Productive Days

Today was a day that I finish feeling very accomplished.  We set an alarm to make it to the early service at church, 9am is not that early.  Sadie had to be woken up to make it on time and it's walking distance from our house!  After church we went to Heritage Park for an awesome day of family fun.  The park is perfect for Sadie right now.  She got to ride on a lot of carnival rides, a steam engine train, a horse drawn carriage and a steam boat!  We went over to the farm and saw all the animals, ate ice cream, visited the candy store and explored all the historic houses.  After 5 hours of walking around and enjoying ourselves, we stopped at their annual harvest sale on the way out.  It was moments before they were closing and we got some amazing deals!  A whole watermelon for $1, a massive box of green peppers for $5, a case of mangoes for $2, cauliflower for $1 and 2 cantaloupe's for $1!  Sadly after we purchased our watermelon for $1 they dropped the price to 2 for a $1.  We would have complained but the money was going to the Children's Hospital here and we've found that place helpful in the past!

We just got home, made a pizza to throw in the oven for supper and are looking forward to relaxing on the couch after Sadie goes to bed.  I even signed Shawn up to be Santa at Sadie's pre-school in December!  What a good sport to save me from having to volunteer to be on the board committee.  It was a large time commitment that I didn't want to make and Santa was only for an hour.  I'm sure he'll be hilarious.

Today, as we waited for our carriage ride, a mom behind me asked how old Sadie was.  I asked in return how old her children were.  Her youngest was 17 months old, the age Hope would currently be.  Whenever this happens I find I stare at the child and try to picture what our Hope would be doing right now and what she'd look like as she got older.  Would she grow into her big eyes, or would they always light up her entire face?  Would she still be bald?  Would she finally be over 13 pounds?  It always stops me in my tracks and brings some sadness before I can continue on with the day.  Watching Sadie ride the ferris wheel alone because she didn't have a sibling to sit next to her was hard when so many of the kids had someone next to them.  It's the little things that continue to hit hard.

We are thankful that we are doing well and are able to go out and enjoy a day as a family.  We are thankful that our marriage is still full of love for one another and that our pain is not turning us against each other, only closer to one another.  We are thankful that Hope is resting safely in the arms of Jesus and that when Sadie asks the tough question, "why did Hope have to die?"  We can answer with the confidence that God knew what he was doing, even though we wanted him to do something different.  We continue to live life and through that we grow and we get stronger, even though the pain lives on.