November, Part 2

The day after the boys' birthday, I flew out to London for my first European experience. I flew all night and landed at Heathrow around 11 AM. I took a car to Chelsea's flat in Central London and it was non-stop sight-seeing for the next 9 days. Chels drives a mean travel itinerary. It is not for the faint of heart. I didn't think I would be able to distract myself but the combination of jet-lag and the whirlwind history tour overload actually did successfully distract me for much of the time. We hit London, the English countryside including Bath, spent 2 days in Bruges, Belgium and the last 3 days in Prague.
I will not bore you with details of our travel itinerary. But I will delight you with some gorgeous photos of my photogenic sister and amuse you with some ridiculous photos of myself.

Westminster Abby

Afternoon English tea in the Cotswolds

Stonehenge

Below: Me attempting to get photos of myself in the picture with Stonehenge in the background. I failed miserably. But I will allow you to laugh at my folly. The park was closed so we basically had to do a drive-by. Chels was waiting in the car so she couldn't take a pic of me, but trust me. I WAS THERE!!!

Still failing...

I gave up but included some nice pics of the sheep nearby. Thought you might like that.

Taking the train to Bruges

There's a reason why all the pics in Bruges are of Chelsea. She actually adds to the scenery.

View from our hotel room that got me out running that morning.

The hot chocolate and chocolate truffles were THE reason I went to Belgium. They didn't disappoint.

I averaged 1 street waffle w/ choclate about every 3 hours. 

Prague is eye-stimulus overload. It's just incredible. The pics don't do it justice.

One of the highlights for me was running in so many different places. Chels lived right on the edge of Regent's Park so I ran through there twice. I also got to explore the quaint cobblestone pathways through Bruges and stumbled upon a fabulous running path around the city. I then crossed some of the historic bridges of Prague, including the Charles, and continued all the way up the hill to the Prague Castle and it's scenic views. I know it sounds lame to most people, but I LOVE exploring new places on foot while running.  So for me, it was cool. Almost as cool as the giraffe-print pants I'm wearing in the above picture, right? 

Thanks to Chels, the coolest, most well-traveled and most photogenic sister ever! (She even managed to keep me alive while driving through the English countryside. For that, I will always be ever so grateful.)

Also, huge thanks to the Grandmas and Brent for kicking me out the door and taking such great care of the kids.

November, Part 1

I think it will be necessary to split this month into two parts, starting with the boys' birthday. I was dreading their birthday because I didn't know how to handle the wide spectrum of emotions. On the one hand, I'm obviously completely devastated at not being able to celebrate Keith's 5th birthday with him. And on the other hand, I have a lively and excited Cole who cannot wait to turn 5, open his presents and eat cake. It is complex to really discuss my feelings about their birthday.

Anyway, we really did our best to be excited with Cole in planning his day. And we were excited. How can you not get caught up in the fun of turning 5? Both Grandmas came into town and Brent took the day off work and Julie brought Hunter and Caden, so it was a full day.

We went to the cemetery first. I don't believe the grandmas had been back since Keith's funeral so it was somewhat healing for them to be able to come. To say a visit to the cemetery is "good" might sound strange, but I always feel better after being there to visit Keith's grave. It's a safe place to let out emotions that are held in most of the time. It's peaceful and quiet.

After the cemetery, we went to Safari Sams and let the kids run and play. The only way we got Cole out of there was to remind him of presents and cake at home.

 Cole picked a pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting just like his dad always chooses. I also made green cupcakes in memory of Keith. They have bug sprinkles on them. He picked them out on a visit to the party store last summer with Grandma Smart and me. I don't know why he wanted those, but he did. I sure miss all the little quirky things he always did. That's why I had to put those silly sprinkles on his cupcakes. I know it's not for him. It's for me.

 Cole was pure comic relief while opening his presents. He rushed from one thing to the next with his one-of-a-kind enthusiasm. He's all decked out in the SWAT gear from Grandma B. I think it was SWAT gear. Cole will probably correct me if he sees this. He played hard all afternoon in his gear and then with his Legos, slingshot and light saber.

 It was too heartbreaking to think about not buying Keith presents, so Brent had the idea to buy him presents anyway and take them to the hospital. This brought me the most healing that day. Cole and Ally helped unwrap them all and a few days later I took them down to the hospital. I don't think we will keep wrapping them, but I know we will keep this as a tradition. As much as I hate thinking of some little boy suffering like Keith did, it helps to think we could do anything to make him smile, even for 5 minutes. Cole will always keep us tuned in to what the "cool" kids are in to each year. It's so nice to have an insider.

Cole was really sweet in his prayers that night. He said, "I'm thankful that Keith will always be my brother and that we will be together again." 

This day will always be a tricky one for Brent and me. We always want to have enthusiasm and joy for Cole on his special day but we will always mourn Keith not being here with us on this special day he was born, too. I just want Cole to know how much we love him and celebrate his life as much as we love and miss Keith. We want to be careful and not overshadow Cole's vibrant life with our grief over Keith. But it's also important to grieve together as a family, too, so Cole knows it's okay to be sad sometimes. Anyway, I'm completely rambling. Like I said, complex emotions. I'll just leave it at that.

