Perfect Moments

I just went back and read my post from the beginning of the summer. It was called "Grief Interrupted." I talked about how marrying my ex and being in crazy town for a few years, short-cutted (I doubt that is a word) my grief process and I felt like I was back near the starting line.  I was quite the special MESS in June and the raining weather DID NOT HELP one tiny bit!  I was missing Dave . . . BIG TIME.  I was missing all that he would have added to our lives, if he were still here.  It was worthy of missing, no doubt about that!

At the beginning of the summer, when I would think of Dave, it was like I was right back near the beginning of my grief walk. It was like my whole body and mind departicalized and was transported back in time to feel the intensity of grief all over again. (Do I sound dramatic?)  One could say it was sweet that I still missed and loved Dave so much, but I DID NOT like it.  I felt like I had a long road ahead of me AGAIN!  With all sorts of grief feelings bearing down on me, I decided to ramp up my counseling schedule.  It paid off!  I don't know if you have ever tried EMDR as a form of therapy, but it sure does wonders for me!!!  The most basic way I describe it, is that is pulls the emotion out of the memory of something really painful.  You still remember the person or the incident, of course, but your body and brain and emotions, don't react to it, as if you were right back in the middle of it again.  Trauma is tricky biz, peeps! 

The first trip in the summer, was to the Sand Dunes.  I was hurting for Dave so hard, and couldn't pull myself together.  By the time I was driving to Oklahoma in July, I realized that I wasn't experiencing the same sense of loss and "I'm missing the magic of Dave," that I had on my first vacation of the summer.  The potential for the grief to pop back up was there, but I went on to more camping trips and a trip to Connecticut and my thoughts and emotions were in a much lighter place.  I'm not going to lie . . . it is no easy task logistically to prepare to camp with three kids and get on planes and get cars packed and get camping meals prepped, and all that other stuff, but that is simply an inconvenience, it's not some kind of deep heart issue.

So, starting at the beginning of July, I had so many "perfect moments."  I try so hard to taste and savor and capture the memory of those moments.  One place I experience many perfect moments is at my pool. Even though, sometimes, I miss Dave when I'm there, I had multiple "perfect moments," playing volleyball with the sun setting and my kids running around aimlessly, this summer.  One time, I even played for someone else's team and I didn't even know it.  I jumped on the court and announced, "I'm here."  I played the entire MATCH, thinking that we sure had a lot of subs that night and no one even bothered to tell me that I was playing on the wrong team, at the wrong time.  That is how gracious Valley volleyball players are!

So many beautiful sunsets from the pool.

Valleyball - Where the most important rule is to laugh a lot, while playing!

I love watching my kids swim.  Diving off the blocks is my favorite to watch.

I, also, love watching my kids form fun friendships!

I had perfect moments with friends, backpacking and camping. I had perfect moments just sitting on my deck.  I had perfect moments traveling to see my sister and her family. And last, but not least, it was a perfect moment when school started back up again.  I have a lot of fun with my kids, but I was ready to get back into a schedule.  I'm thankful for their love of school and for their teachers that love them so well!

Backpacking with friends!

I mean, this was beautiful!

Summer, camping, campfires, friends.  I love it!

I feel so thankful that I was able to experience these "perfect moments" without the shadow of grief on them. Had you asked me if that was possible at the beginning of the summer, I would have said, "NO WAY!"  I'm guessing that grief will circle back around, because that is just kinda what it does, but I always have to keep remembering that it will pass.  It's hard to remember that in the midst of it, but I'm learning.
 

Laughing is my favorite!

Immediate Healing

I just had to sit down and write yesterday, and this is what came out!

Last March (2018), while I entertained the thought of leaving my marriage, I thought that I would be facing years of counseling to put my delicate, unidentifiable, self back together.

