family of 5

Its been a hard 2 months.  I venture to say some of the hardest of my life.  (The other hard time that comes to mind to compete is the months before Morocco.)  Today and the last week has been better so I feel the slight motivation to write about/ document it.  I'm not sure why God has allowed the suffering & hard times, but He has.  Some of it feels too raw to write a lot about or post pics of.  Peter has been to the hospital twice (that is the part that rips my heart out, literally) and has been a great sport about it.  I am so proud of him.  Three days after he came home from the first stay, we found out that Lily's chin issue is herpes.  And two days after that, we found out I was pregnant.  I was hesitant, Mike was the rock that he is.  We totally embraced it by God's grace and Mike and I both would say to each other how excited we were to have another baby!  It did feel like the happy spot in a hard time.  Thankfully, by God's grace, I wasn't overly anxious about the pregnancy and just enjoyed it (I've always loved being pregnant and knew we'd probably only have 3, so I tried to embrace and enjoy it!).  I'd been anxious during the first trimester with P&L but just felt good about this one.  I looked forward to the 8 week ultrasound and kept telling Mike has much I was looking forward to it.  But we found out that our little one didn't have a heart beat.  It was 6 weeks and 4 days "big".... the day of Peter's elbow surgery, ironically.  By God's grace, he allowed us to get thru it.  Mike is a rock.  I love the man and would not have survived these 2 months without his strength and love and care.  We were sad but I don't know, surprised but not surprised.  It seems like a lot to go thru what we've been thru and be pregnant too.  So these pictures document our family of 5.  We took them (with raw eyelids) the afternoon that we found out the baby wasn't alive.  We are thankful for its little life, even tho we didn't get to meet him/her on this earth.