Butterfly Girl

Today marks the six month anniversary of our daughter Lynette's death. I had an experience at the Butterfly Conservatory in Key West, Florida yesterday that really touched me. As we walked into the conservatory there were hundreds of butterflies and moths too. They would pause on the flowers and the the trees and the chairs and even on me! They reminded me of our Butterfly Girl.

Lynette was REALLY into insects for a LONG time. One time I stenciled a butterfly on a yellow sweatshirt (she always loved the color yellow) for a gift. She wore that until it was too short and too little. She loved it.


One of her favorite Halloween costumes was a butterfly costume I made for her. I had no pattern for it but worked out the "mechanics" with lots of input from Lynette-because the wings needed to spread open when she spread her arms. That costume is still in our costume box. It was well loved. The picture below shows our 4 in their costumes. By the looks of it I made all 4 of their costumes that year: Butterfly for Lynette, Cheerleader for Carynn, Ninja for Bret and Turtle for Melinda. This is when we lived in Vancouver, Washington and would have been Halloween 1990.




I admit I cried a bit as I sat there on a blue butterfly chair in the butterfly conservatory and butterflies landed on or near me. I tried to sit as still as I could and after a while they treated me like I was part of the furniture which was fine by me. Lynette would have loved it. It reminded me of a time not too long ago when she bought butterflies in cocoons and then let them go free after they emerged from them.

The butterfly on my shoulder is actually a gorgeous blue when it opens its wings. The color just about matched my shirt. The blue ones really seemed to "like" me today.

The Butterfly Conservatory was an amazing experience. It was hard in some ways because it reminded me of Lynette, but it was healing too. Things are still hard for all of us, some times more than others.

I love you my Butterfly Girl!

Mom/Mama/Momma

aka

NS

Miller Time

Our Miller Trio came to visit over the last weekend in February. Memorable moments of the trip included:

• Ethan turning 18 month old! We had a lot of fun playing with the little guy! He is so much fun!

• A mani and pedi for me and Laura (Yay)!
• Lunch at Cafe Rio (Yummy Pork Barbacoa)
• The Miller Trio Went on a Hike at Snow Canyon
• A visit to another of our favorite parks (Tonaquint) for birdwatching, bird feeding, swinging and enjoying the play structure there. Ethan loves swinging and slides and climbing through and around everything. He let us know that he didn't want to leave too!
• A family walk to a closer park for more swinging.
• Chefs Bret and Laura making dinner.
• Movies from Redbox

We might have been "lower key" but a good time was had by all. We're so thankful that they could come see us.

We love our Miller trio!

NS