Once upon a time...

A few months ago I expressed concern that my other children wouldn't know Ethne.  Mr. E was so young when the accident happened that he doesn't remember anything and Baby J and new little miss will never know their oldest sister, in this life.  I need them all to know of her, to know who she is and recognize her in pictures.  It makes me feel more like my family is whole.

When my mom saw that post and learned of my concern she called me up with an excellent idea.  As most people know, I have two younger brothers that are adopted.  When G (the older of the two) was still pretty young he started asking questions about where he came from so my mom wrote him a story about how he came to be part of our family.  She suggested that I do the same, write a story about Ethne that we could read with our kids.

So I set to work.  I started looking at printing companies that I knew would allow me to put together my own picture book.  And I got stumped.  Most of the companies had a minimum page number that I knew I wouldn't be able to meet and/or required too many pictures per page.  So I turned to social media and my friends gave some great suggestions.  I tried a few of their ideas and landed at the Walmart photo center, where I was able to choose a template, and then edit it as I pleased, it only required one picture per page, and the minimum page count was do-able.

So I got to work.  I chose pictures that I thought were good representations of Ethne, her spunk, her love, her beauty, and even her not so fun side.  I wanted to be honest about her and her life and not make her seem too perfect, because she wasn't always.  The story came pretty easily.



"Once upon a time a beautiful little girl was born..."  She loved her mom, and dad, and her brother.  She was silly, threw tantrums, and loved everyone she could.  Then there was an accident and she went to heaven.  Because we are an eternal family we will get to see her again, and she can help us when we need her.  I also included the scripture John 13:15.

We gave it to Mr. E for Christmas.  He loves it.  He pretty much has it memorized and likes to take it to church and read it at bed time.  I cry every time I read it.  Baby J reads it with us too and has started to recognize Ethne, it makes my heart happy.