Travel and Great News!

Our new place!
Tim and Timmy at our resort in San Diego

Timmy at Polar Bear exhibit at Sea World

Let's watch a Disneyland parade!

Tim, Rick, Rachel, Timmy ad I at the Bug's Life attraction at Disneyland

Groom's cake for Rehearsal dinner for Rick and Rachel's wedding. This cake was made in a borrowed kitchen by Kate Wilkerson (Tim and Rick's very talented cousin)

Take a bow Kate!

Timmy playing with "Uncle Boo-Boo"

Congratulations Rick and Rachel!

Timmy and Grandma Jan

Great news! We got the results of our quad screen test back today for the new baby. It was negative! This is not a 100% positive assurance that there are no major issues, but it indicates that there are no markers for increased risk. So the baby is most likely free of genetic disorders and neural tube defects. What great news!

Tim and I also got to peek at the baby this week. It took the midwife a really long time to get the heartbeat because the baby kept moving so much. "She" is an active little one! When we did a quick ultrasound, she was pretty much break-dancing. A LOT of movement!

We are getting ready to move to Texas, and the move will take place right as I would ordinarily be getting the anatomy ultrasound done. This is obviously a huge issue for us, since we really cling to more and more positive assurance that the baby is doing well. Thanks to a really supportive staff at the hospital, we were able to finagle a slightly early appointment for the "big ultrasound" so it could be accomplished before I move. I am really happy to be getting this done at our hospital so we do not have to worry about setting up appointments and waiting for availability when we get to Texas. I also happen to particularly like the staff at our hospital. So, God willing, we will arrive in San Antonio with some extra assurance and some knowledge about the baby's gender. Great news!

We just returned from two weeks of fun travel. Tim, Timmy and I went to San Diego to attend Rick's (Tim's brother) wedding. While we were there, we took a week to vacation at Disneyland, Sea World and around San Diego. We had a blast and really enjoyed the family time. Rick and Rachel had a beautiful wedding that was definitely memorable for everyone.

After our vacation, Tim returned to Kansas for field training and I flew directly to San Antonio to look for a house. Timmy stayed with his grandparents in California and had a blast! San Antonio was surprisingly relaxing for me, and turned out to be just what I needed. I was in a great hotel (highly recommend the Townplace Suites by Marriott if you are ever in San Antonio). The hotel had every service imaginable (for free!) and included two meals a day (well, if you don't mind hotdogs and tacos for dinner). They even shop at a local grocery store for you! So, for a week I had no childcare responsibilities, someone else had the reigns for my company and I didn't have to cook. I had a blast (despite being a little lonely). I am feeling great (have to look at my expanding belly to convince myself I am pregnant) and was able to work out every day (three miles of running, one mile power walk).

The good news from last week is that I found a great place to live. We will be living in Cibolo, Texas, which is slightly north of San Antonio, in the suburbs. The house is absolutely beautiful, with much more space and a lot of nice little features (garden tub, window seats in the master bedroom, open floor plan, really clean and new). I was really happy with this place and super excited to move in!

I only have one and half weeks left in command (change of command is 7 May). Leaving command will be a little bittersweet, but I am really looking forward to the next step in my career. It will be nice to have a solid two years of being responsible only for myself and my family instead of 300+ Soldiers. It has truly been an honor to serve, but it will be an honor to pass the reigns and move on as well. It will be a mixed blessing to move on to San Antonio and start the Baylor program.

...Moving Forward

On my last post, I titled "Looking back and moving forward." Well, I sort of omitted the part about "moving forward." So, here goes:

Ahem.

WE'RE PREGNANT!

Tim and I have been blessed with this fun little secret for about 14 weeks now. We have been very, very nervous about everything, especially given our last experience with pregnancy. However, we have had a few ultrasounds and some paranoia-generated heartbeat checks, but everything has always checked out just fine. Our last little check-up was last week, where baby Decker's heartbeat was 156 bpm, right on track.