October

 I don't remember much about October besides trying to keep as busy as I could. I was mostly in a fog and Halloween and the boys' birthday hung over me heavily.

But the beautiful thing about children is the excitement they have over holidays and birthdays. Even though we felt so sad without Keith, we knew Cole and Ally deserved to have a fun Halloween. And we knew Keith would want us to celebrate, too, since it was his favorite holiday. 

Ally was her favorite princess, Snow White. Good thing I chopped her hair, right? I decided to be the evil queen from Snow White. I found my dress at Goodwill for $6.  I added a fake (and scary) pair of eyelashes to complete my outfit.

Brent went as William Wallace from his favorite movie, Braveheart. The mullet wig was pretty stellar. Almost as awesome as Cole thinking his dad was wearing a skirt.

Cole was "Ninja #5" for our church Halloween party. This look included jeans and a superhero t-shirt, a Sheriff Woody vest, a Batman cape, a ninja hood with a #5 on it, and various weapons. I regret not getting any pictures that night! We were in charge of the ward Halloween party so it was an insanely busy night.
The night of Halloween, Cole decided to be "Iron-spider". What is that, you ask? Well, it's a Spiderman head and an Ironman body, of course. Cole was offended whenever anyone at the door asked him what he was for Halloween. "Grrrr...I'm Iron-spider!"

Caden and Hunter joined us for Trick-or-Treating as Ironman and a monkey, respectively.

I wish I remembered more about October, but I don't. I started to read through my journal from then and it mostly just sounds sad. So I think we can call it good with Halloween. We sure missed Keith and all his Halloween excitement. Cole and Ally had a lot of fun and we just did our best to join in.

September

September was the strangest month I've ever experienced in my life. It started, obviously, with Keith's passing and funeral. I felt like I was walking around observing my broken life as an outsider. I responded to people normally, I think, but it was as if I was on auto-pilot while remaining detached most of the time.
I wanted to include some pictures of Keith's funeral. Our Funeral Director recommended that we take a picture of Cole and Ally with two special pairs of something. The kids would then place one in the casket with Keith and have one to keep for themselves. I thought this was a great idea but stewed all week over what the kids would use. I wanted it simple but somewhat meaningful. The night before the funeral, it all came together.

Cole is holding a pair of bears my mom gave me at my baby shower when I was expecting the boys. Cole remembered which one belonged to whom and was very careful in putting Keith's bear next to him.

Ally is holding Bernard and Bianca from The Rescuers. Anyone who spent time with Keith last Spring/Summer knows how much he loved that movie. One of my sisters and my mom found the pair of mice on Amazon last Summer and Keith got to enjoy them briefly before he passed.

Keith is buried in an LDS section of the cemetery next to the Zoo and Children's Museum. He is as close as a plot can be to the Portland Temple monument.

Anyone who attended Keith's viewing or burial, can attest to Cole's attentiveness to his brother. He rarely left Keith's side and would remind other children to be reverent. It was the sweetest and most heart-breaking thing I've witnessed. But I want Cole to know if he doesn't remember it, how he truly was his "brother's keeper" that day.

Cole and our beloved Bishop Eckhardt.

Aunt Darel and Cole at the luncheon.

Me and some of my besties from BYU. They were so sweet to come from  AZ and CA to support me.  15 years and 13 children later, it's pretty awesome to have such great friends.

Smartie Sibs

Uncle Shea and Ally

The day after Keith's funeral, we took our trailer (did I just say that? Yes, we co-own a trailer with Clint and Julie. My sisters will never let me live it down). Anyway, we hauled our trailer 10 hours in 2 days to a special fishing spot of Brent's. We camped, fished, hiked and just got away for several days. We were in the middle of nowhere. No cell phone service, no internet. Fishing on dry flies took enough concentration to help distract us anytime we were on the river.

This is the first picture we took as a family after Keith died. I remember it so well because I just hated taking it without Keith. Brent's parents came along for the first few days which was nice so they could help with the kids when we felt pretty unmotivated to do much of anything.
I appreciated such concentrated time with Cole and Ally. I had often felt bad about not spending the time with them that I would have liked to in recent months. We went on countless "witch hunts" around camp. Just this week they asked to go back so they could look for good witches and bad witches in the forest.
As a side note, I had Chelsea register me for the Boston Marathon while we were camping. I only had a short window to try and get in and of course, I had no internet. So, Chels registered me while we were camping and I found out the day we returned that my registration was accepted. I wasn't even sure I wanted to run it. My heart couldn't have cared less about a race at that time, but Brent strongly encouraged me to have Chels register for me while we were gone so I would have something to focus on throughout the Winter. He was right. I'm glad to have it to focus on right now even if I don't care about it as much as I once did.