Lydia's Birthday

Lydia's second birthday would have been a week and two days ago. We decided this year to have a party. The hope of the party was to do two things. First, we wanted (as my friend Megan said) to put Lydia on everyone's front page. We wanted her thought of and her name spoken with thankfulness on the day she was born. We thought, how better to do that than by gathering all the people who loved her and who have loved us together?

The second thing was that we wanted to say thank you to the people who walked through her life with us and who have walked through the difficult time of her death and our grief. It was a beautiful night. It doesn't take away the pain of her not being here, but it made us feel so blessed and thankful for her life and for the people God has caused to surround and support us.

Here are some pictures.

After Lydia died, I found a quilt online that was made from a child's clothes. This child was still living and the quilt meant to be a keepsake for him as he grew older. When I saw it, I knew I wanted one out of Lydia's clothes. These aren't the very special things she wore, but they are things she wore often that we loved to see her in. My amazingly talented mother in law made it for us and it's perfect. It's on our couch, ready to snuggle up under on cold nights.

The amazing Megan came for the weekend (and brought her wonderful baby girl) and helped make decorations and provided all around emotional support.

These are the centerpieces she made. Branches and paper flower with beautiful tea lights. They were lovely and sweet and perfect.

I grabbed this old window out of the barn in Maine. I strung pictures of our girl and Micah hung it from the tree. I love how it turned out.

Sugar cookies were favors. I had an elaborate plan to decorate in detail, but when it came down to it, I just did an "L."

No picture could capture the loveliness of our backyard that night. Micah put a spotlight in the maple tree (which we are now calling "The Party Tree") and my brother-in-law Josiah hung lamps purchased from IKEA all through the tree. It was magical.

We gathered rocks from around the yard, grabbed some paint and brushes and put them out on the table. We asked our friends to paint them with whatever they wanted and we are planning to build a planter in the yard designated Lydia's Garden. We'll plant tulips and these rocks will be used to decorate.

Thank you to all of our dear friends for loving us and celebrating our girl, to our families for helping us prepare and execute this whole she-bang, to Megan for being around and helping with everything (despite freakish fever sickness) and Amber for taking photos!