To all of my friends, family and collaborators who read this blog,
I am not even sure where to begin. My heart has absolutely broken into 1 million pieces and will never be the same again. Thursday morning, I found my husband Justin, who had passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. I am still in a state of shock and complete sorrow. My mind cannot even process that this has happened. I feel the worst for Ava, who will now never know her father. She will only know him through the photos, videos, and stories that we have of Justin. Thank you to everyone who has sent their kind wishes and prayers. I appreciate every single one of them. These past few days have been difficult thinking back on all of the wonderful memories and adventures we had been on together in this life. We were recently planning our spring and summer out and to think those plans will never happen now is heartbreaking. I lost my best friend and the love of my life and someone who I was supposed to grow old together with and raise our family.
I do not plan on posting here for this week and possibly the next.
The photos above are some of my favorite recent ones. The first two were taken at the end of February on my iPhone. The weather was beautiful and we decided to all go for a walk and then some lunch afterwards. It was a great day and I think those photos reflect that. The next two were taken two weeks after Ava was born for our first family photo shoot together. The last one Justin had asked me to take of him so he would have a professional photo of himself. We actually took it in the living room after we had done the pregnancy announcement photos. It turned out nice and he was so appreciative of it.
Justin specifically asked me to take this photo of him and Ava at the beginning of March this year. I got her all dressed up in her outfit that said Daddy's girl and I could not wait for Justin to see her. His eyes would light up every time he saw Ava and hers would light up whenever she saw Justin. He has only ever asked me to specifically take a few photos of him and this was one of them.
This is an oldie but goodie. It was our first date back in December of 2006 at the Holiday at Hayfield dance. We met each other at Penn State Wilkes-Barre right around Christmas time. It was the perfect first date with the holiday season. We look so different. I remember how nervous I was too. We actually got married in the same room where this dance happened. We thought it would be neat to have it come full circle from our first date to our wedding day.
I hadn't looked at our wedding photos in a while, but when I was starting to gather photos for the viewing, I saw this one and thought how happy we both looked. This was at the reception.
Lastly, a photo from our Honeymoon in Disney World. It's one of my favorite photos of Justin and I together.