A beautiful Season

Lexi's first day of first grade.

A rare family picture with all of us smiling! :)

The boys on the property getting ready to head to farm preschool.

Lexi with her kindred spirit Kathy

Celebrating Christmas with the two families together.

Baby Parker

The year Lexi went to first grade our family was going through a lot of changes. We sold our house and moved into an apartment above an old barn while we were having a wheelchair accessible home built in Sandy. Lexi's ladies had moved a few months before us and it was actually their barn apartment in Damascus that we were staying in. The apartment had everything but a full kitchen. Since we didn't have a stove I took turns with Gayle and Kathy, making dinners for both families at the main house.

During that time I was pregnant with my fourth baby who turned out to be another boy. We named him Parker Elliot Tatro. While Lexi was at school all day Caden was going to a farm preschool a few mornings a week and Chase was my little toddler sidekick.

We were given much grace in that busyness and Lexi's health was the best of her life. She was able to go to school most days and rarely missed for being sick. This was HUGE!!! In Kindergarten Lexi missed more school than not. With this season of health she was finally able to start using her energy to make some progress on learning new skills. Everyone at school was gaga for her. She was joyful and so fun to be with. It was healing for me to be able to enjoy my daughter without a cloud of sickness and fear hanging over us.

We loved living literally right next store from the ladies which meant that we saw Lexi and shared her care with Gayle and Kathy every day. Since there wasn't room in the apartment she slept in her bed at the main house every night but we did bring her up often to hang out with us in the daytime and we went over there a lot as well.

That pregnancy I couldn't lift Lexi at all. She was a 6 year old and over 40 pounds. That was frustrating for me. It was also the deciding factor to have that pregnancy be my last. Other people probably think 4 kids is more than enough but Daniel and I had always wanted a big family and it was a hard decision to make. I wouldn't say it was really what I wanted but it felt like the responsible choice. After 4 c-sections and knowing that every pregnancy would leave me unable to care for Lexi on my own we were in agreement that it was the right thing to do. Maybe because of that I enjoyed my 4th pregnancy more than any of the others and wasn't in a hurry for it to be over.

Making decisions for the new house was incredibly stressful, especially with Daniel working crazy overtime during Occupy Portland. The apartment was the smallest place we had ever lived in as a married couple and at that point we had 3 kids. But the ladies lived on property and the boys spent a lot of time outside climbing trees and riding their power wheels. Caden's imagination was developing in fun ways and he was always going on some sort of adventure. Gayle and Kathy became grandmas to the boys as well and the boys loved to go spend time with them. It was also wonderful for me to have adult conversation any time I wanted.

I will always remember those 6 months in that barn apartment as one of the happiest times of my life. It got much harder to stay there once we had a newborn and I was more than ready to move when we did but I will be forever grateful for those joyful memories made during that time with Lexi.

Unfortunately that beautiful season did not last. Life was about to get very painful for Lexi and our whole family as a result.