Christmas Reflections

Merry Christmas to All! We hope that your holidays were full of love, food and the spirit of Jesus's birth. We were blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with both of our families this holiday.

On Christmas eve. We went to Hillman to my parents. It was so fun watching our nephews (Ethan & Owen) open their gifts of toys and go back and forth between them all. We were able to all be there: Mom, Dad, Dustin, myself, Betsy, Rob, the boys, Emma, Aaron (her boyfriend), & our family friend, Bud. Bud is a friend of the family who has been celebrating Christmas with us for 10 plus years, his wife Catherine, passed away in August 2007. There certainly is a spot at the table missing with Catherine gone, but we are grateful that Bud still joins our family. We went to Christmas Eve. Mass, although, the kids in front of me were more well-behaved then myself! I could NOT kneel, every time I did, I thought I was going to fall over & my back hurt so bad. And of course, you pack about 350 plus people into the Catholic church in Harding & the temperature is bound to rise. I managed to take my coat off and I was still sweating. At one point, I thought I was going to pass out, I started to fall back & caught myself on the back of the pew. Mom was so sweet & told the lady behind me (who I knocked into) that I was carrying twins! Oh, Sorry I just fell on you, but I DO have an excuse! :) We got a ton of gifts and lots and lots of presents for the twins!

We were able to have a quiet Christmas morning at home, I made breakfast and we watched TV, listened to the babies heartbeats on the doppler and were just able to enjoy each other & the morning. It was fun to talk about "what next year will be like" and to dream about having TWO babies around the Christmas tree.

In the afternoon, we went to Brooklyn Park to Dustin's mom's, Nancy's & her husband's. We had DELICIOUS salad & manicotti, it was so nice to have dinner with them. We watched "A Christmas Story" and opened gifts. They were VERY generous, as always, and bought us a beautiful 4 in 1 crib. The twins will be sleeping together until they get too big for the divider or start waking each other up. This weekend, we will be painting the nursery and putting the crib together.

Today also was bittersweet. It was one year ago today that I woke up early, took a pregnancy test and saw those two beautiful pink lines. One year ago today that we found out we were pregnant with our angel, Sammie. Last year, on Christmas morning, our whole lives changed, as we found out that we were pregnant & now parents. We found out we lost our angel exactly one month later. I only got to be pregnant with her for a month, but the love that we have for our first born is unimaginable. We learned so much medically, emotionally, spiritually. Our lives were tested in every possible way. We lost a baby, we grieve a child we never knew. But, we now know hope. We have a child, waiting for us in Heaven with Jesus. We know that the twins will be born because we lost Sammie. We have excellent medical care now, because of the hell we went through when we lost our first angel. Being pregnant again this Christmas does not replace last year, and these babies never will replace our first child. We will blog throughout the next month of our story, and losing Sammie. It plays a huge role in the twins life, and they will always know about their older sister & that by losing one child, God blessed us with two.

Love to All, Sara