Opa!

Friday night date night was a little different this past week.  We had planned on a couples’ night out, but mid-week when Josh started coming down with a sinus infection, he opted to stay home.  I went out anyway, and my wonderful friends never made me feel like a 5th wheel. 

We went to Tavern Opa! as Channelside.   I’ve been to an Opa’s once before in Orlando, and I loved it!  When I found out that one was coming to Tampa, I had to go!

The food was amazing!  Have you ever had Saganaki?  If not, you MUST try it!  It’s flaming cheese!   We had the Saganaki and spicy Feta with Pita for an appetizer (BEWARE: Definitely not LoseIt! approved).  For dinner, I split a Greek platter and salad with Allison and it was TONS of food! 

Opa!

Every hour or so, the restaurant basically turns into a Greek-style night club.  The music turns up, and the servers all come out doing some type of a line dance around the whole restaurant.  The servers toss paper napkins everywhere, and they leave a stack on your table for you to toss too.  Watch out though… the napkins will land in your drink!  A Belly Dancer comes out too and dances around the tables; oh and sometimes ON the table!  So much fun!

 

Overall, I give Opa’s a 4 out of 5!  I can’t wait to go back again!

  

Cupcakes & A Thought

Here are the cupcakes that Josh and I baked last night for our babies…

We had fun baking together.  I think we’ll make this a tradition to do every year for the babies. 

Heidi’s color is purple, Lily was always pink, Paige, yellow and our little boy, Rylan, is blue.  So we saw it fitting to decorate their cupcakes in those colors.  (Although when typing this, I just realized that Heidi’s cupcake was pink this year too.  Oops!)

On another note, my good blogger friend told me today that I “…remind [her] that its okay to move forward and enjoy what life has to offer. “  Thanks for pointing that out, Andrea.  I didn’t realize that, but it is SO true.  Going though this experience has taught me many things, and one is to enjoy the life we have and appreciate our life.  It may be hard to appreciate what life has dealt us at times, but I firmly believe that God has a plan for us, and good will come of this. 

 

Thank you all for your sweet Heaven Day messages!  We really appreciate all your love and support.

Heaven Day

*Sigh*

Here we go again; more Heaven Days… 

Last month we honored and celebrated Heidi on her 1st Heaven Day, and now it’s Lily, Paige, and Rylan’s special Heaven Day.

I think about heaven a lot.  It’s such a mystery, but I know it is indescribable and beyond amazing.  When things get really tough or I’m sad, I just try and remember that our time here on earth is actually really short, but we get to spend an eternity in heaven.  My children are there waiting for me, and we will all  be together one day and everything will be perfect!  

Even though one year ago today was the worst night of our lives, the scariest, and the saddest…  It was still beautiful and peaceful in a way.  We held each of our children, prayed with them, and watched their souls become angels. 

I’m surprised, but I am not sad today.  I’m OK with today.  I  want to make remembering my babies a happy thing.  Sure, I’m sad that I don’t have them here with me, but that is so beyond my control it is not even worth dwelling on.  We are celebrating The Green Beans today.  I am so honored that they are a part of my life and that they continue to touch so many of your lives.  That makes me so happy.

For Beans’ Heaven Day, I had this mahogany box engraved for them.  Tonight, we are going to put all of their ashes in their box and keep it on a shelf in our bedroom.  We are also going to spend the evening making the perfect cupcakes for them.

We love you and miss you dearly, Lily, Paige, and Rylan…

Valentine’s Day

 This year for Valentine’s Day, we planned on going to Charley’s Steakhouse for dinner.  To make a long story short, we made the reservation for the wrong night and didn’t end up going.  Regardless, I was still craving steak, so for Valentine’s Day we made our own delicious steak dinner and dinned in!

(Oh, and by the way I’m a brunette now!  What do ya think?  I’m just trying it out for awhile, and liking it so far.)

On the menu – We had parmesan crusted filet mignon, loaded baked potatoes, caesar salad, veggies, rolls, and cheesecake with fresh raspberries for desert!

I got the idea to make a crust for our filets from Ally.  I wanted to do something different than just the usual steak and make it a little more like a steak you’d order from a restaurant.  Instead of trying out a recipe, I just decided to wing it.

I mixed together a 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, and a 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese.  Mixed in 1 egg, some salt and pepper, onion powder, and basil. 

Once the filets were gilled to perfection, Josh brought them in and I topped them with the parmesan crust mixture.  Then we broiled them for about 5 minutes, until the crust started browning.

Overall, it was a nice Valentine’s Day.  The food was delicious and the company was great; Josh and I sat around the dinner table for hours just chatting and sipping champagne. 

Thank you for the Green Bean Valentine, Jennifer!  I love it!

From A New Perspective

It recently dawned on me that our parents and family have suffered and grieved the loss of our Green Beans in a similar way that Josh and I have.  We didn’t just lose our children; my parents lost their grandbabies, my siblings lost their nieces and nephews, and so on...  Over the past year, I’ve been so consumed with our loss that I haven’t considered my family's feelings as much as I would have liked to.  Now that I am getting a (somewhat) clearer mind, I asked my parents to share their thoughts and feelings on the subject.  This is an important perspective that I think often gets ignored in all the chaos.  Beware – it’s a tear jerker (at least for me anyways).

