Happy 19th Birthday Porter

I Just wanted to wish you a HAPPY BIRTHDAY sweetheart!!!  Your family loves you all the way to eternity and we look forward to celebrating birthdays with you again someday.

Six Months

Today is a hard day.  It has been six months since I lost my 18 year old baby.  Those emotional waves that come and go aren't happening as often, yet Porter is always in the back of my mind and forever in my heart.  I can be doing something as simple as driving down State Street and I will start crying.  I was weeding and cleaning the yard yesterday and a small memory triggered something and I started crying.  I don't mind crying, in fact it is very cleansing for me.  It's just embarrassing when it happens in public. My eldest son walked into the room last night and said "It still doesn't seem real."  I knew exactly what he was talking about and I completely agreed with him.  Each day I wake up and hope it's a bad dream, yet reality hits and I know it isn't.

In just 8 days, September 13th, it will be Porter's 19th birthday.  We are having a big celebration for him.  We are breaking it down into two different days.  On Saturday the 11th we are eating breakfast burritos (Porter's all-time favorite food) at the Dry Canyon parking lot in Lindon and then hiking Porter's mountain and placing this memorial rock at the base of the cliff.  A good friend of our family owns a business called rememberrocks.com and created this beautiful rock for us to place in the mountains. (Thanks so much Neal and Arlene)  Our family sat around the kitchen table one night trying to figure out what to put on the rock and this is what we all agreed on.  Porter's very favorite group was Keane and his favorite song was "Somewhere Only We Know."  This title also has reference to those of us that know exactly where he fell, and that's where this memorial will be placed. 

The second part of Porter's birthday celebration will be on Monday the 13th and will be held in our back yard.  Porter's life long dream was to be in a band and to be famous one day.  He worked so hard at his music, his writing, his audio mixing and eventually tried out to be in a band and was accepted. The name of the band is "Ask for the Future".  They are so graciously coming to perform a concert in Porter's honor.  We are so excited about this event and are looking forward to a nice evening of music, friends, family, and neighbors, whom we appreciate and love so much.  Oh! and eating cake too because it's a birthday party.

I love you Porter♥