Living the Dream Even After 22 Years...

Well, we did it.  Another anniversary.  This has been the best and worst year so far.  If you had asked me 7 months ago how things were I would have responded "Really hard with a new baby and a toddler, but I am loving it and we are so happy and our family is complete."  Tatum brought a lot of joy and hope to our family.  Just because she is gone, does not take that away.  I have to remember that.
When I woke up this morning I had remorse over my post from last night.  I felt very sad and negative when I wrote it.  I guess it is good to share those things too, but it just is so hard to allow myself to be so vulnerable.  Hopefully it helps to see the really hard side of grief exists even in someone who is generally happy and OK.

We started off the anniversary with another swim meet!   I actually don't mind them.  It gives me special time with Heidi and I get to exercise while we are waiting for her events and hang out with my good friend whose daughter is also swimming.  The weather was nice this morning and the meet was in Pleasant Grove where I used to do quite a bit of running with a good friend of mine.  Heidi did pretty good in her events and had fun.  While we were there we spotted a lady that was in our first Lehi ward.  My friend asked if I wanted to go and say hello to her.  I decided not to. I didn't want to have to go through the entire story and I didn't want to omit her from our family either.  Solution, avoidance:)  
Afterwards we stopped at, where else, The Purple Turtle.  I think that I gained 5 pounds when I walked in the door.

Heidi is sporting the yellow cap.  She will love this when she gets older:)

When we got home from the swim meet I found this on our dining room table with a sweet note from Lance:

When we were planning our wedding we went and registered at a store that sold these dishes.  This was back before registering was very popular in the LDS community.  Between my family and gift cards we were able to get quite a few place settings for our every day china.  Ten or so years ago we drove up to the Mikasa outlet in Park City and picked up some replacements for some of our dishes that had broken over the years.  Now we have plenty of place settings.  Lance is always a very thoughtful gift giver.

The rest of the day was pretty normal.  I did some errands for the hospital and Lance did some house projects.  Then we went out to grab some dinner to celebrate our 22nd anniversary.  I have felt on the verge of tears all week so I was a little nervous to go out anywhere.  I was afraid that we would see someone that didn't know or something hard like that.  I just wasn't feeling very jovial or social.  We stopped to get gas and as Lance was pumping the gas someone yelled his name.  It was a man that he worked with right out of college.  They chatted for 10 or 15 minutes.  Luckily I didn't have to get out of the car because I didn't know him very well so I didn't feel like I needed to join in on the conversation.  Rude of me, but right now I am allowing myself to do those things.

We headed down to the Orem/Provo area.  We ended up at Carrabas.  It was a good choice.  It wasn't too busy and the food was good.  As we were waiting for our table my Obgyn walked in.  Luckily he didn't see me and I don't know if he would recognize me. I do know that my Pediatrician and him are friends and he told my Ob about Tatum.   Luckily we went throughout the entire dinner without seeing anyone that we knew.  It is so unlike me to not want to see people we know or old friends from the past.  I am a very social person so that is something that under "normal" circumstances I would have loved.

Lance asked if I wanted to go and see what our old house in Provo looked like and we should see if the people living there would let us in.  So not something that Lance would normally suggest.  He would rather do anything than inconvenience a perfect stranger to let us in their home and show us around.  So against his nature.  We are all so out of whack.   We decided to take a few pictures of ourselves and call it good.

I am horrible at "selfies"  obviously since you can see my finger in the picture!

 This is where we lived for the first four years that we were married.  It was 275 dollars a month, that included our utilities.  What the?!  A lot of our history is in this little old house.  Trevin's whole life was spent here.  I remember it being so hard to leave this neighborhood and this house when we moved to Lehi.

After going to Provo we decided to try and find where Halea and her friends were.  She and three of her friends had dressed up in 50's attire and were going to the old car show cruise down Main Street in American Fork.  We found them and got some great pictures and some video of her cruisin'.  Adorable.

Then we came home and jumped into the night time routine with Hilary.  We were going to watch a movie, but we were both too tired by the time we were done with everything.  Senior citizens!

I have been thinking a lot about the good differences in myself that I have noticed in these past 6 weeks since Tatum died.  One of the really good things that I have tried to preserve has been that I can't stand to listen to "regular" music on the radio.  There are a few songs that i can listen to, but for the most part I don't listen to anything other than my mellow music. It just feels offensive to my soul.  it has been really nice to remove some of the clutter from my brain.  Same with TV.  I didn't watch a lot of TV before, but now I hardly watch at all and it is great.  I feel like I don't get as worked up about certain things.  I find it easier to leave my house even if it isn't spotless, especially if I am going to do something of value like visit with someone that needs it.  I am trying really hard to pay closer attention to how I am representing the Savior in my everyday life.  I am so far from perfect, but I think it makes a difference in my behavior when I make a conscience  decision to pay attention. I hope that I can maintain these things and add a lot more positive attributes gleaned from this hard and sacred time in our lives.
 I am so lucky to have Lance,  my family and great friends who are literally carrying me through my days at times.  I am ever so grateful for the knowledge that I have of the Gospel.  Without it I would be lost.  I pray that my heart can continue to heal so that Lance and I can continue to live the dream for many more years.