The Ison's:

Some hard pics... but a lot got left out from that day after post.

I was so careful to pick the ones that didn’t look too rough. But as I continue to process things...It was rough!!

I dunno I wanted them on here so...maybe stop reading now-or close your eyes and scroll down.

All other ones I posted I tried to make sure his little cheek was always covered. But when Sethy sees this one-or one like it all he sees is Jammies, he yells “Jammies Jammies” with delight. I do love that Seth loves to look at the pictures of Riz. Always. Sometimes I’m a little less up for it than him. It’s up and down for me.

I made this next one small on purpose.

Then more from the graveside

Tan my emotional clone-poor kid- and Sethy looking like “what is wrong with my mom???”

And a few from before we headed over to bury him. We have so much to be thankful for!!

The next few stories are old too-I just think they need posted. Just today though Tan was sitting at the table coloring and singing about/to Riz, so they’re not that old:

-Seth’s finally figured out Riz was who was in my tummy. And he likes to point it and say “Riz”. I say. “Yep, he was in my tummy but he’s not there anymore-he lives in heaven with Heavenly Father” to which Sethy usually says “famee” and I confirm “yes, he’ll always be part of our family”

-Tanner after being told I wouldn’t take him to Walmart to buy toys SCREAMED at me “Mom our little brother DIED!!!! If you don’t take me to do fun things I’m going to hate this life!!!!” It was heartbreaking at hilarious all in one. He is also constantly making up songs about Riz and how we don’t need to be sad cuz we’ll see him again. And we can play with him then.

-I thought Colt was handling it the best but then we had more of the uncharacteristic outbursts from him too.

-Cann is seriously what I thought it would be like to have a teenager 😩I I’m supposed to have 3+ more years on that-but one day after he’d yell’d at both Isaac and I separately I walked past his room (we’d probably sent him there) and “caught” him looking at a little picture of Riz. This is hard on all of us.

Isaac-that poor guy doesn’t know whether to hold me or if he’s going to be in trouble for trying.

So I guess that’s the update...well the old but not that old update. 7 weeks. Can you believe it’s been 7 weeks?? But all of Feb and 3 weeks in March-I guess that’ll do it.

Anyway...

Last Saturday Isaac had a zoom mtg with Elder Uchtdorf (and about 500 other people) He went into work for it but ended up wishing he would have stayed home. I guess Elder Uchtdorf was so cute about wanting to see the kids on the screen and stuff-our boys would have eaten that up. Oh well live and learn. That afternoon Isaac officiated at a wedding (we found out later one of his students was a bar tender there-ha!) I could tell Isaac was a little nervous but he did a good job. After we ended up chatting with...I guess it would have been one of the Bride’s uncles but found out he actually grew up in Santa Clara-that was pretty cool. We bailed before the dinner and dancing and such (not that that’s a surprise to anyone) but the Pettit’s were tending kids anyway and offered to have ours come too-they’re the best!- We took them up on it, the kids had a great time s and so did we! We just went to Dinner then bought some flowers for Riz’s grave.

Sunday was just normal except we got to sing 2 lines of I am a child of God for a little pre-Easter thing Bro Seaman is putting together for the stake. It’s supposed to go on the friends of the Nauvoo stake FB page but since I’m anti-Facebook hopefully he’ll email it to me. Then I’d post it here. :)

Monday was my 6 week follow up appointment. The 2 week one went super well but my anxiety was just building and building. Finally last Friday I asked Isaac to go with me-that helped settle me down quite a bit, but Monday as I was dropping Seth off before going the Dr office called and he was in a delivery. We rescheduled for Tuesday. Tuesday as I was leaving the house they called again-I guess he was covering for another Dr this week plus his patients-he had a busy week...and I had a very wound up week. Ug we rescheduled again for Thursday (in 5.5 years I think I’ve only had to reschedule appointments at that office 2 maybe 3 times) Anyway it was crazy but if I’m blogging about the week —that was it. I was a nervous wreck. But Thursday we did get to go and it went really well. It was just good to chat with him again. I apologized for cussing ✅ phew. He said “you’re forgiven...you’re forgiven for something I don’t even remember.” So that was good 😉 and I thanked him for not letting me quit-I wanted to quit! And he said “No, you did good, you did really good.” We talked about how it was horrible but also at the same time...the word he used was “beautiful” but I would have probably picked “sacred” or something (cuz I mean...that was ugly!!) But I knew what he meant I felt like we were on the same page. He told us he could remember the song that was playing-I asked what it was thinking it had to be Be Still My Soul or maybe Abide With Me or Come Thou Fount cuz those are the 3 I’ve listened to over and over and over since. But it wasn’t, it was Amazing Grace, Isaac said later “oh yeah as soon as he said it I remembered” I still didn’t remember. But then I looked it up on the Gentri album that I love and once I actually heard it I did remember. Vividly. It’s crazy but music has become very important to me. And that song is on my playlist with the others now! I was so thankful that he shared that with us though-just so grateful to see more of the “beautiful” side of things-and remember that (more than Ug you had to get a dead body out of me) we talked about a lot of things I asked a lot of questions like oh we could have tested this or that -should we have? but he said no not really-we did everything we should have. Overall I just really felt good about our visit there—all of that anxiety for nuthin! We’re still heartbroken of course but we are at peace with things too. Our faith is strong. So we’re slowly moving forward. 👍🏻

What else?

Isn’t he too small for this nonsense? We only gets one body! And then our St Patrick’s day green!

Yesterday we made a quick-super quick, last second decision to go quick- trip to Adam-ondi-ahmen to see Wayne and Teresa (Isaacs buddy Jesse’s parents) They got into town Wed but we couldn’t pull it off and we decided not to wait until the weekend. It was so fun to see them I’m even if it was super fast! We had signs and bribed the boys to sing the first verse of Adam-ondi-ahmen. I actually loved practicing with them on the drive over.