Today is an important date

Today is an important date for several reasons:

First of all, today Hailey would have turned 6 months old.

Secondly, today is the deadline for donations to Hailey's Hope for our first set of gift bags.

And third, today is the official launch date of my new blog!




So as you can see I have a lot to write about, but I will do my best to keep it as short as possible...

Six months ago today, almost to the hour, Hailey Marie bravely entered the world. I think I will always view her life as bittersweet. There will always be so much joy and so much sorrow intertwined together. But most of all, I will always think of her as my brave, beautiful little girl, who blessed my life for 36 days. I will always celebrate her and the time we shared together. I will always hold on to the hope I have that I will one day see her again in Heaven. Six months is a significant marker in time for many babies, and my husband and I sit and wonder as we spend her birthday without her, what she would have looked like at 6 months old, what she would have accomplished by now, and how she would have interacted with her big brother and puppy, Opie. For now we will never know, but our hope is that one day we will know, and we will have an eternity to spend with her getting to know her. Today God has filled me with joy as I reflect on her and the moments we shared. He has filled my heart that is broken over her not being here with peace. Today I lit Hailey's candle in celebration and remembrance of her. The candle that reads one of my favorite verses: "May the God of Hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him."

I will also add that over the weekend I was missing her deeply, and my heart was grasping for her knowing she isn't here. I decided it was time to watch some videos of Hailey, which I haven't done in months because I was afraid they might make me sad and make the grief worse. But this weekend I watched her. I sat in my glider with my laptop on my lap, and I rocked and watched videos of her. Videos that I forgot existed, and the surprises were a blessing. The live action of watching her was something my grasping heart could cling onto, and seeing her comforted my heart.

Another reason today was not a difficult day was because I spent it doing something that will bless other babies and parents like myself. Today was the final day of collecting donations for Hailey's Hope, and I used the donation money to begin purchasing the items that are still needed to fill 20 gift bags. The generosity of others brings warmth to my heart and helps fill in those painful wounds of losing Hailey because I know that this is something good that has come from her life. Her memory is living on and helping others in the process. What joy there is in that! I am also so happy that we will be able to fill more than our goal of 20 gift bags, and, therefore, bless more than 20 babies and their families. I do not know how many I will be able to fill yet, but I will keep everyone updated as I go.

And lastly, welcome to our new website! I hope you will find this site much more pleasing to the eye than the location of my last blog, and hopefully it will be better all around! Thank you to Splendid Sparrow for designing it for me! I am still looking to work out some kinks with the sidebar widgets, and I will be editing the pages. So this is it about 90% done! I was going to wait to launch it until it was 100% perfect, but I had to post on this new location today because today is just such a special day! So keep an eye out for changes in the future - it's only going to get better from here! And please note the URL change - I will not be blogging at thevlips.wordpress.com anymore as of today. You can still find all of my old posts and everything here on this site - everything has been transferred over. Sometime soon I will hook up this blog with Networked Blogs so my posts publish directly to Facebook.