Sunday, December 18, 2011

Christmas 2006

The year leading up to 2006 was another full and busy one.  In May, we welcomed another daughter to our family, our very sweet Olivia Grace!  Soon after she was born, as we were trying to track down what things were wrong with Sam, he had an MRI which showed he had abnormal white matter growth on his brain.  At first, they told us that he most likely had Leukodystrophy, a terminal brain disease.  We were devastated and didn't even know where to begin to handle that kind of grief.  For 4 days, we believed that and it was some of the hardest days of my life.  By the end of the week, the neurologist said that they may have been wrong, and it could have been caused from a bleed on the brain or something similar to a stroke, while in the womb.  Fortunately for us, the latter is what it ended up being and as difficult as his life is sometimes, we are so thankful, every day to have him!

For Christmas that year, we spent a quiet one at home.  I don't remember a whole lot, partly because I was dealing with a lot of depression.  I think the combination of having a new baby and dealing with so  many ups and downs with Sam, it left me emotionally feeling spent and empty.  I remember not being able to feel very excited about anything.  I forced myself, for the kids' sake to go through the motions of our traditions, but it was very, very difficult.  It is really amazing how consuming it is when something is wrong with one of our children. It makes all the rest of life somewhat of a blur.  I know I survived those days, but barely.  And it makes me sad how many memories are just swirled together and difficult to pull forward.  I remember that Chipper got a keyboard and Mitchell got a bike.  In fact, on Christmas Eve, when we went to put the bike together, it was missing a few pieces and I had to drive 2 hours, to Las Vegas, to get it replaced!  I don't remember what Abby got.  Sam got a Little People ABC set with all the different animals and Olivia got a little monkey gym thing that she could crawl into and play with.  I also remember that year that I bought my husband an ipod, which was the first of any of the iproducts we had ever purchased!

It really is amazing how easy it is to forget and reminds me of why I started this project in the first place!  I'm so thankful for this opportunity, each day.

Today was our Christmas program at church and I played the piano for the choir.  It was extremely difficult for me, as I am not an accomplished pianist-by any stretch of the imagination!  But they were all patient with me, and I got through it, and I really think the program turned out very nice!

Today's freebie is another tag template.  I'm hoping that these are coming in handy for a few of you!

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2 comments:

boop52245 said...

thank you

Scarlet 357 said...

just looked through your awesome blog...I noticed that hardly anything was made in an universal file form so that any scrapper could use it. You have put a lot of work into filling your blog with lots of templates, whihc I'm sure you have done to draw attention to your new designing label now that you aren't designing at Brownie Scraps any more. And that's great..freebie will bring people to your blog, but do you realize how many potential customers you are missing out on , because your products are pse/ps bias. There are 5 companies I know of that can't open tiffs or psd , so they need pns or one of the files made for their programs. Creative Memories is a huge American inteernational company in US, Canada, Mexico, England, France, Germany, AUS, New Zealand, and even Japan and they all shop in our American digi shops. My Memories is growing by leaps and bounds . They are adding new well known designers to their program's store everyday and the designers are changing the structuring of their products to suit their programs. Shutterfly's software use grows as well. I don't know how any designer today , especially a designer that only makes templates, can go without offering pngs, the universal file, that can be opened and used by everyone for your product. I would love to use your templates.