etched in the wavy glass monument that seemed to go on forever.

I was determined to find it. I wasn't going to leave until I did. I went through name by name and surprisingly, found it quite quickly. The names are not in any particular order which is why it made it a challenge to find.

When I finally found it, I thought it was so perfect that her name is located right next to the statue of a mom holding her little girl up in the air. A little girl that looks to be how old Gracie would be right now. Bittersweet.

We love and miss Gracie every day but have a peace in our family that we will be with her again. We are so grateful for organ donation and are grateful for all of our other heart friends whose lives have been saved by a selfless organ donor and their family. Donate to Life!! :)

A New HEART for Mason

Our little heart friend, Mason, got his new heart yesterday on EASTER!!! The family had arrived just a couple days before to visit Summer and Mason in California for spring break so the timing was perfect!! He is doing well and we couldn't be happier! Callie prayed tonight and said she was grateful baby Mason got a heart and hoped that it would 'work good'. So keep it going MIRACLE MASON, we hope your heart 'works good'!!

Two

Tom brought this Willow Tree figurine home in memory of Gracie's Birthday. Two years old today on the first day of spring. She would have been a cute little toddler! We miss you baby!!

One Year Ago We Said Goodbye

One year ago today I saw my baby for the last time. Waking up the morning of her last day was a surreal experience. Knowing that I only had a few more hours to see her was completely overwhelming. I really can't explain what that feels like.

Looking at the clock that afternoon was like looking at a ticking time bomb. .......four hours left, then three........then two.........the anxiety was so high I didn't know what to do. How do you gather enough strength to watch your child pass away? Oh how I wished I could stop the clock!! But I knew she was in pain and that it was time to let her go.

Later that night after she passed away, I couldn't bring myself to blog about that experience. That's when my husband so beautifully wrote his post 'Goodnight Gracie'. A blog that I had faithfully updated for 14 months had now lost it's main character, my GG. My love, my inspiration was now gone. I would now be writing an obituary, planning a funeral, dressing my baby's body at the funeral home and seeing her sweet face one more time before closing the casket. Experiences that none of us want to have. But some of the most important life lessons come about from the most painful experiences. We can't learn them any other way, it's just not possible.

One year.......it feels longer than one year since we ended our mortal journey with Gracie. Since then, our lives have gotten 'back to normal', and sometimes it all feels like a dream. We have been blessed by the kindness of others and that has helped heal our broken hearts. We have much to be grateful for.

Blogging since Gracie passed away has been challenging because I always like to blog with a picture or two. Obviously over the 14 months that I kept up the blog, I used all of my favorite pictures of her. So for this post, I thought I would post the beautiful portraits that people have done for us of our Gracie Girl.

A couple weeks ago, we attended Paul Cardall's concert at Abravenal Hall. He played to a sold out crowd of 2,700 people, many of whom had been effected by congenital heart disease. The concert was awesome. He ended the concert with a longer and different version of 'Gracie's Theme'. It was so beautiful with a full orchestra!! We are so blessed to all of you who continue to remember our sweet Gracie. Paul had a silent auction before his concert and an artist named Patricia Christensen donated her services in doing a free portrait of anything the bidder would like her to paint. In doing so, she asked if she could paint Gracie for her example portrait for the concert. We of course said 'YES!' and saw it for the first time that night. Patricia gave it to us and we are thrilled. I particularly like her eyes, eyebrows and fuzzy hair. I think it's just adorable! (sorry about the flash on the glass).

This portrait is done in watercolor (I think!). We received this from someone who followed the blog whom we have never met. I heard that they had this commissioned out of Chicago. We absolutely love it. One of my favorite photographs of her has now been made into a portrait. The detail and talent of these artists is AMAZING!

Sisters........ JR Johansen (my mother in law's cousin) did this portrait of Callie and Gracie. He did an 'Angels Among Us' exhibit up in Huntsville of children who had passed away or who have medical conditions. He even incorporated her little 'chapstick' into the picture. (For those of you who don't know, to overcome her oral aversion, the speech therapists told us to use chapsticks to get her used to flavors and positive things by her face) He has an amazing talent and I love Gracie's chubby cheeks and fuzzy hair......ooooooo it just makes me want to smooch those cute cheeks again!!

This portrait was given to us at the funeral. Our heart friend Daxton's mom Hilary brought it to us, one of her friends drew it. This was the first portrait we had received and thought it was SO kind for complete strangers to do this for us.

We cherish each one of these portraits as well as each and every gift, letter and email that has come our way with words of comfort and love. I don't know how many times I can say that we truly could not have gotten through this experience without the love and support from all of our family, friends and blogging friends!

It wouldn't be my blog without putting my latest favorite quote on here (which I have already attached to my side bar), it reads:

".....Heaven's kindness will never depart from you, regardless of what happens......Bad days come to an end, faith always triumphs, and heavenly promises are always kept."

--Jeffrey R. Holland--

Gracie on January 15, 2009.

Gracie, we miss your sweet smile, little blue fingers, chubby cheeks, fuzzy hair, big dark blue eyes, gorgeous long eyelashes, fluffy hair and button nose. You are deeply missed. But we will have you in our family forever. We have a little piece of heaven in our home when we think of you and honor your memory. Our memories of our life with you will make us live better lives while we are here without you. Until we see you again sweet baby girl, we love you!!

P.S. I am adding this little tidbit to this post today on March 3rd. The newspaper said that MARCH 2ND is BY FAR the most likely day for moisture of any day the WHOLE year. I thought that was pretty interesting. The odds are just over 50% that it will rain or snow on March 2nd. In fact, no other day of the year statistically has a chance for moisture that is 50% or more. (January 11 and April 25 were the next two most likely days for rain in Salt Lake City at only 41%). So BRING ON THE RAIN, so appropriate for all the future March 2nd"s we have ahead of us!

Bright Eyed GG

I couldn't resist posting this picture of Gracie. My mom took this photo and I just saw it for the first time a couple of weeks ago. Such a cute little look on her face, biting her lip and observing the world through her sweet little eyes. Oh GG......we miss you!!