Sweet & Somber Saturday

We spent the morning just relaxing and watching Mulan.  Autumn has now moved past Pocahontas as her favorite movie (thank goodness) and Mulan is now the movie I am going to get tired of.  After just spending the morning relaxing, we went and picked up Debbie (Tara’s Mom) and said hi to her Dad and Grandma.  It was so good to see them again.  I consider them family for sure.  Then we met up w/ Michael’s family at Papacita’s.  Jana was so cute w/ Autumn and sat and played w/ her until our food came.

Michael & Krystina are such a close brother and sister (not to mention they look A LOT alike).  I know it has been so good for them to have each other for support this past year.

I am so thankful that Debbie came w/ us.  I definitely consider her to be a second mother.  She is so loving and nurturing and giving, not to mention beautiful.  I just love her to pieces.

Autumn was pretty good while we ate, but then she hit her limit, so Debbie took her for a walk around the restaurant.  They had such a good time just walking around and looked so cute walking hand in hand.

After dinner, we stopped at Hobby Lobby so Debbie & Jana could pick out some fall flowers to put at Tara’s gravesite.  Tara loved to celebrate every holiday and all the seasons.  We headed out to the cemetery.  It was out in the country and definitely off the beaten path, but it was the perfect setting and was so peaceful and beautiful.

Here is her beautiful headstone w/ the fall flowers.  I LOVE that it has a picture of her on it.  It makes it so personal and she is just gorgeous.  I also LOVE that it has a hibiscus flower in the upper right hand corner.  It reminds me of our trip to Hawaii and how much fun we had together.  We all stood there and just took a minute to think about Tara and how much we love and miss her.  It was SOOO HOT outside and we were all just sweating like crazy, so once we were all done Debbie said Tara would tell us to quit standing around and go get a drink at Sonic, which was so true and made me laugh.  So, we loaded up in our cars and went to Sonic to get a drink in Tara’s honor.

We just went back to Michael’s apartment and relaxed and watched TV and movies.  Autumn hadn’t taken a nap all day, so she finally crashed and burned on the couch.  She’s such a sweet angel when she’s asleep.

We spent the rest of the night watching episodes of Dexter and I wanted a treat.  There was one drumstick ice cream left and Michael said I could have it, so I ate it.  Little did I know, it was Krystina’s!  Whoops!  So, we made Michael go to WalMart and get us some more treats.  He went a little overboard, but we didn’t mind and enjoyed our snacks and spending time w/ each other.

Even though it was an incredibly sad thing that brought all of us together today w/ the one year anniversary of Tara’s passing, it was nice to be together w/ other people that knew and loved Tara.  We missed having Rachel & Jeremy there for sure!