About two weeks before I left, I remember sitting with some friends for dinner, and one of them asked me about doing some kind of skit or something like that and I flat out refused and I thought to myself, "No way!!!!!  I'm not even funny anymore.  In fact, I have no idea who I am anymore!?!?!" (Some of you may thinking that it's funny that I ever considered myself to be funny at all, but
anywho . . .).   I felt like the essence of who I was, was no longer even present inside of me. . . anywhere???? Talk about terrifying!!!!   At that point I was 98.7 percent sure I was leaving my marriage, (however, I had been there a couple times before and didn't leave) barring some crazy miracle and I wondered how long it would be, before I would feel like myself again . . .  if ever. I thought I would be some delicate, broken, child, for a long time, needing countless hours of therapy and whole lotta time.  I can tell you, with great relief, that as soon as I walked through the door of my old house and into a new life without my ex, it SERIOUSLY was like something supernatural happened.  It's like whatever was so heavy and whatever I was wearing that kept me from being me, stayed behind me as I walked through the threshold of my previous HOME.  It's like it wasn't allowed inside and it just fell away, turned to dust and blew away.  I think that requires an Hallelujah!  It nearly brings me to tears. OK . . . I am teary.  It just reminds me so much of how gracious Jesus was to do that, and I didn't even ask or expect it.  These are some of the first pictures, after we moved back into our HOME, last summer!!!!!

All last summer, I couldn't believe how immediate the relief was and shocked at how in one instance, I felt like I was back to myself.  I did go to counseling and did some, for reals, intense work with EMDR, which is a form of therapy, in relation to my ex. But my whole point is that, when I left him, I felt like a whole person almost immediately. And I would not consider it a stretch to say that I felt like MORE of a whole person after going through an abusive relationship and leaving it, than I did, even before Dave died.  I didn't feel delicate, I felt strong.  I was certainly wounded, but I was not wrecked. I thought my kids would be broken and angry that I was leaving, but they were relieved to the core and forgiving of me (mostly) for not leaving earlier. I did not feel condemned (by Jesus), like I expected. In fact, NEVER EVER  have I felt so loved and taken care of in the most gentle way, by Jesus, than when I left.  Sadly, I kinda miss that feeling and consider it a true gift that I had a season where my God was so incredibly personal and just . . . so gentle, when I thought I would feel debilitating guilt.  These are all things that I absolutely didn't expect and didn't even think to entertain, before I left my marriage.  I absolutely didn't expect to feel whole so quickly and I absolutely did not expect to feel that Jesus was the most understanding and gentle of anybody.  I guess that says a lot about how I viewed (view) Jesus.

Now a good solid year away from moving back to my house, I still find myself questioning the character of Jesus.  It's so easy for me to fall back into seeing Jesus as condemning.  For instance, I used to be such a good little Christian (I mean, I don't really think I'm "good," but "a good little Christian," who doesn't get drunk, loves Sunday morning church, reads my Bible consistently, adopted a child for crying out loud, and certainly didn't get divorces!!!) Now, things are different.  I don't really love church anymore, after this whole ordeal.  I feel cynical, I feel distrustful, I feel confused about the church.  When I hear messages of how to love well as a Christian or how to turn the other cheek or to put others before yourself, or countless other messages, I just die inside, because I know these messages are trapping and guilt inducing and confusing for those in destructive marriages.  And often times the abuser uses these very messages to reiterate how the other is deficient at loving well.  What is really quite astonishing is how quickly I return to the idea that I don't qualify to receive his voice and his love, since I don't really love church, and I'm questioning so much about my faith, yet I can hardly say the name Jesus, without dying in pile of tears, because I love him so much and I'm so beyond grateful for His presence, His love and His grace.

Grief Interupted

About six months ago, I was feeling guilty for feeling like I had sufficiently moved past all intense emotions about Dave and feeling like I was good to go, in moving forward in life.  It's like in the movie Father of the Bride, Part 2 that I watched six trillion times, when the movie starts and Steve Martin says, "It's like the saying goes, all those who think you've got it made, take one step forward . . . not so fast George Banks." (is it sad that I have that memorized???) All of the sudden I am backwards.  Like, as in, WAY BACKWARDS.  I feel like I'm back at where I should have been at summer number two.  It feel ridiculous, but then again, it kinda makes sense.

Nine months after Dave died, I started my nine month survival plan of living with a terribly herniated disc.  Life became all about managing my physical pain.  Then in the middle of that whole ordeal, I met my ex.  When we got married, I was pretty much, not allowed to have any of Dave's stuff anymore or even talk about him, and having a feeling about him, was way out of the question.  If I would tell a very neutral story from the years that I was married to Dave, it would not go well. I would say something like, "when WE went to the Sand Dunes, it was so incredibly windy." Then my ex would sarcastically say, "I never realized that WE went to the Sand Dunes together."  Then I would try to use I, instead of we, and say, "I went to the Sand Dunes once and it was so incredibly windy."  Again, according to my ex, I got it wrong and he would say, "Oh, you went there by yourself???"  Then I would just sigh and give up telling my story, or I would ask him to choose the pronoun he would like me to use.  It was too exhausting to ever tell a story, not even about Dave, but any story that took place while I was married to Dave.  This is one tiny little picture of what emotional abuse looked like in my marriage to my ex.  It wasn't like he would call me names or tell me I wasn't worthy. In fact, often times his words were complimentary, which is what makes these relationships so confusing.

