{"id":489,"date":"2012-09-26T03:29:55","date_gmt":"2012-09-26T03:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kandynolesstevens.com\/?p=489"},"modified":"2012-09-26T03:29:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T03:29:55","slug":"4-days-to-go-a-place-where-fun-still-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/?p=489","title":{"rendered":"4 days to go: A place where fun still lives"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kandynolesstevens.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/09\/kids1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-493\" title=\"kids\" src=\"http:\/\/kandynolesstevens.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/09\/kids1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"497\" height=\"318\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/kids1.jpg 1069w, http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/kids1-300x192.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/kids1-1024x656.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/kids1-624x399.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 497px) 100vw, 497px\" \/><\/a>Early in the first days of grief, I made\u00a02 choices.\u00a0 Tough, gut-wrenching, deliberate, and much-needed choices.\u00a0\u00a0One choice was to not allow grief be the theme of our house.\u00a0 We know families where loss has created a darkness in the home that never really allows the light of life to penetrate.\u00a0 We didn&#8217;t want to\u00a0live in that house.<\/p>\n<p>BC &#8211; Before crash, we were the family that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>had impromptu dance parties while cleaning the house.<\/li>\n<li>got led by pixies in the forest and even got lost in that forest in the dark.<\/li>\n<li>drove to Dairy Queen in our pajamas.<\/li>\n<li>had sleepovers on the basement floor after family movie night.<\/li>\n<li>put paper plates with drops of food coloring on the driveway in rainstorms to create masterpieces.<\/li>\n<li>sang to citrus fruit, &#8220;Oh my darling, Clementine.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>prayed and sang and read together each night.<\/li>\n<li>laughed so hard we cried.<\/li>\n<li>had an open door policy for any child, pet or wayward friend.<\/li>\n<li>made silly home movies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We were always the family that people called in a pinch for a back-up babysitter or afternoon play-date. Our freezer was never without popsicles, pizzas, or ice cream.\u00a0 There was always an extra toothbrush, blanket, or swimsuit.<\/p>\n<p>As we sat in the hospital learning more and more about Sawyer&#8217;s injuries.\u00a0 I made a willful choice to not allow our house to be surrounded in sadness.\u00a0 We would grieve, but we would not give up.\u00a0 Oh, I wanted to do that.\u00a0 I wanted to dig a hole and crawl in it.\u00a0 But if I did that, what would that say about the value of Sawyer, Erin, or Cloie?<\/p>\n<p>Our beginnings were baby steps.\u00a0 We created a nerf gun fun house while Sawyer was still wheelchair bound.\u00a0 We threw our Easter egg dye all over a white sheet in the backyard; thus creating a hilarious masterpiece.\u00a0 Eventually, we invited friends back over for movie nights, and we laughed and giggled again.\u00a0 The BC list of fun things slowly creeped back into the rhythms of our life.\u00a0 All, but one that is.\u00a0 Making movies of our happiness just didn&#8217;t happen, because eventually one of us would break into tears.<\/p>\n<p>It took awhile, but eventually, the old camcorder came out from its hibernation. Silly movies happened again that catalogued the current state of zany antics.\u00a0\u00a0That&#8217;s exactly what happened last Saturday when we had a passel of kids staying over.<\/p>\n<p>I think that Reed would definitely approve of\u00a0the silliness in\u00a0our house &#8211;\u00a0where fun still lives.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/W_QL_CZGkQs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early in the first days of grief, I made\u00a02 choices.\u00a0 Tough, gut-wrenching, deliberate, and much-needed choices.\u00a0\u00a0One choice was to not allow grief be the theme of our house.\u00a0 We know families where loss has created a darkness in the home that never really allows the light of life to penetrate.\u00a0 We didn&#8217;t want to\u00a0live in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[138,234,274,512,515,516,526],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.realsweetgrace.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}