blankets

We have two beautiful blankets for Eli.  They are identical.  I will explain.  A group called "angel watch" does some special things for people have or will likely experience a loss.  They take a blanket you have wrapped you sweet, little baby in and use the fabric to make a little stuffed bear  after your baby passes away.  It is a special memento for your family to have. They are planning on doing this for us, but we also wanted to have the actual blanket to remember him by.  As I began looking for blankets, it was a hard and interesting experience.  Nothing seemed to be "good enough" for Eli.  You can't just walk into Babies R'Us and buy some blanket off the shelf.  It seemed wrong.  I was hoping they had a store from the celestial kingdom that would magically appear, so I could go there.  It was too mundane and common grab a blanket with giraffes on it off the shelf and swipe my credit card.  I quickly realized that nothing would ever feel "good enough" so I had to make it feel as good as possible.  We went to the fabric store as a family, and picked fabric for the blanket.  I wanted something incredibly plain, because I know that HE is the precious bundle and not the blanket. I didn't want anything to distract from that fact. All of the cute fabrics are nice, but not what I was interested in.  

It is interesting how everything in life seems to be like this right now. All the fluff, and icing, and extravagance are gone.  It is all about simplicity, and pureness.  Life has a lot of "fluff" that we really can do without.
So, my wonderful sister, Heather, agreed to sew the blankets for me. She made them with love and I think they look absolutely perfect.  The kids were excited when we got them back from her.  Lincoln tried rolling around in it for a little while and we eventually had to put it away because I was afraid he would destroy it.  He has a tendency to do that sometimes.  Katelyn and Ethan felt each side and tried to decide which side was softer. It was very sweet.  Thank you Heather.