My Daddy writes:

We thank God for Lauren, Josh, and their “Green Beans”. This past year has been a mixture of sadness and joy. The days of sorrow and crying have moved on to hours and then on to moments (though sometimes the hours return). By the grace of God we are now often filled with joy in knowing that Heidi, Lily, Paige and Rylan are walking with Jesus in Heaven. One day we will all meet in Heaven and get to know them better.

We are proud of Lauren and Josh. They worked relentlessly to save their babies. Many weeks were spent in the hospital and throughout Josh rarely left her side. We went to visit often and would spend a couple hours with them. Only once in a while would Josh take the opportunity to go check on things at home. He was never gone for long. He was with her day and night.

We saw Lauren suffer much physically lying in the head down – feet tilted up position. Her feet did not touch the ground for weeks. Eating and digesting was a struggle, but she persevered. She wanted these babies. The last few days were the worst. It was hard for us to watch the physical pain she endured especially from the Magnesium treatments. Even harder for us to see the emotional pain when she pPROM’d, hoping and hoping the babies would hold on. We had only been home a few hours when we got the call that the babies had come. When we arrived the babies were already still. We touched them as the nurses gently cleaned them and clothed them. Josh and Lauren had been able to hold them as they died in their arms, and were now exhausted and thoroughly drained. Soon after her release Lauren had to reenter the hospital. She was so ill and weak that we were facing the possibility of losing our sweet Lauren as well. After a couple days, thankfully, she began to recover and a few days later she was able to return home.

We thank God for all of you following their story on their website. Your prayers and comforting comments have been a help to Lauren and Josh and us also. It is wonderful to know that so many people care for them and their babies. We also pray that God will bless all of you especially those who have also suffered the loss of their babies.

We pray that God will bless Lauren and Josh with children again. We pray the Green Bean Angels will watch over them (Matthew 18:10b –“ For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven.”).

We are confident (John 6:23b – “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord) that we will see them in heaven. What a grand reunion that will be!!

In God’s Love,

Gene and Fran

Ask and you shall receive!

Many of you left comments and emailed me saying that you would like to have your very own Green Bean Bracelets!  That makes me so happy, and I love that you are all willing to help carry out the memory of the Green Beans.  Really, that means so much to me!  This has tuned out to be a great way to honor our angels.


This is a great opportunity to help one of our favorite charities, March of Dimes.  With each purchase of a Green Bean Bracelet, a donation will be made to the March of Dimes.  The bracelets are being sold for $5 each and 100 percent of the proceeds will be donated in honor of Heidi, Lily, Paige, and Rylan. 

Quantity

1 Bracelet $5.00 3 Bracelets $15.00 5 Bracelets $25.00 10 Bracelets $50.00

The support that we continue to get amazes me and helps me each day.   I love that the memory of my babies can live on, and that they have touched so many people’s hearts. 

Click the ‘Buy Now’ button above to order your bracelets.  Remember, all of the proceeds will go to the March of Dimes.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Green Bean Bracelets

The other day, Josh told me that he ordered me something.  Something that I would never be able to guess and something that I’d love!

And that ended up being THESE…

Josh ordered these bracelets that say “Remembering the Green Beans”.  It was a very sweet gesture of him.  The bracelets are something that he can always wear, and they are great to give out to our friends and family too. 

We have some plans in place for Lily, Paige and Rylan’s upcoming Heaven Day on February 23rd.  I look forward to sharing it with you soon!

Friday Night Date Night – Updated!

Josh and I used to be really good about having our Friday night date nights, but we haven’t done it much lately.  We use to make it a point to try a new restaurant on Friday nights.  It was a great way to get out and to try new things. 

Life’s been so busy lately, and we realized that we need to slow down and take time to enjoy each other’s company.  SO… to get back into the swing of things we decided to have my iPhone help us out with deciding on a new restaurant.  I plugged in the location of where we wanted to eat, and let Urbanspoon do the rest!

We ended up having Spanish tapas at Cafe Ole.  We had a good time despite the food being a little overpriced (even though Urbanspoon had it listed as only two $$).  And after dinner, we went and played some pool. 

It was nice to get to spend some quality time with my hubby after the busy week we had!

 

Updated:

I’m introducing my new rating system that I came up with for restaurants that I try out.  Out of a possible 5 full glasses, I give Cafe Ole a mere 1.5 glasses.   Next week, we’ll be trying a new restaurant for Valentine’s Day and I am really looking forward to it!  It’s gonna be a goodie!

    

More Doggie Drama

Romie decided she needed to go back to the vet last week, as if her recent cow incident wasn’t enough!  I started to notice something was wrong when Romie started rubbing her eyes a lot, and then I noticed that her eye was all red and had a hazy look to it. 
I called the vet, and (of course) they advised me to bring her in that day.

Seven came along for the ride to be a supportive big sister to Romie. 

It turns out that Romie got some sort of a scratch on her eye, and she has a Corneal Ulcer!  Poor baby! 
 
When she’s unsupervised, she’s supposed to wear this cone.  She’s also back on anti-inflammatory meds and eye drops 4 times a day.  Her prognosis is good; there doesn’t seem to be any complications.  Romie should be as good as new in a few days.