Emberly's 1st Heavenly Birthday

For anyone who has lost a loved one we all know the holidays are hard and also birthdays, but the "1sts" of them tend to hit and sting a bit more. Today is Emberly's birthday, she would have been 2, time seems to be going by almost too quickly.

My best friend told me that December 6 is a special day because it is also the day of Saint Nicholas, who in fact was the patron saint of children... how fitting is that? I will never forget ... that the Saint who would eventually in America be celebrated as Santa Claus, is the same day the heavens gave us a precious gift of a child for a short time in our lives.

My heart hurts for my brother and their family, I hate that we live so far from each other. I would love to hug them, reminisce with them, and celebrate her memory and simply just be with them. But because I am far away I am going to simply embrace and share some of my favorite photos of her and keep her flame burning. There is not a day that goes by she isn't in my mind or reminding me to keep going.

I have worked on keeping her flame and memory alive and have so much in the works to share at some point. I am excited that over the last 5 months and also for the next year I have been putting together a foundation/organization in her name. One that will help others spread joy and also be an outlet for those in need and raise awareness for child safety. I found that one day while listening to some beautiful music that all of the sudden the thoughts came to my mind about forming the organization and within 10 minutes I had grabbed a piece of paper and layed out the entire structure of it. I have learned thousands of times in my life when you have a thought or a prompting you immediately listen and do and also write it down. There is a lot to go into it, but by next December it should ready to launch.

Now let me share some of the amazing moments from Emberly Joy's life that I captured on my camera, I also can attest, you can never take too many photos of your kids together, one day those will become precious as gold and you can never relive those moments.