Month: March 2016

The Month of March

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Nate and Aria on one of many egg hunts 🙂

One of Nate’s favorite time of the year is Spring. He loves flowers and being outside but I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that a major part of it is the Easter bunny and stuffing eggs with special treats. At one point it didn’t matter what was inside the egg, as long as it was a surprise (and by surprise I mean, just about anything!)  

Easter Eggs by Nathan: Elea Emme Nathan

This year he colored his eggs with Grosi and made sure both his sisters got an egg (his is the yellow). I love the colors and all the joy that comes with Easter, especially when you have the little ones running around, which is why I have also had a hard time with Easter the past couple years. Emme was expected to arrive right before Easter and I had imagined such a wonderful time with Nathan opening his basket and our little babe in her bassinet, but it all turned out completely different than I had expected. As Easter approached this year, it felt a little better. Elea, full of joy, crawled everywhere and ate everything. Nathan helped her find her basket and fed her ‘baby treats’ because she couldn’t have big boy treats. The house seemed full of joy with love bursting from the seams. And it was, all while Emme was prime on my mind.

Elea eating her basket (literally!)
Earlier this month Eric and I had the honor of attending the Women of the Year Award in downtown Los Angeles, where a group of amazing women were being awarded for different accomplishments in their lives that had had an impact not only in their lives but in those of thousands of others. They ranged from women’s  rights to helping children find homes with loving families. These women made it a priority to ensure they made a difference for someone, and they all did, in amazing ways. While in attendance, I couldn’t help but think about the difference I want to make and the difference I want my children to make in others. The job that I now have as a parent to instill kindness, love, mercy and so many other great characteristics. In a world where we see so much hate and heartbreak, if we can simply show a little more love and kindness, perhaps it can change one persons life. And that’s enough. Even if we can’t do anything else than smile and love, that in itself can change the world. 
Nathan’s joy as he gobbles down strawberries from his garden
Emme taught me to love deeper than I was ever able to. I loved her deeply with every part of my being for the eight days I was blessed to have her. I loved her deeply the 9 months I was able to carry her in my womb, and nourish her while she rolled and kicked. And as her 2 year birthday rolls around next month and I find my arms aching, I embrace Nathan and Elea a little harder, and thank her for the wonderful life lessons she left us with. She made me a better person. All around. So as April comes around this week, you will be bombarded with Emme on my Instagram and will probably read a lot of self reflection posts.

Emme’s Garden

To making a difference.

To Become

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Be an encourager. Be a teacher. Be a learner. Be transparent. Be human. 


There seems to be an overarching theme in my life right now. A couple weeks ago I saw a dear friend of mine. She spoke to me about the difficulty of meeting people for who they really are and how sometimes we are made to feel inadequate (by our toughest critic- ourselves). As human beings, we have a tendency of comparing ourselves to others and or have an insatiable want of things (whatever that thing may be to you).

Elea’s “thing”: food
In my experience, it never is about the someone else or the thing, it is almost always about me. It is about dealing with the cause of my emotion, but often times we try to blanket our emotions with a temporary fix. Embracing the array of emotions that we can feel is wonderful. Being sad or angry isn’t wonderful but allowing yourself to feel that and then dealing with it, is more revolutionary than you may think. 

Emotions by Nathan 

We are not always going to be joyous. 

We are not always going to be sad. 
We are not always going to be angry. 
We are not always going to be jealous.
We are not always going to…I can go on forever.

My point is, embrace the feeling and then find its source. 

Nathan introducing Charlie (the victim) to his classmates 

As February comes to a close, I have felt myself unraveling quite a bit. I have been less patient. I have been easy to anger. I have cried myself to sleep more often. And I’ve been blaming everyone (especially Z) for just about everything. Today I hit rock bottom. I blamed Charlie ( Natey’s turtle) for our tardiness to school, the water spillage in my car and (this one is the best!) my parking ticket. Because it only makes sense that I didn’t look at the street post because we were already late, because I had to bring Charlie to Natey’s pet week. 

Long sigh.

Right.

Poor Charlie.

Emme Sophia Zurbrugg
I can tell you about my long weekend alone with the kids (Z was out of town), how a lot went wrong and how I broke down in the garage only to have my toddler tell me it was going to be ok and walk me through counting to ten while we took deep breathes. And I could tell you about the rest of my day today, after the ticket. But I am going to spare you my sobbing story and save the good laughs for another post. However, I will say that after a series of events I found the culprit. I found my cause. And I am ready to embrace my healing heart. You see, Emme’s birthday is around the corner and lately, my heart has been aching a little deeper. Fear of falling apart has prevented me from going there. But not dealing with my healing heart has me falling apart in a messier kind of way.

There are things I have learned in my journey, life after loss. There are things I can shed light on. There are many areas where I need growth. I am a student, still. Always will be. I want to learn to be better. I want to encourage others by my actions, not by what I say I do. I want to love deeper. I want to be honest so that if you feel the way I do (at any point in life), you know it’s normal. We are human. 

Natey experiencing love

We can only experience growth, joy, love, success and whatever else you want to experience by trying. Every day, we can try to be better. We can try to be transparent to others, so they too will be encouraged. We can love. The world can always use a little more love.

Be an encourager. Be a teacher. Be a learner. Be transparent. Be human. 

LOVE