MEND Walk to Remember

On Friday, at my Dr. appointment, he said I could go off of strict bed rest since I had made it to 34 weeks and everything seems to be going OK!  I was  so excited!  I did miss having a countdown to the day anticipation that I had been looking forward to as it was a surprise to me!  I had all these visions of things I would be able to do now before Baby gets here!  When I got home and checked Face book, I saw that the MEND Walk to Remember was on Saturday!  I had been so sad to miss this and now I had permission to go!  Since it was on the other side of town and I knew it would be a long day, I needed to take it easy until then and that meant no celebration dinner that night.  But it was worth it!

They have ornaments made for each child (I have another for the triplet, but it was left in Jon's car, and he is not here) and you put them on a tree as they call out their names.  The boys have their own Christmas tree with all of these ornaments on it. 

Then each person got a balloon in the color representing their baby that is in heaven and you can write a message on it for them.  I wrote "we love you to Michael and Jake and then Allie wanted to write her message on her balloons.

 She was very focused and put her name on it because as she said "she wanted them to know it was from her!"  She was being super sweet that day and it was really good to be out and about with her!

 She wrote her name backwards- which is a first!!

 There is a silent remembrance walk to release the balloons together.

 This year, it was VERY short which was good for me because I was worn out!  The ceremony was held outside (covered) and it was still quite warm so I had to go inside for a lot of it.

 As you can see, we didn't even walk the whole way!

 It's a beautiful site, but also very sad when you realize that each balloon is a life that was cut too short and represents so much pain for so many families.

My favorite pictures from the last 3 years have been these- Allie on Jon's shoulders releasing the balloons.

On the way home, Allie said to me "Mommy I am sorry that Michael and Jake were born too little!"  

Oh my sweet little girl...

She was brave this year and went up front to sing "Jesus Loves the Little Children" with the other kids and see sang it for us on the way home  to make sure that we heard it!  It's really funny!  I was really worn out by the end of the say and learned that  just because I could be off bed rest, didn't mean I should be off of it!  Too many contractions for my liking!