Remembering Karinne For Her Birthday - Part1

On Sunday, May 8th, we had a celebration with extended family and friends in honor of Karinne's birthday.  It worked out well that the grandparents, aunts & uncles, and cousins were in town for our son Noah's and my niece Jaelle's 6th birthday party on Saturday.  Then everyone came to our house on Sunday for Karinne's.

For church, Curt, the kids, and I all wore pink for Karinne.  We also each wore a Karinne pin or necklace I had made from various special photos of her.  I had sweet little corsages made for myself and the grandmothers too.

The service included a few special moments in honor of Karinne.  It was youth sunday - where the high school youth group kids did everything for the service.  Since we are dear friends with the youth minister and since I have several of the kids in my art classes - I had requested that I would love it if there could be some special touches to the service for Karinne.  During worship, we sang "Blessed Be Your Name" which holds special meaning to our family since we sang it at both the prayer shower and the funeral last year.  Later, several of the girls sang "In Your Hands" (on the playlist) and sweet Hannah read a beautiful dedication to Karinne before they started.  It was SO lovely and special.  And of course - it all made me cry. 

We ate a yummy meal at our house after church and then hurried around to meet friends out at the cemetery at 2:00 for a balloon release.  When we pulled up to the cemetery and saw how many cars and people were gathered there - I was overcome with emotions.  It was just SO GOOD and SO OVERWHELMING to have so many there to remember Karinne with us.  My sister Jessica passed out balloons and we passed around markers to write on them.  We had filled 50 balloons and used them all - so we had right at 50 people there!!

 

I turned on "Blessed Be Your Name" on our van stereo and we sang along with it as we let the balloons go.  What a lovely sight!  Then we played "I Will Carry You" as we watched the balloons fly away to the north and Curt & I walked around sharing hugs with everyone and thanking them for coming. 

It was a very emotional time but a special time too.  And also a very HOT time!  Believe it our not, it was nearly 100 degrees that afternoon, so we were all plenty hot and icky by the time we left the cemetery!

The other special thing we had planned for the day was to make garden stepping stones.  We had the kids plan theirs out while the cement set up a bit.

Unfortunately, we had a combination of things go wrong:  too much gravel in our cement mix making it difficult to push the embellishments down AND waiting too long to do it so most of the stones got too hard.  So we were only able to decorate 4 out of the 13 or so tha we had mixed up.  Oh, well - live and learn - and we'll try again another day.

At the end of the day, it was time for cake.  Oh, how I wished Karinne could have been there to blow out her candle and get all messy.  It was hard and strange to have the cake without a cute little one-year-old to enjoy it.  But it would have been even harder for me to have NOT made one for her.  At least I was happy with how cute the cake turned out.  A sweet cake for my sweet girl!

 

We gathered the siblings and cousins around for a photo - like we always do.  And we sang "Happy Birthday" to Karinne.  That was VERY hard for me to get through.  Then we let the kids blow out Karinne's candle.  Oh --- if only..........

It was a special day.  It was a hard day.  It was a day I wish could have been different.  But it meant a lot to me to honor her with family and friends as we did.  Thanks so much to all of you that were a special part of our celebration of Karinne's life.