And don't even get me started on Dave's birthday or death day.  I didn't even want them to exist, because managing my ex around those times, took more out of me, than taking time to remember Dave.  If I had a feeling about Dave that I would dare to express, my ex would express how difficult it was to be married to someone who had lost a spouse.  There simply wasn't enough room for me to have a feeling about missing Dave, because that was just too hard for my ex and then I would have to manage his feelings and his passive aggressiveness that would inevitably ramp up to a level 10.  It was so impossible.

As, I type this, no wonder I am so far back in the grief process.  I seriously had to shut so much of Dave down, as soon as I put that ring on.  It is so sad. Last summer, I did not feel this way.  I felt immense relief and some serious anger, but now that those are diminishing, the sadness and the vacancy that Dave left, is so stark and so sharp.  I've decided that I do NOT do sad, very well.  In fact, I seriously hate it.

I've done a lot of choking back tears lately.  Like a couple Fridays ago, when I went to pick up Spencer at Eagle Lake Camp, where Dave and I were both campers at the SAME TIME, when we were Spencer's age. What are the chances of that happening???  I can't even imagine how different it would have been to drop Spencer off at camp or pick him up, with Dave there???  Then when we got back, I took the girls to get mountain bikes and we all went for a mountain bike ride.  It felt so great to take care of all of that on my own and get them out there, because I knew Dave would be cheering us all on, but the cloud of sadness that he was not WITH us, was pressing in so hard that day.  Then after that we went to the pool and I got to play some volleyball . . . yet another thing Dave and I enjoyed doing together. I loved everything I did that day, but I couldn't get away from heavy sadness that comes with doing Dave things.  It's like I want to carry on all these things that we did together and I want my kids to learn all the things they would have if Dave were here, but doing those things, also hurts, lately.

I can't even seem to speak his name without crying, lately. I was timing at a swim meet, when someone asked how he died and I instantly began to leak tears.  It is just so right back on the surface, for LITERALLY crying out loud.   I broke down in Taco Bell, of all places, the other day.  May I remind you, this is 6 1/2 years later??????  It feels ridiculous to me!!!! My kids were with me and they were like, "What the heck?" So I told them I was missing Dave and then I went on for a bit.  I said, "Are you guys tired of listening to me talk, yet."  Spencer said, "I'll never get tired of hearing you, mom."  Leah goes, "I will!"  I want to be fine without him and without any other guy, for that matter.   I am relearning again how to do this life and parenting without Dave, (or anyone else) yet again.  This time, for reals!

Oh, one quick story from our bike riding time, was when they all started to do some bouldering and the girls were having a hard time getting back down.  I was at the bottom telling them to get busy getting down and that it was taking forever, because that is the kind of patient mom I am!!!  Meanwhile, Spencer had climbed over to them and told them where to put each foot and he talked them down all instructively (is that a word?) and calmly.   It was SOOOOOOOOOO Dave, that I started laughing out loud!!!!  Spencer is SUCH a mini-Dave in his just simple kindness.  It's not from me!!!!!!

Father's Day just recently passed.  I just wanted to pretend that the day was just like any other day.  I've already felt so griefy lately, that I just didn't want to entertain all those sad feeling that I'm evidently NOT good at, whatsoever. I was doing such a good job at forgetting that it was Father's Day, that I got on Facebook, where every post is about how wonderful everybody's dad is, complete with perfect family photos. I was in mid gag, when I came across this post called, "Let the Children Fly," and it challenged me to work A LOT harder that day to honor Dave, by using the day to talk about the men in my kids' lives that are examples of good fathers. Lately, I tend to want to point out what makes up an unhealthy person, but after reading that post,  I tried to use Father's Day to talk about what makes a good father. They had some really good ideas on what makes a good father. I ended up letting them take the lead on the day, and they decided that they wanted to play mini golf at Dave's favorite spot.  And then at dinner that night, Leah prayed and thanked God for all the Father's out there.  She was thankful for fathers, even though she doesn't have one here on earth????????  My kids are quite possibly so much further than I am.  So, to the men in my kids' lives, they are watching and God may be using you, more than you know, when you live lives of integrity, honesty, kindness, and faithfulness.

