Three Princesses in Waiting

A couple of weekends ago I was very lucky to be able to attend the Bears of Hope Pregnancy and Infant Loss Support Ball. It is an awesome night and I'm so grateful that I can be part of such a wonderful charity that supports families. I have written about Bears of Hope before, I have mentioned the Bear of Hope Ball and being involved in the Ball Committee. What I haven't written about before is the over whelming feelings you have attending the ball. During the night there is a candle lighting, it is a time to light your candle for your baby, to watch a beautiful slide show of all the babies names of the people that are in attendance. This year I sat with Jen, my partner in Bears of Hope crime, we became friends 4 yrs ago, not long after I had Riley and just 12 months after Jen lost her first son Bailey. In the first year of our work with Bears of Hope we both very much needed a purpose. There may have even been some competition on who go the most amount of sponsors and dona...

The award for Best Mum Ever goes to Monique's Mum, that would be me! According to Monique. After a late night making Book Week costumes, because I take Book Week a little seriously. I had two children that loved what had been made for them. Poppy got up at 5.30am and woke the rest of the house up telling us we had to get to school really early to get her face painted. Needless to say, although she was up early we were still not at school early. This year Poppy was the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland & Monique was a Wonka Bar with Golden Ticket from Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. The smiles say it all...

I love it when David goes away for work over a weekend. It gives me time with my girls to do girly things. We hit a theme park, go shopping to buy chick flicks, home for homemade pizzas. Singing songs inbetween. I love that Poppy looks after Josephine and knows her role of being a big sister is so important.  This all paints such a happy picture you can forgive me if there is no images because you might just have caught the tantrums, the messy house and the unbrushed hair. 

For a long time I have wanted to have beautiful family photo's taken to show the personalities of each of my children. Images that I can put on my wall to look at when the screaming starts and I can remember that we are all uniquely part of this family, no matter what. I asked my friend and super fantastic photographer Melissa Pratt Photography  to take some photos. We sat down and discussed what I really wanted and where. Over the last 4 years each time I have begun the process to get family photos, it brings up a well of emotions as although these images are lovely, my heart knew that Riley would always be missing. Melissa was fantastic and very caringly worked with me to find a way that we could include Riley in some images. The blue balloons - are my boy, my prince that I held so briefly. My Riley. On the day of Riley's funeral we released 31 blue balloon.  Life after a loss means that the smallest of things like having a family photo ...

Like my blog posts I'm not able to keep up with things that have to be done on a daily basis.    Here's my day 2 which is actually day 3. If figure if I spread them out I can be more grateful for longer.  1. I'm grateful for friends that come to my rescue when my car breaks down, laugh with me and at me, call me when times are tough for advice and give advice right back, make my day a little brighter each day. Being in another state to some of my closest friends It's so good to know that all I have to do is pick up the phone.  My crazy walking buddy, yesterday we made it all the way to the coffee shop in the rain for hot chocolate. We even ran! 2. I'm grateful for hairdye which I'm so desperate to buy more of.  Without it I would look so much older.  3. I'm grateful that we have the opportunity as a family to have warmth, shelter and a cupboard full of food because I know some people don't have the same privilege as us. 

I've been challenged to write three things I'm greatful for, for the next five days. Here I go Day 1 1. I'm grateful for the mess I can make in my own kitchen, after renting for three years I'm glad I can say this place is mine    2. I'm grateful for the three booty shaking girls in the back ground. They are fiesty, they love to dance and they love to cook, hence the mess.  3. Now I've seen a lot of these grateful posts over the last few weeks and I know all the standard things but I'm not a standard kind of girl. So my last thing today is I'm grateful for my taste buds. I'm so glad that I can cook and taste food. I love it so much. After two weeks without chocolate I missed it so much. I fell off the wagon and fell face first into a double family size block.