Chance

One of Jenny’s books for school.

Friday marked the third anniversary of Jenny’s accident; today marks the third anniversary of Elijah’s death. While the last week of April has been a somber time for us since 2009, I’ve worked to focus on some of the happier things this time around.

The items in this photo are just a few the gifts we have received since then. I continue to be amazed at the outpouring of grief on our behalf and of love for us. People we barely knew and people we didn’t know sent us condolence messages. You wouldn’t think that those kinds of things from total strangers would make a difference, but they do.

Friends I hadn’t seen or heard from since high school were sending me messages. People we only knew in passing dropped by the hospital to visit with us and have since become very good friends. A friend loaned me her Nintendo DS so I’d have some form of entertainment in the hospital while Jenny slept. People brought us meals. Flowers were sent. Tons of flowers were sent. Jenny’s students sent her cards and posters. Some folks even sent us gift cards and money. Because we were in the transition period of moving to DC, we were living with my parents; people came to help them out too.

We don’t expect people to remember us this time of year. Even though it’s been a few years, we continue to receive small gifts, cards, and notes on our Facebook walls. On the first anniversary, some close friends from college sent us the quilt and tie tacks you see in the photo. They waited specifically for the first anniversary so they could remind us that we’re still in their thoughts and prayers.

We’ve done our best to send out thank you notes and express our deepest gratitude for all the kindness we’ve received for three years, but I can’t help but fear that we’ve forgotten a thank you note or two. I thought about using this post to individually thank these people, but I just know I’d leave someone out. There are just too many kind people to thank. Please know that we’ll be forever grateful for you. We’ll never be able to pay any of you back, but we’ll do our best to always pay it forward.

We went to the temple tonight, so I was looking forward to getting some shots I hadn’t tried before. Unfortunately, it rained so I went with this overdone shot.

We discovered a robin’s nest in the shrub beside our door. Despite my best efforts, I wasn’t able to capture their feeding.

My batting gloves. My softball team is doing really well, but we had a really tough loss tonight. Always a bit rough to be on the wrong side of a nailbiter.

Had some friends over for dinner.