six years in the making

 Today is Maggie's 6th Birthday!!  She had dance pictures taken on Monday, picked out her new bike that night and was a riding machine on Tuesday!  

And today...she is six!

The most unintentional of breaks

I made the decision a few weeks ago to document a little more of our daily lives and it has been harder to find the time than I could have imagined.

We were looking forward to having last week as a "Spring Break" and taking a trip with Big Daddy. He was scheduled to be in Pennsylvania and have time off, so we were planning to take the girls to New York City (one of Maggie's dreams) and to the Pennsylvania Amish country and a few other sites. Big Daddy's mom was hospitalized on Wednesday, April 4 and he came home the next evening. We visited her in the hospital and I discussed her condition with her nurse and we knew that the situation was not good. After several bad days and a couple of good ones too, she passed away last Tuesday. Thankfully, we were all able to visit the night before and Big Daddy and I , his brother and father were all able to be with her when she passed away.

Maggie understands and is doing very well. She has never been around Big Daddy's parents on a daily basis, so I think the loss doesn't seem as real. Ellie knows that Grandma is gone, but of course doesn't quite understand. When I told her that we were going to see Grandpa last Wednesday, she said "and Grandma will be there too". I reminded her that Grandma was sick and in the hospital and that she had died. Maggie took it upon herself to explain everything to Ellie, which helped quite a bit. Ellie casually mentioned that Grandma was in heaven yesterday.