Disney!

Disney was magical.

Disney was beautiful.

Disney was emotional.  Very emotional.  I found myself crying every day at unexpected times.  I mean, sure I always cry in the shower when I am thinking about the girls.  That's a given.  But who cries during the parade on Main Street, USA?  This moi.

Patrick wrote a post on facebook that we were taking the trip to honor our girls and I wrote this comment to explain:

It may seem funny to say that we're taking a trip in their honor, but we got a small sum of life insurance upon Brigid's death and decided to do something special for our family with it instead of just paying bills or buying a headstone for them. We're so grateful to be here, but constantly reminded of the great cost to our family. I see princesses and wish my girls could be here with me...and then remember that if they were here, we wouldn't be in Disney right now. It's this brutal fluctuation between great joy and great sorrow that happens all day long. Very difficult to process.

So while it was incredibly warm and fun and fantastic, we both found ourselves so overcome with emotions that it was also rather draining.

And you may be thinking right now, Come on, Eileen, you're complaining about a trip to Disney World?

I'm not.  It was fantastic.  I think the next time we go (!) it won't be like that.  It was just the juxtaposition of the extreme joy that comes from watching three of your children see the castle and the mouse and the awesomeness of it for the first time and the extreme sorrow that comes from knowing that you're only able to afford letting them do that right now because two of your children are dead.

I know, right? Whoa.

But the weather was so warm and the pools were heated in our beautiful hotel and we got to meet just about every single character there was to meet and fill up our autograph book and that. Was. Awesome!

This little photo album has some of the best pictures from the trip and even a few videos.  You can hover over each one to enlarge it and just click on the play button for the videos.  It may take a second or two for all the photos from each page to load at first, but if you give it a little time, they'll all be there.  My favorites are the photo of PJ and his shadow, which is very old-school Mickey Mouse Club-esque, Jack with his Mickey ears on, and the video of Tommy and Stitch. 

Enjoy!

This photo album customized with Smilebox

Visiting our cousins

We spent a lovely week in New Hampshire visiting with family and friends between Christmas and New Year's Day. The boys love spending time with their Greenland cousins, who are each about five or six months older than each of our boys.  Everyone gets along so well, and it's fun to see the similarities between the cousins.  They also got to spend time with a new Chester cousin, Sean, this blue-eyed heartbreaker right here:

 Can you stand it?   The boys loved smothering him, baby lovers that they are.

PJ and Sophie are both middle children and always manage to find each other when they're spending time together.  I happen to think they also look a lot alike.

Spaghetti dinner with the whole crew!

Easing into the morning (sort of) with lots of cuddles on the sofabed.

My then soon-to-be two year old was looking awfully grown up to me when we visited the children's museum.

Entertaining...no one in particular.

Watching the snow fall with cousin Lucy and Auntie Katie.

Cutthroat checkers.

There was something for everyone, and a good time was had by all.

We're looking forward to going back again soon!

The Beginning of the End

Oh my.  So many things have happened since the last post.  I'm going to try to get updated this week, especially for those folks who live far away (hi, Su!).  Now, here it is the first month of 2012 - the end of that month, actually - and I already feel like this is going to be a year of new beginnings for myself.  I feel a renewed desire to get organized, get in shape, and to get myself in a better frame of mind.  Not that I'm putting pressure on myself to get over my grief.  That will happen when it happens.  But I just feel ready to make some changes for the better.  The ironic thing is, that if the Mayans are right, I might as well just let the house go to hell in a hand basket and eat all the cheesecake I can get my hands on.  Fingers crossed that by this time next year, I'll be around to have made good on some of my resolutions.

The best way to follow the last post, in which I was giddy with excitement about telling the boys that we were going to Disney World, is with this video clip we took Christmas morning when we actually told them.  They have been asking about Disney for about a year now, ever since they learned that the castle from the beginning of their favorite Disney movies is a real place.  And you can go to it.  And Lightning McQueen and Buzz and Woody are there.  Bigger-than-life-sized.  And you can meet them.

You know the videos you see on television when the parents are telling their kids and they're practically crying from the excitement?

This one leaves those in the dust.  In fact, I can pretty much guarantee that you've never seen a "We're going to Disney World" video like this one.

So go pop yourself some popcorn, grab a cold beverage and come back and hit play.

Go ahead.  I'll wait.

Because I'm sure you're going to want to watch this more than once.  It's just that unbelievable.