This is a father that my kids didn't know super well, but man, all three of my kids really looked up to him.  We will miss you, Ted Woodard! 

This weekend, I'm headed to an Aldridge reunion of sorts.  I'm so thankful for my continued relationship with Dave's family.  I love them so much. Sometimes when I think things will be hard, they are not, and sometimes when I least expect it, the grief hits. Either way, I'm thankful to still be a part of Dave's family.

One last parting thought.  I am not really a lyrics person.  I don't need deep lyrics to enjoy a song, but I do like a fun beat, (that's just how deep I am).  With Tween's in the car, I've gotten a lot of Tweeny music exposure.  One of my favorite songs, lately, is, "Broken and Beautiful," by Kelly Clarkson.  It's how I feel about writing a post like this.  It's this mix of, "I've got this!" "Hold me!" "My broken is beautiful!" Some of the lyrics are:

I don't need your help and I don't need sympathy
I don't need you to lower the bar for me

I know I'm Superwoman
I know I'm strong
I know I've got this 'cause I've had it all along
I'm phenomenal
And I'm enough
I don't need you to tell me who to be

Can someone just hold me?
Don't fix me, don't try to change a thing
Can someone just know me?
'Cause underneath, I'm broken and it's beautiful  

 

Here We Go . . . I'm Gonna Tell My Story

Holy Cow! It's not actually all that long before Spencer goes to college. 

You wanna know the random thought that floats through my head all the time?  I picture my kids going to college, where nobody knows their story already.  I picture them having to tell a little about themselves in a welcome week group and they start with the framework of their little lives and they say something like, “My name is Spencer. I am from Colorado.  I love soccer, skiing, camping and I play the piano.  I grew up with the best mom in the world (my own words are in italics) and two younger sisters. One of my sisters is Ethiopian and was adopted when I was five.  Sadly, my dad died while jogging to work one morning when I was six years old and then a couple years later, my mom married another guy. He ended up being pretty abusive.  But we got out of that and life just went on from there.”

It just doesn’t feel real that that is the story of MY kids???  The Aldridge kids???  That can’t be me, he is talking about to his new college friends!!!  A mom that got into an abusive marriage???  Only really weak, not well, messed up moms get into relationships like that, right???  It’s so embarrassing and still so shocking that that was me . . . in a totally, completely, dysfunctional, destructive marriage, dragging my kids through the whole deal.  While it is embarrassing to share, I will share, because it was two girls from college, actually, who shared their story and gave me the strength to face my reality.  They were NOT messed up girls.  They were strong, they were leaders, they were so kind, and they were beautiful and they were both very brave to share their stories and were a critical part of me understanding my reality.  They took away the myth about who marries these types of people, for me.

Part of not getting out earlier, a HUGE PART, was desperately wanting to bring our marriage to some state of health and normalcy, so that I didn’t have to sit here, like I am in this very moment, at Starbucks, and be not only a divorced woman, but an abuse victim (which I’ll talk more about in a second). The countless hours pleading with God to turn our marriage around, revolved so much around just the shame of getting a divorce, the belief that divorce was some unpardonable sin and, also, that a divorce would jeopardize my reputation as a good Christian and as someone who would simply just never get a divorce (as if I am better than people who do get divorces). In addition, I pleaded for a normal marriage, because I wanted my kids to have a step dad who loved them, a husband who treated me like he loved me and because marriage can be so much fun and so many wonderful things. I desperately did NOT want my reality to be that I was in a destructive marriage, so I worked so incredibly hard to make that not true and believe that is was not true.  To no avail, of course. 

It may sound like I am being hard on myself.  I don’t believe, anymore, that I was just plain stupid to get into a relationship like this.  I was maybe ignorant about the fact that people like this really exist. And let me tell you, they are everywhere and they are sneaky and they are hidden and they are tricky. That statistic feels IMPOSSIBLY HIGH, but once I was on the other side, I can not go anywhere, without meeting people who have been in relationships similar to mine.  It's just that now I have ears to pick up on it and I'm not afraid to start asking questions. I truly believe it is an epidemic. 