As for me, this pregnancy has been (physically) a piece of cake. A little nausea, but I am holding a personal record for not yacking through the entire first trimester. I am still running and all of my energy has returned since moving into the second trimester. This has been my easiest pregnancy yet, but I guess after the last one, almost anything would seem easy.

I have been saying a daily prayer for Baby Decker, and I would like to humbly ask for additional prayers as well. I pray that this baby will be kept healthy and formed in the image that God has planned. (We would really like to have a little girl, but I haven't quite gotten the audacity to ask God for that one yet. I do, however, refer to the baby as "she" in my prayers. I am sure God is pretty good with hints.)

One another note, I have a few messages for some special people:

Congratulations Craig and Karen Bender on the birth of your third baby! Karen, we wish you a speedy recovery and hope that you enjoy these precious first moments.

Heather Sample & family: We are thinking of you as you approach your "one year." We will all remember Brian with fond memories and be thankful for the precious time that he had in your life. Heather, you are are a rock solid woman! You get my enduring respect for the graceful way you have dealt with your loss. Brian was one lucky man to have you walk beside him on the most difficult (and probably most rewarding) portion of his life. You gave him an opportunity to become a husband and a Dad and experience as much as possible out of the time he had left. My hats off to you and my prayers are with you as well, Heather.

Happy birthday Mom Barkley and Mom Decker! 35 never felt so gooood!

Looking Back and Moving Forward

On Friday we honored the first anniversary of Emma's death. I have been anticipating this event for several weeks now with a bittersweet mixture of resumed grief and a positive sense of moving forward. Tim and I took a few hours off from work on Friday to have lunch and make the drive to Herington to visit Emma's grave. We planted tulips next to her grave, since Tulips will always bloom each year around her birthday. Tulips were also the flowers that I chose to carry in her honor at her funeral and the flowers that all of the family members placed on her casket to be buried with her. Not a spring will go by from now on that I will not see tulips and think of Emma.

While Tim and I were at the grave, we took the time to go through my boxes of things we have collected to remember her. It has been a while since I have gone through these boxes, which is a mark of healing, I suppose. Going through these items was definitely sad for the two of us, but it was also an experience of healing. One year later I can go through the boxes without sobbing. I can look at the few Earthly reminders that we have of Emma and remember her with a sense of warmth. In the past few days and weeks, I have relived almost every experience that I had through Emma's birth and the days beyond. Now as I reflect on these experiences one year later, I certainly remember the heartbreak and the sadness, but what is significant is that I can look at these experiences with happy remembrance as well. All of the events that surrounded this chapter of tragedy in our lives have been somewhat revised in my memory with a much more positive spin. The positive, warm memories stand out in my mind due to the love of friends and family that surrounded Tim, Emma and I and lifted us up through our darkness.

As we look back, we remember Dr. Evans, the maternal fetal medicine specialist who walked us through every step from the initial bad news to our discharge from the hospital. He is one of only a handful of doctors in Kansas that has the training to deal with high risk pregnancies, so it is not surprising that his patient load is enormous. Still, he took three hours of his time to go through every option with us, look up research in personal library and help navigate us through the hardest decisions of our lives. Through it all, he treated us like we were his only patients, though I knew we were just one couple of many. When I was in the hospital, every one of his staff came up to the ward to visit me--from the ultrasound tech to his nurses. This small gesture really made an impression. We were one of many, but we were made to feel special and loved by a wonderful staff led by a truly remarkable doctor.

Shortly before Emma was born, Corey and Kelly Boernsen moved in to our house for a few weeks. This was a blessing in our lives at exactly the time that we needed it. I met Kelly for the first time and it seemed like we had known each other for our entire lives. Corey and Kelly (with the creative help of Ryan and Nancy Kules) orchestrated the melon smashing event that I will never forget. (Sometimes I just want to go do it again simply because it was fun and completely childish.) Standing in our driveway in the middle of the night with melons, an axe, a a hammer, a bag of tomatoes and our closest friends and family was a memory I will carry for a lifetime. Now, one year later, I recently had the opportunity to fill out a background check questionnaire for Kelly's new job. When it asked me how long I had known her, I had to catch myself and fill out the truth-only one year. It seemed a little hard to believe given the special place that she and Corey have in our lives.

