Which brings us to the next event coming, Josiah's birth. A couple of weeks ago I was really dreading his birthday coming up, mainly because I felt like I wasn't going to find the perfect (for our family) way of celebrating his birthday. I didn't know what to do. Did we celebrate here in Greer with our family and friends or did we want to go to Charleston as a family. A week and a half ago I followed some links from another heart mom's blog and ended up on a website called "To Write Their Names in the Sand." It is this woman's web-site who has lost a baby of her own and she takes names of babies that have died. She writes their names in the sand on this beach in Australia where she lives and then takes beautiful sunset pictures of the babies name. The images are very moving. So here I was on this website in Australia and it came to me, I knew what I wanted to do to honor Josiah's birthday. I was looking at these pictures and the image of the four of us siting at the beach with Josiah's name in the sand got stuck in my head. One of the things I regret is not having any quality pictures of the 5 of us. I actually only have one picture of all of us from when Josiah was about 2 months old. So that's what I wanted to do was have family pictures taken with Josiah represented. In my head this image was beautiful and I knew that my Kodak easy share camera could not capture the beauty. So I knew we would have to have this professionally done. From this website in Australia I followed a rabbit trail of links to this organization called "Now I lay me down to sleep." This is an international organization of photographers that donates their time to photographing families whose newborns are dying. I was frustrated when I started looking at this site because I wished I had known about it while we were in the hospital with Josiah. So I dug deeper on the website to find out if there were photographers in Charleston that were apart of the organization. I was doing this because I wanted to pass on this great resource to our friends in the PCICU. Sure enough there was a list of about 6 photographers in the Charleston area. As I looked at the list I felt like I should e-mail one of them and explain our story, share my idea of what I wanted to do while acknowledging that I realized this is not what the organization is normally for. So I picked a name and sent an e-mail at 11:00pm. At 11:05pm I got a response back saying, OH ERIN, YES! The response then went on to say how this woman that I e-mailed knew our story and in fact follows our blog. She apologized that we had not met while Josiah was alive but that she would love to do this for our family now. I started crying immediately. I just couldn't believe it and just truly felt like God's hand put that together for us. I was overjoyed because I felt such relief that I found a way to celebrate Josiah's birthday in a way that was perfect for our family. It has truly changed my perspective on Josiah's birthday coming up. I am so incredibly grateful for this photographer to take time out of her incredibly busy schedule to do this for our family.

So that's what we are doing for Josiah's birthday, going to Charleston, having family pictures taken on the beach, a place where we found peace and comfort for us as well as a place of joy as we played with our girls. We hope to see some of our Charleston friends and just enjoy our family as we remember Josiah's life. This week is going to be difficult as I just can't believe Josiah would be turning one but I'm looking forward to honoring Josiah while we visit his city.