I was also very trusting and why shouldn’t I be???  I was married for eight and a half years to Dave, the most straightforward, easy going man. It never even crossed my mind to not trust Dave - even once.  OK . . . maybe once for about 6 seconds when he was all giddy about running the Ragnar overnight race with pretty much all cute, younger women from work.  I was like, “don’t act that excited as all these cuties are pulling up in our driveway.”  But, honestly, I actually thought it was cute.  I just didn’t have it in me to not trust him.  I just trusted him and he trusted me.  All that to say, these people that manipulate and control and lie in these types of relationships don’t discriminate.  In fact, sometimes they target strong women and Christian women, because they know strong women will fight to make the marriage work and their Christian beliefs will also keep them trapped in a marriage. And strangely enough, after my last post a million months ago, I had a decent number of women who had lost their husbands and then found themselves in a marriage like mine, next. I don’t know how to explain that one, but it was weird.   

Some people will give me an excuse and say that I was in a vulnerable position when I met Tony.  And I was, no doubt!  I had only lost Dave a little over a year, when I met my ex.  I was also in a lot of physical pain for many months, with a herniated disc. But that is NOT why I got sucked into this marriage.  Maybe, those things had a little to do with it and maybe he targeted me, but mainly,  it was that I, literally, knew NOTHING of this type of person.  Plain and simple.  

Earlier in this post, I wrote that I was an abuse victim. I honestly don’t know how I feel about that label. There was, FOR SURE, financial abuse, where I was clearly a victim and could do nothing about some of it.  So, I will take on the victim label there, but the rest . . .  I don’t really know.  I chose to stay, even though I knew it was JACKED UP!  I could have left earlier and I almost did at a mere 3 months and again at two years.  However, I didn’t understand what I was dealing with at those points and I was too afraid to really look.  So, I don’t know what to really say about that, but that every time I think of myself as a victim of spiritual and emotional abuse (which is a term now that almost makes some people say, “whatever,” but I don’t know what else to call it) I don’t feel comfortable with it.  Maybe because I don’t want it to be true, or maybe, because if I had the choice to get out, then how could I be a victim?  In fact, I guess I do believe that I was no longer a victim, when I took off my blinders, got educated with articles, counseling and books and knew what I was dealing with.  Once I knew what I was dealing with, I was making a choice to stay and I was no longer a victim. Anyway, thanks for talking through that with me!!!!!   

What really blows, is that when I finally got real, and left and told the truth about it all, there were people that simply didn’t believe me or wanted to diminish my story for some reason.  In my case, the people that flat out didn’t believe me, were mostly men and they were also people that interacted with my ex a decent amount.  This phenomena will, to the end of my days, baffle me. This was far, far, more shocking to me than almost anything my ex did. 

Nothing became surprising with my ex, because he was not well, but people that I have known for a long time and do not seem to have mental illness, their responses to me leaving were either no response at all or opposed to me leaving.  

Sidebar:  TO BE CLEAR, there were a few men, that did see through my ex and would not entertain his victim playing.  Of course, my ex wouldn’t interact with those few men who wouldn’t entertain my ex’s games and fake humility. I really can’t tell you how much I appreciate those few men, though. They have been and continue to be an important part of my healing, just knowing that they stood up for me and that there are men like that out there. 

Anyway . . . I have about six hundred more sidebars to share that I just feel some need to share them at this time.  My goal is to share my story.  Over the past 14 months, since I have left the marriage, it has actually become somewhat of a distant memory already, which I feel is an incredibly tender mercy from God. For a while, I thought I’d never be able to think of anything, but that messed up-ness. I was so consumed by it. Now that I'm not consumed by anger and survival, but the memories are still there, I want to write about a few things, that relate to being in a destructive marriage.  Maybe my story will help someone else who is trying to understand their own crazy in a relationship, or maybe it will only help me to move through what is still hanging on me, from all of this.  These writing may accomplish nothing, but I just feel compelled to write at this point.  So stay tuned, if you want.  I plan on writing some more.    

Six Years Later (and a month, but who's counting?)

We have now celebrated six of Dave's death days.  I can go back in my memory and describe how I was feeling surrounding the last six deathaverssaries.  The first, I was in absolute survival mode and in so much physical pain with my busted disc that my only goal that day was to survive.  The second, was about the most normal one.  The next three were were miserable and impossible, but not because of grief. The next was so rich, but it took an extreme amount of energy to guard the sacredness of that day.  And now this one.  Year six. Personally, I think it is a good sign that I didn't feel so pressed to write about it in any hurried manner.

