I'm not going to lie.....

I'm not going to lie.....I am very, very sad. No matter how well I was prepared for losing Charlie, and knowing exactly everything I was going to experience because of losing Evan, it doesn't make me miss his sweet little face and noises and presence any less. I can literally feel my heart in my chest hurt, and I really do have to remind myself to breath sometimes, and I have to get out of bed every morning and remind myself that life IS good and that I WILL be okay. I went out to the graveyard to design a new grave marker for Evan & Charlie, and they had just moved Evan so that they could be next to each other. In all honesty, it was probably the most pain I have ever felt in my heart. I just kept thinking about what a loss it is to my little family that BOTH of my boys are gone. There is an emptiness in my home. It was hard to be faced with the reality of it, seeing them buried side by side.

At least this time, I know not to feel guilty for moving on. On Charlie's last day, I told him that I love him with all my heart, and that I know that he will understand that after he leaves me, I am going to do EVERYTHING I can to move on and have fun and be happy as soon as possible. I'm sure if he could have spoken, he would have encouraged it. Because it is just too unbearable to carry that sadness every day for the rest of my life.

As you can see, I have been pretty busy finding things that make me happy, and here are a few of them from the past month:

Maddie's preschool's Christmas show. She is one of the cuddly little brown bears. Can you see why she wanted to be in the snowflake class? She kept telling me that her matted brown costume was itchy. :o)

The ladies in my family. My emotional (and physical during the pregnancy) support system.

The fact that I found a robot the day before Christmas Eve. Hallelujah! Santa always comes through!!

Maddie's soon-to-be-uncle, Adam, who came up with this creative solution to non-sticky snow and helped Maddie make this snowman so that I could stay in my spot under a blanket next to the fireplace. :o)

This very colorful rendition of the nativity scene. Maddie was SO excited that she got to be Mary for the first time.

My 6++ foot brother having to be the "jackass" in the family nativity. It must be a pain to be the last one married in a family!

Newport Beach. Quite literally the happiest place on earth.

Finding out that our favorite place to get chili in a breadbowl in Newport is named this, and we didn't even know it.

That Josh is a real life Prince Charming and didn't even make too big of a deal out of the fact that within 2 minute of being in Disneyland we had to buy Maddie new shoes because the ones she was wearing gave her blisters, even though Josh told her three times before we left the house to change her shoes because she needed more comfortable ones. Girls and their shoes......

And last, but certainly not least, the Cranberries concert in Las Vegas. We bought these tickets months in advance, and promised ourselves that no matter what the situation was, we were going to go and have a blast. Well, I was seven days post-partum and literally couldn't even stand, had to go to the bathroom every ten minutes, was an emotional wreck, and hadn't slept through the night in seven days. But I went, and let me tell you, it was the most uplifting thing I could have done. I walked out of there stronger and determined to continue to live a rockstar life. Yes, I buried two sweet, adorable babies. And yes, I can hardly breathe when I think about it. But, I am hoping those are just the sad, life-changing chapters in a long, fabulous book of my life.

A little video to show how Delores rocks: