Photo Framed

Harri is a very happy boy tonight, going to sleep snuggling under our beautiful quilt made out of Aaron's t-shirts, with his favourite photo of Aaron and me in a frame next to his side of the bed. I didn't realise until I went to take a photo of him in bed with it, that Aaron is wearing the t-shirt that is on the quilt.

iPod memories

Every morning as we drive to school Harri listens to the songs that we used at Aaron's funeral, as he scrolls through family photos.  Just after Aaron died he would do it on the way to school, and would be crying the whole time.  By the time he got to school he was a wreck. 

Instead now he just loves looking at the photos and talks about different things that he remembers. 

This morning he kept looking at this photo of Aaron and me, which was taken in July last year as we were about to head off to watch the Hawks V Lions.  He then made it his wallpaper on his iPod and told me it was his favourite photo and he wanted me to put it in a frame, so he could put it on the table on his side of the bed (he is still sleeping in my bed).

The funniest thing was that he told me that Aaron's cheeks looked like Noah's as they were chubby in that photo 'because of the scarf'.  I laughed and told Harri that it wasn't the scarf - it was just that Dad and I were both happily chubby at the time :)

Un-Australian

There is so much on my mind at the moment - things I have to sort out like insurance, superannuation, bank stuff, getting the house finished off etc.  Lots of things I have no control over as I'm waiting on other people, but there are lots of things on my mind that I can do on my own.

Just we sorted out Noah's things quickly after he passed away, I have just felt like I've wanted to go through Aaron's things and get them sorted out.  It's not that I wanted to get rid of anything, but it's just hard to have things around the bedroom as 'normal' when things are anything but normal. I guess that I feel like I can't deal  in my mind with what's happened, until things are physically sorted out.

I have been sorting through his things slowly, and today I tackled his drawers which were next to his bed.  One of the drawers were stacked full of memorabilia that he had kept hold of - beautiful cards from students, photos that students had given him, newspaper clippings and letters from his school principal praising him for the great work he had been doing.

As I was pulling each thing out it would either make me smile, or cry as I read the beautiful things the students had written to him, or see a photo of him doing something crazy at school.  

At the end of last year he was asked to be the 'Communications Officer' for the Tassie Hawks Supporter Group, which he was really excited about.  He had gone to his first meeting and came home excited for the year and to help out in a more official role with working with Hawthorn. I found his diary in the drawer and it opened straight up to this page as he had his pen in it. 

Unfortunately he didn't make it to his second meeting :( 

I actually laughed out loud though when I pulled this out.  It was an 'award' that he got one year from the staff at school.  It was exactly what we were calling Aaron the day that he died.  He and Chrish were going on all day about being 'Un-Australian' especially on Australia Day.

 

It was nice to have a laugh in between a few tears, as I went through his things.  

Rio al Mar

Last weekend the boys and I went away to our friends beautiful holiday home.  After Noah passed away we got to know Chris and Erin as they bought 'Nan's van' so the could easily transport their gorgeous son Jack, who uses a wheelchair. 

Before Aaron passed away they told us about their home they rent out as a holiday home at Dolphin Sands (near Swansea) which is called 'Rio al Mar (meaning River to Sea).  They told us to check it out on the internet and said we were welcome to use it if we would like.  As soon as we saw it we were blown away as to  how beautiful it looked and looked forward to taking the boys there.  We booked a couple of nights for last weekend but unfortunately things are of course a lot different to how we hoped. I decided it would be nice to still go away with the boys anyway and the owners Chris and Erin said that I was welcome to take my extended family with me if I wanted.

Nicki and Alex were hoping to come but unfortunately Linc was sick, so instead it was just us, Mum, Jared and Becky and their kids and Eden and Steph and their kids.

I picked up the boys from school early on Friday, after I finished work and we headed down with Mum.  We were so excited when we arrived and saw how beautiful the house and views were.  You can see the river and beach from the lounge, kitchen, bathroom and main bedroom (which the boys and I claimed).

The day bed in the lounge room was definely a favourite spot for lots of people.  Mum pretty much spent half of her time enjoying the sun, reading and resting.

The rumpus room was fantastic with four bunk  beds as well as an eight ball table and foosball table which kept us all occupied all weekend.

When we arrived it was quite cold and windy, but it didn't stop us from walking down to the beach to collect some shells.

The river was just too tempting and the water wasn't actually that cold, so the boys decided to roll up their pants or just wear their undies and had some fun trying to jump across from one back to the other.

Everyone else finally arrived and we all settled in for the night. Kobe was so excited that his cousins were coming and kept saying 'why my cousins having a sleepover!!!?'.

The next morning we all rugged up as it was so windy and cold and the girls and kids headed off to the beach with the kids, while Eden, Jared, Jay and Mum went out in Eden's boat fishing.

The boat came past us on the beach and gave us a big wave.

The kids had a great time collecting hundreds of shells. It made me laugh as both Becky and Steph's kids live near the beach, but were still so excited about getting some shells to take home.

Hugh fell asleep and braved the cold wind and slept on the beach all morning.

After some time back at the house we all headed back down to the beach together.

 The boys loved having a kick of the footy with their uncles and playing cricket.

 The next morning it was Steph, Jay, Hugh and my turn to go out on the boat with Eden. Jay and I decided we were going to keep up Aaron's tradition of keeping a family tally of who was catching the most fish. So Kings V Triffitts was on!

Jay was reeling them in and caught way more than the rest of us. I kept saying it must be his rod and spot on the boat, which Eden said was a typical Aaron comment :)

Steph quickly though caught the two biggest fish of the day. In the end it was Kings 14, Triffitts 3 but I won't mention that most of them were undersized and had to be thrown back or that Eden was busy untangling our lines most of the time.

 

We sailed past the house to see if the kids and Grandma were on the beach, but we missed them. 

 Hugh was a champ on the boat and absolutely loved it.

As lovely as the weekend was it was so nice to get home. I really missed Aaron a lot and it was hard being down the East Coast, even though it was a place we hadn't been together before as it brought back so many memories of our last summer together.   I also felt sick the whole weekend, which didn't help. I was so happy to get home as it's where I feel safe and the closest to Aaron and Noah right now.  Jay was also happy to get home as he found it hard being away from home, even though he also had fun.  

We were so grateful though to have such a lovely place to go to for a weekend away. Thanks Chris and Erin for sharing your beautiful holiday home with us.  We look forward to going there again sometime.

Tuesday night fun

We decided to kill some time tonight while waiting for Jay for an hour, by going to Kmart and then headed to the car wash for a bit of fun.

The boys cracked me up as they always want me to go through the one that you 'do yourself' (rather than the scary one that makes Kobe cry!), just so they can hang around the back and stand in the spray coming off the hose.

I couldn't resist pulling my phone out to take a photo, when I saw the smiles on their faces. It was so nice to see them looking so happy.

2 Months

It's amazing how fast the last two months have gone. Before now the longest that Aaron and I had spent apart was two nights.  It's hard to believe that it's now been two months since he was here.

We went away for the weekend to a beautiful spot with some of my extended family, but unfortunately I was sick most of the weekend and felt pretty crappy the whole time.  I woke up this morning and still felt sick, but thought I'd be okay to go to work. I felt pretty yuck all day and was glad when it was time to leave, and had a lovely surprise when I walked out to my car after work and there was Simone, Jonty and Flynn. 

I was shocked to see them, but then in a lot of ways I wasn't either.  I feel bad now that I didn't make more of a fuss that she was there, but I was just feeling so horrible from being sick that I probably didn't seem that enthusiastic.  Sorry Simone!

She was there with tea for me as she knew I was feeling sick, and flowers which were wrapped in a bow of brown and gold (for Hawthorn of course), because she knew that it today was two months since Aaron had passed away, and that it would be on my mind all day. 

I have many amazing friends, but Simone is one who just seems to know what to say, do and be.  She knows when to give you space, and when to be there, and it was so nice to see her today. 

The boys didn't realise that it had been two months since Aaron had passed away until I picked them up from school and reminded them.  We decided after tea we would go to the cemetery to release some balloons together, and then get dessert at Maccas.

My brother Jared has been finishing off the final touches around the house and yard to get the house finally finished.  We were excited to see our clothesline had been screened off today (and we had a new gate!) and thought it would be fun to enjoy our new garden by eating tea outside tonight. 

We then headed up to the cemetery and had to park the car at the gates (as it was locked) and walked in to Aaron and Noah's graves.  On the way to the cemetery Kobe kept asking 'why do people go to the cemetery?'.  We reminded him that's where you go to visit the bodies of people who have died and he then said 'they go to hospital and then they die'.  I asked him why he thought that and he said 'Noah went to a 'different' hospital (Hobart) and then he died and then he goes to the cemetery'.  I told him that was right for Noah as he got sick but then we talked about how Daddy wasn't sick and didn't have to go to hospital, but had died when we were on our holiday.  He said 'that's right!' and then talked more about the 'different hospital' and how we stayed at Ronald McDonald House.   It's so hard to know what he really thinks about it all.

I felt very sad this morning when I woke up and knew what the date was, but as the day went on I felt okay (probably helped that I started to feel better as the day went on) about it.  Tonight was nice to go to the cemetery with the boys, rather than it feeling too sad.

Kobe was happy to run in the cemetery to start with.

But just before we got to Noah's and Aaron's graves he decided he'd walked enough and spat it.  He decided to just lay down on the grass and not move another inch.

I went back to tell him to hurry up or Jay would let all the balloons go without him and that made him get up pretty quick.

We went to Aaron's grave first and released a balloon each.

Jay made me laugh as we were walking in. He said 'I love you Mum. You've always been my second favourite parent'.  He knows he'll get a laugh out of me whenever he says that - cheeky boy!

We then headed over to Noah's grave and each released a balloon there too.

Kobe kept jumping over the top of his grave and would say 'me almost tripped on Noah!' and would laugh.

It was nice to finish off the day in a fun way with the boys.  It would've been easy to have stayed in bed all day today, but I'm glad that I was able to go to work and felt better as the day went on.  The days are getting harder and sadder as time goes on and things sink in more, but I'm glad that the boys keep me going, and even make me laugh on hard days like today.