A few months ago, I did kind of get a little/lot panicky.  The dates were lined up, just as they were the year that Dave died.  The year he died, school ended on a Friday and I was supposed to go in and help with Spencer's Kindergarten Christmas party.   The next day we were headed to Pagosa Springs, to ski and celebrate Christmas on a Tuesday, with his entire side of the family.  Fast forward to 2018.  This year, school ended on a Friday, with Christmas parties as usual. We were headed up to Pagosa to ski and celebrate Christmas, on a Tuesday, with Dave's entire side of the family.  I was starting to feel like I needed something to be different or that something bad might happen again, with everything lined up so exactly the same.

As Christmas began to creep closer, I expected my fears to escalate, but they did the exact opposite.  I don't know if it had to do with God's continued whisper to me that HE is the SUSTAINER of my life and the life of my kids, or if it was some EMDR work that really helped surrounding this, but I imagine it was a little of both.  In fact, I felt a little over EMDR'ed potentially, because I was actually looking forward to the day in a sweet way.

Truth be told, I actually felt almost a little guilty about feeling so OK with the day and even accepting  of Dave's death.  It was an unfamiliar feeling, for sure. Here is my pattern now. I have that unfamiliar feeling of being a little too OK with Dave's death, so then I feel guilty for about one second and then it is quickly followed by a little smile.  You know why?  Because I am 10,000% sure that Dave is so proud of me and our kids.  He's so proud that we are moving on and enjoying life.  He's so proud that I left an unsafe situation, as scary as it was.  He is so proud that even his death doesn't have the same hold as it has in the past.  He's so proud that we are looking forward to the future.  And he is so proud of who I am, who Spencer is, who Leah is, and who Macie is. (I can't be sure he's proud of Emmit, because he REALLY loved Charles, the dog).  I just know it and I am 10,000% sure that he would want it this way, because DAVE WANTED GOOD THINGS FOR US!  I can't tell you how much I loved that about him and how much that character quality of his, helps me now.

So, on Dave's death day, we really just enjoyed the day with the four of us.  We saw the movie, Ralph Breaks the Internet  (I never would have chosen to see that movie, but I loved it), we did a little last minute Christmas shopping, and then we went to one of those pottery painting places.  We painted plates with things that reminded us of Dave.  Then in the evening, we went home and watched Christmas Vacation, because that is what Dave and I did the night before he died.  I still feel so lucky that Dave and I had such a sweet night, the night before he died.  What a gift!

At the top of Spencer's plate, he added the quote,  "Did you see the Peak?" because EVERY time it snowed on Pikes Peak, Dave would call
from work and make sure we saw the snow up there!

My Dave quote was, "Before we go, everyone needs to pick up
10 pieces of trash."  This quote is meaningful to me, because until
his funeral, I thought maybe he just said that to our family, but one of
his friends that spoke, included that Dave quote in his talk. One thing
I loved at his funeral is that everything I heard was so consistent with
who I knew Dave to be. He was the same person with everyone he
met.  Dave was just Dave.

Another incredible gift that happened the week of Dave's death day is this little story.  I LOVE this.  So, a couple weeks prior, a friend sent me a picture of Macie when she was still in Ethiopia.  It made me realize that I was missing some pictures.  So, I took a cursory glance around for Dave's old phone, wondering if I ever got the pictures off of it.  I couldn't find it, but then I was looking for something else a week later and came across his phone in the most random place ever.  It said it was disabled, but I tried to sync it with my computer and it actually worked.  Some of the pictures I had, but some of them I had NEVER seen and there were a number of videos that I had, also, NEVER EVER seen.  Evidently, when Macie came home, I was busy falling apart and Dave was busy taking videos of her.  So, the week of Dave's death day, you could find the four of us huddled around my computer, watching these new found treasures.

I love the timing of this discovery.  It was so perfect.  I'm so happy that we didn't discover them until now, because now they feel so untainted.  I love that the kids can hear Dave in the videos.  When I took videos it was usually of the kids and not Dave, believe it or not, and usually he was at work or wherever.  But in the videos he took, it was his voice and his personality that you get to know.  There were a couple videos that I think the kids watched literally 20 times.  Those videos were not ones where my kids were performing or doing something video worthy, but they were videos where Dave was interacting with them.  I think they were so hungry to know what Dave was like with them.  I won't post those, because they feel so sacred to my kids, but I want to post a couple of them to share Dave's voice and to share this perfectly timed little treasure.