LOVE in the 406: Memories

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Memories

My mom gave me some good advice as I've had a hard time grieving the loss of my nephew recently. She said that every time I feel sad that he's gone, I should think of a few of my favorite memories with him that will bring a smile to my face. It's been helping a lot.

My first favorite memory with Hayden was in December 2010. Brad and I had been living in Lewiston near the Simmons for a few years as Brad prepared to go to dental school. It was a long road for us to get into dental school and Brad had just applied for his third time. December 1st he got his acceptance letter to Indiana University School of Dentistry and we could not have been happier at that time in our lives. I was on cloud 9 for weeks. On December 3rd we celebrated Hayden's 13th birthday and were up at there house. After dinner Hayden pulled out his guitar and sat on the counter and played a lot of fun songs all night. He had been taking lessons for a while and was really good. The good songs he was playing, and my extreme happiness from Brad getting accepted to dental school compelled me to dance around the kitchen while he played. It was a really fun night!

We both shared a love of music and he taught me a few Taylor Swift songs on the guitar and even bought me my first guitar string capo.

I have a lot of fun memories boating with Hayden. While we lived near the Simmons in Lewiston from 2009-2011 we got to go boating with them a lot. It was always amazing to see him barefoot ski! He easily picked up on any thing he wanted to do. Most recently we went out boating with them a few weeks ago after moving back to town. A friend brought some jet skis and it was only his second time riding one but he was already doing really cool tricks on them like submarine-ing. It was amazing.