Hope...

For a few weeks now we have been eluding to a couple of projects we've been helping some special people to complete.  It is finally time to share with everyone! Since we have a lot to tell you about we decided to do this in a couple different posts!

A special post written by Mommy and Daddy today!

A few months ago we were approached by a couple of the nurses from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where the trio was born, asking us if we wanted to participate in a couple of projects to inspire other NICU parents who will follow in the years to come.

One of the projects was to display NICU graduates on a "graduate wall of hope", in the brand new state of the art NICU at the University of Washington Medical Center.  We were so excited to help out with this project! This was a place where we feel our children were given the chance of a lifetime to show what they are made of and prove to the world that even the smallest of babies are fighters! To help with the project we were asked to come up with a theme, something our babies liked to do.

We spent a bit of time trying to come up with the perfect theme.  We thought for awhile and then we decided to use our theme for the summer. We chose "adventure".  The next task was to come up with props to fit the theme.  We thought of many different ways to depict this, a couple had already been used so we went with the one that we started our summer adventures with this year! We chose a beach theme! Given that the babies first summer adventure had been the beach and they had enjoyed it, we thought that was very fitting for them.  We decided to gather up beach props, so we ended up with swim suits, a blanket and a GIANT beach ball! We packed up the trio on a summer afternoon and headed for Seattle to meet up with one of our favorite NICU nurses, Heidi and another NICU buddy, Claire!  We had such a fun day, it was well worth the drive to see our friends and get our photos taken!  The trio even got to swim in a neat pool at the park where we went to meet our friends! You can read about that day here. 

Once the photo shoot was done, Heidi and Claire shared with us that the photos might be used in a variety of different ways and that we would be given a copy of the photos used.   As we mentioned earlier in the post, some of the photos would be used on a "wall of hope".

Below is a picture of one part of the wall with the pictures of various graduates! We tried to go back and get a picture of the other half today from the same angle, but so many people came to view the wall that it was impossible. We have other pictures of the wall from various angels. The trio is the bottom left.  The picture in color is of them with their "beach" theme and the black and white is a picture of them in the NICU. The picture was the first one taken after they were born of them all together! What an amazing display of hope it truly is, to see so many once tiny and fragile babies become strong and defy the odds stacked against them!

“When the world says give up, hope whispers try one more time.”