LTC Sherri Franklin walked beside me every step of the way through the entire pregnancy with Emma. She went out of her way to take care of me in every conceivable way. She took care of my physical needs as a health care provider, and also served my emotional needs as a friend and mentor. She visited me an hour away in Topeka, after working a full day herself and still having a family in need of dinner. She called to check up on and helped me keep my head up when I needed that strength. On Emma's birthday this year, she remembered to call and even sent flowers. LTC Franklin is a woman who is truly filled with a lot of love. Her patients are lucky to have a provider with such love and compassion. It is her love that defines her as a person and also as a provider and sets her apart from everyone else. I owe a lot to this very special person.

Chaplain Diana Crane also walked with me through this entire experience. She has been a chaplain and a friend to me in the two years that we have known each other. She's often overbooked in her service to the Lord, but she found the time to help me co-found a pregnancy and infant loss support group for our hospital. Working with this group has helped me find some positive meaning to our tragedy and assist others who have walked a sad mile in my shoes. Diana took care of all of the funeral arrangements and officiated the ceremony. Her words brought comfort to us, not just because they were spoken from someone so dear to us, but because she has a special way of putting together just the right sentiment for each moment.

Tim and I also felt surrounded by the love of our family. We had so many family in the house for Emma's funeral that we had to arrange a sleeping chart to account for all of the floor space and bed space in our house. Our family cooked for us and helped with all of the details of daily living that we didn't have the energy to fulfill around the time of the funeral.

Our list can go on and on. We were surrounded by love by so many friends and family who called, sent flowers and cards and attended the funeral. We anticipated a small memorial with pretty much just family, but were greeted by a church full of people on the day of Emma's funeral. None of these people knew Emma, so we can only judge their presence have been a sign of love and support for our family. We felt incredibly blessed.

For some reason I have had a lot of church hymns in my head lately. When I reflect on this experience, I can't help but sing to myself the old tune "Love Lifted Me."

"When nothing else could help...love lifted me." This song reminds me of the love that surrounded us through our experience and lifted us up in our sadness. This love was powerful enough to completely reshape our entire memory of these events, thus allowing us to remember more of the acts of love, kindness and friendship than the moments of grief and sadness. To all of our friends and family, we thank you for that.

. Tulips outside our house bloomed on Emma's birthday

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! Today has been a really fun holiday for our family. We started the day by sleeping in (Timmy crawled in bed with us around 0700 and graced us with an extra hour of sleep). When we woke up, Timmy was excited to find that the Easter bunny had visited the house! He gathered eggs all the way to his Easter basket, which consisted of cars, eggs and candy. He was thrilled! Tim blessed us with his pancake-oriented culinary skills and then we were off to church. For Easter, Timmy wore a summer pin-striped suit with a peach tie. He impressed all the little ladies in his nursery class!

"I don't want to go to church!"

Getting through the Easter sermon was a little bit of an unexpected challenge for me this morning. Despite the festive mood that we created with our morning Easter egg hunt, I couldn't help but look back at Easter last year. I imagine that Easter will always remind me of Emma Grace. Last year we tried to push back the tears and celebrate Easter, despite being in the middle of planning a funeral for Emma. Sitting in church reminded me a lot of last Easter. I am pretty sure I am the only nerd in church that got misty-eyed during the second verse of "Because He Lives." The verse references the fact that holding a newborn baby is one of the greatest joys in the human experience, but implies that the joy is nothing compared to entering Heaven. I like to think that the joy that Tim and I sacrificed in holding Emma was traded for the joy that she experienced upon entering Heaven. Hence, the tears.

We got through the sermon and then got a great Easter Brunch at the conference center on Fort Riley. This was a special treat because Timmy got to play outside for a while after lunch. He jumped in a bouncy house and greeted some friends at the Easter egg hunt. (Well, he more or less sat in the bouncy house and let all the other kids bounce him, and we missed the Easter egg hunt in favor of an afternoon nap). We came home, napped and did another Easter egg hunt in front of the house. What a fun day!