Experiencing a New Normal

I love to read other people's blogs.  Sometimes I get neat ideas from them or at other times it's just fun to hear what is going on in that particular family.  I few months after TJ passed away I received an email from a friend of the family's to check out a certain blog.  This particular family had just lost their 15 year old son to pancreatic cancer.  I decided to go back to their caringbridge page to read more about their journey.  There were some similarities and some major differences, however, we have both experienced the loss of our sons WAY too early.  I love to read her blog because I can totally relate with her.  I almost feel as if everything she shares are my feelings as well.  She shared something on her blog the other day (something someone else had shared with her) and I hope you all don't take this the wrong way, (I'm sorry in advance) but  Our transition is still a grieving one. They are SPOT ON!...

As I promised - more pictures of our time at Hollywood Studios!         The boys with Buzz & Woody!                 Just part of the light display - it was incredible!     I'd love to show you all the pictures but that will just take too long to download them all.  The next day we awoke even earlier than the previous two days to head out to Magic Kingdom.  Unfortunately we awoke to rain and cool temps.  We arrived in time to see the train pull in with a bunch of Disney characters welcoming everyone!  That was neat (something I didn't know they did).  We headed off to go explore the park.  I have to admit the rain helped a bit with the crowd.  I'm not exactly sure how many rides we rode where there was NO line!!  However, we were wet, cold and had bad attitudes.  I had mentioned to Jon - let's just go back to the condo and come ba...

So, day 2 of our time in Orlando didn't turn out the way we had planned.  We had another sick kiddo.  This time it was Anthony.  We were hoping that it wouldn't last long, but unfortunately it lasted all day.  Everytime he ate/drank anything (even one bite) it came back up again.  We had planned on doing an alligator airboat ride and take the kids to the ocean.  Instead Jon took the younger boys to the pool while I did laundry.  We also spent part of the afternoon/evening playing monopoly.  We knew we couldn't push him because we really needed everyone to be well because the next three days were jam packed! Thankfully on day 3 Anthony felt better, so we headed off to Sea World! Jon and I had taken TJ to Sea World in San Antonio when he was 2, so we knew what to expect - the other boys had never been before.  The weather was perfect!  We really enjoyed the shows and the animals.  It was hard to take picture...

Our first day in Florida we slept in.  We were all very tired from the late night/early morning.  We decided to head out to Daytona.  Originally when we were to go last February we had purchased tickets to the Gatorade Duels along with Sprint fan zone passes.  So since there is no racing going on (I should say NASCAR) we decided to show the boys the track and to take a tour.  Now they keep talking about coming back for a race!  The tour we went on included several different stops.  We drove down pit road.  We stopped at the start/finish line and walked on the track - there is only an 18 degree banking there.  We drove around the whole track - checking out that 30 degree banking - that is scary.  It's hard to believe that there are 43 cars, sometimes 3 wide going over 200mph on that kind of banking - it's amazing.  We also got to see Nationwide & Sprint Cup car garages, where the drivers have their meeting, vi...

I was going to post one day at time of our vacation, but then realized that day two was mostly a travel day.  Not too exciting to post one day about that!  We spent a day at the Georgia Aquarium - very cool place!  If you have never been - I highly recommend it.  They had some pretty neat exhibits, a dolphin show and a 4-D movie!  Here are some pictures of our time spent there: The boys are part of the river exhibit!   Wearing our 3-D glasses waiting for our turn to watch the movie!     One of the huge exhibits with very large fish!              They had one of those underwater tunnels with the walking sidewalk.     While we were in Atlanta we spent some time at Coca-Cola.  This was a pretty fun place as well and it was right next door to the Georgia Aquarium.  You enter together as a group into a room with a bunch of Coca-Cola memorabi...

We decided this year that we were going to give the boys a vacation as their Christmas gift.  We also decided to take it during Christmas break.  I know....not the best time to go, however, I didn't want to spend break at home.  I knew that this Christmas was going to be difficult and thought it would be better to get away and spend time together as a family.  Besides, when else can you take a 12 day vacation and the kids only miss 2 days of school!!  You see we were originally going to take this vacation in February 2012, but TJ got sick and the vacation was cancelled.  We chose to go with the same vacation - just change a few things.  We spent three days in Atlanta, GA and the rest of our time in Orlando, FL.  We had a great time!  I will admit there were times when I fought back the tears and TJ's presence was definately missed, but it was nice to be together without other distractions.  We had originally thought about leaving Decem...

  Here is a picture of TJ's tree that we all decorated at Christmas on the Ferguson side. 

Since the last time I wrote on Caringbridge was in November, I thought I would rewind a little.  I will have more than one post to let you know about the rest of our 2012 - as we did quite a bit in December.  The month of December was a hard one.  We had the boys school program, church Christmas program and Christmas all without TJ this year.  I was anticipating these being difficult, but never realized how hard they would be until we actually went through it.  The first of these was the church Christmas program.  For those of you who didn't know TJ well - he LOVED to sing and entertain.  He always shined when it came to any kind of program.  Let me tell you his brothers would have made him proud.  All three of them sang their little hearts out!  I was so proud of all of them for the way they shined this year in the program.  I sat in my pew and smiled at the boys while tears ran down my face.  It was hard not to envision TJ ...

Welcome to our blog!  This has been more work than I thought it was going to be and I still have more work to do.  I think I'll just keep working on it a little bit at a time until I get it the way I want - SO it might look different every time you check it out.  Who knows!  I thought I'd create a blog for you to keep up with us instead of checking on caringbridge everytime.  I don't know how often I will update.  Just know that I will be sharing our life with you as it is without TJ.  Some topics might be just the everyday things our family is experiencing - school, holidays, vacations, etc.  And at other times I might be sharing my heart.  Follow along if you wish to know how we are doing, what we are doing and ways you can pray for our family.  See you soon!