Grace in Small Things, April 18, 2014

Apr 18

Written By Kristen

Hi Everyone! Happy Friday!

Some things I'm grateful for today:

1) Easter is going to be so fun, although there is WAY too much chocolate coming. :) My husband and I have had fun collecting little things for Easter baskets, and the kids and I are going to dye eggs this morning, and there's something that happens in New Mexico called confetti eggs which are real eggs hollowed out and filled with confetti...the kids are going to love it! Plus we're going to do a really nice dinner at the dining room table...looking forward to making the holiday special...

2) My daughter running around the house yesterday with a stuffed bunny as big as her called "Tiny"...cutest thing ever.

3) I put our nice warm down comforter back on our bed last night...we were a little too anxious for spring I think switching it out for a light quilt a few weeks ago...nice to be toasty warm again.

4) Luke's been waking up with bad dreams (usually some sort of animal in his bed, there's been a peacock, a donkey, a dog), but he snuggles into my shoulder while I rock him for a few minutes and then he goes right back down...

5) Didn't realize I had these pictures of Dexter on my phone...I took him on a hike, one of our favorite spots, right before we put him down. It was weird at the end, he would get super distressed and have a massive nosebleed, and then whould be fine. The last nosebleed it was just clear he was hurting before it happened and I just couldn't see letting that happen again; the nosebleeds were happening about twice a day. It was hard to make the decision to let him go...he had late-stage cancer that we couldn't do anything about but I thought it would be obvious when the time came, that he would be obviously weak and sick, but instead it was this weird mix of everything is awful/everything seems fine. Anyway, I did the best I could with the decision...it was going to be hard no matter what. So after the last nosebleed he was fine and so I took him on one last beautiful, peaceful, amazing hike...and when we got back to the (remote national forest) parking lot a motorcycle zoomed by which I took as a sign because my brother Luke--to whom Dexter belonged--loved his motorcycle, actually was on it when he died, too. And then the spot in the last picture makes me so happy because to me that means Luke was with us. And now he's got his dog back and I'm grateful for that. So glad I have these pictures...