This past year we laughed, we cried, we fell in love, we got hurt, we got sad, we got happy, but more importantly, we lived our lives. This coming year, let us look forward to a brighter world. Let us hope for peace, prosperity and security in our lives. And so, these things said, let us move forward. Every year is a new beginning for us. Make new memories in our lives, as we leave the old memories in our hearts.

       I've been thinking a lot especially with all of the stuff coming up. I was worried that we've been so busy the last 7 years, trying to bring home a baby that maybe we didn't do enough as a couple, just us. I've spent our entire marriage either pregnant or trying to get pregnant so we would stay home a lot. Thinking that I couldn't or shouldn't go out because I might be pregnant. 

 I worry about everything so I expected lots of emotions to be happening with the surgery getting closer. Sometimes I felt like we should have taken more time to enjoy just us. But, we knew I'd have problems just thought fertility would be the only issue, not losing children in the 2nd trimester. So we had to start early trying to have children. 

Then I looked back at this year and minus the grief (obviously that is always and will always be with us) this couldn't have been a better year leading into what hopefully is the best year of our lives.
We started out by seeing the Red Hot Chili peppers, going to Frankenmuth, tubing more than once, Wheatland, Crane Wives, Cirque show, lots of dinner dates, traveling to Indiana for Thanksgiving and I'm sure I'm missing some things now that I'm sitting down trying to remember them. 2012 was a really good year (again I stress, minus the grief especially Evelie's 1st birthday) 

I'm glad we did all those things. Glad it lead to this. Glad that the very first month of 2013 will be spent this way. I'm thankful for little things. Today I think I'm going to go through the girls' things. I want to touch them and smell their blankets. I miss them terribly and wish with all my heart that they were here and we knew nothing but happiness for the last 7 years. If I could fix it all, I would. Especially for my husband. I wish a different life for him. This month I'm hoping to bring happiness into our lives. A little ray of sunshine, and the rainbow after the storm. 

It's really hard to put into words the things I'm feeling leading up to surgery day. Today more than anything I wish I could kiss my daughters' and hold them. Breathe in their smell and touch their faces. A baby will bring us all the happiness in the world but I know it won't fix things. I know that each time I do something for our living child, I'll be wishing I was able to do it with the girls. It will make me cherish each thing I do get to experience with our future children. I hope that where ever my girls are they know I fought very hard for them. Today I want to feel everything. I want to take in the grief, the nervousness of surgery and the hope for the future. I want to feel it all and cherish every part of it. The good and the bad. The happiness and all the pain. The steps we've taken in life brought us here and I don't want to skip any part of it. I don't want to forget my girls, their pregnancies and their births. I don't want to forget all the happy times we had or even all the bad. This is my life and no matter how much I may hate parts of it, I have to own it. It's mine, no one else's. And sometimes I wish things didn't happen, but they did. I have a choice to let it take me down or to continue. I choose to continue. Hoping that somewhere in the future we get the things we've dreamed of and not a single day of it will go by without carrying my daughters in my heart. Every single moment they'll be with me, in every beat. I will carry them with me. 

Today I'm extremely emotional. I imagine it will get worse the closer we get. I enjoy my quiet moments where I get to think of the girls and I'm so ready for a noisy house. So ready to wake to a crying baby and stupid loud toys. I'm ready to stop being just us. Ready to be a family and so ready for all that comes with it. The stress, the sleepless nights, the worries and most of all the love and joy of watching a child grow up. Something I'll never take for granted. We were denied that privilege with the girls and I promise if we get the chance, I'll take in each moment and love it all. 

I can't believe we're going. I can't believe we get this opportunity. Can't believe I got the January date that I so badly wanted. Can't believe this is happening. Besides the grief, 2012 was pretty good to us. It feels like a great way to move into 2013 and this surgery is the best way to start the new year.

I'm off to go pull the girls' stuff out and allow myself this time alone with their items. Their prints, their photos and to touch their hand and feet molds. Those are my babies. You never know how you'll feel about children. you can imagine but you have no idea until you hold them. I will never forget their births and their little features. The way Emerson moved her fingers when they laid her on me and the softness of Evelie's skin when the nurses put her on my chest, skin to skin. I still remember their smell. Their tiny gums and sweet little fingers. And then feeling our entire world crashing as we had to watch them take their last breath.

 I realize now that we didn't waste time trying to get pregnant, never wasted a moment of our lives. I don't think we didn't get enough "us time". We did what we wanted to do, we wanted to have children and I'll never regret a moment of our lives. I'll never regret missing a party because I thought I was pregnant, never regret not drinking because there was a possibility. Those moments and all the things we chose not to do, brought me to my girls. I'll never regret spending the last 7 years trying to get pregnant, because nothing else that we would have filled our time with, is more important than what we did and what we will do.  I am at peace with myself, if only for this moment. I will always feel the pain, always but it's up to me how I deal with it. Someday I hope I get to sit my children down and tell them about their sisters and then tell them all we went through to get them here, safe. I wish for a future with more happy days ahead. I wish for nothing more than that moment where Derrick can watch his baby being born and he will be crying tears of happiness, instead of excruciating pain. And I hope that moment is captured in a photograph so I can hold onto it forever.