Zoe loves cameras and I think someone in the family was planning on getting her a children’s digital camera for Christmas. The next set was very fun to shoot because it all happened in a short period of time. The final shot is one of her bawling but it came out blurry because she moved too fast for the camera settings I had on, so I didn’t bother to upload it. Oh, it will definitely be given to her parents so they can show it at her 16th birthday party! hehe! Hey Dad, can I borrow your camera? Sure kid, lemme show you how to use it! YAY! I’m so…

A story by Zoe: One day I was at a park with Mommy, Daddy, Aunt T and Uncle Twis. We had all sorts of fun and I was minding my business drinking out of my sippy cup and apparently I left my belly hanging out. Then my Mommy told me to stop looking like a redneck and put my shirt down! She ruins all the fun! My belly needed a tan, doesn’t she know that?

Over the holiday weekend Chris and I went down to Dinosaur Valley State Park with my brother, SIL and Zoe. Before we went there was a cake contest launched. We brought the cakes out and it was hilarious how similar they were despite having been made in completely separate houses. The cake part for both ended up being some version of chocolate. There was supposed to be a rule of not using non-edible parts, but the person who made the green dino ended up using a toothpick in each leg of the dinosaur. We had so much cake we had to share with our neighbors! The orange cake used buttercream…

While waiting for our connecting flight in Baltimore yesterday I opened my laptop to find unprocessed photos from before we left for the AT. I found all sorts of Zoe photos and so I decided to process some of them and here they are! She is so much bigger now and you can see little parts of her now, but she’s more kid than baby now! This one was kinda out of focus so I ‘rescued’ it by turning it b&w. It was too cute to let it fade away. Mmm, bubbles! This smile is still there. Oh, you should have seen her this morning when she got to see…

The last few days have been difficult and hard on everyone. Today it seemed as if finally some of the strain may have lifted a bit as the funeral for Ashleigh was today. She had many, many people in attendance, so many for her 104 days here on Earth. When I think back at the last time I saw her back in March and then at all the photos I’ve seen of her since then, it is still very hard to imagine that she is gone. Looking at her eyes in the photos, and in the videos with her moving about—-it’s tough. We saw her yesterday in her pink gingham…

After writing that Ashleigh was doing so good, I am heartbroken to write that she has passed away. I don’t know if it was fate, luck or divine intervention, but we were hiking yesterday morning on a ridge and Chris has left his phone on by accident after calling his mom that morning and the phone rang. The phone doesn’t just ring out there for us. People know we are hiking. I knew something was up. It was my mom calling with the news. Once we realized we had a road in 7 miles and didn’t have to back track we kept on going while trying to make arrangements to…