Well, we made it through the first year.

I can't believe everything we've packed into a year. Michael giving up legal practice; moving; study; kid stuff - some of it very positive such as feeling as though they've finally settled into our new family dynamic, some of it difficult such as getting them settled into a new town/school and sorting out visitation with their father; financial stress caused by ongoing dispute over payout for the partnership; and of course a pregnancy.

Throughout it all we've experienced trauma, grief, sadness, laughter, contentment, stress, pain (physical as well as emotional), excitement, nerves, anxiety, joy. And throughout it all we haven't once wavered in how close we feel to each other. We've been the one constant and I'm kind of proud of that.

Anyway... the anniversary. We spent the day with the kids, which was what we wanted. We had to go to a BBQ (a work do for Michael) but we were all together. The kids happily came and went from us to playing outside with other kids and that was nice. We went shopping and bought the first plants for Kat's garden.

We said right from the start that we would buy a plant every year on her anniversary to make a garden and also that we didn't want to buy the first of them when she died; we wanted to buy the first one on the first anniversary. Our intention all along had been to buy a rose each year but in the lead up to actually buying something I was getting nervous about growing roses in this climate. We decided to go to the nursery and look at roses first then if we didn't want one to look at a lemon tree. I liked the idea of her tree being productive, of using the fruit from it. And Michael liked the lemon being yellow for Kat (it's the colour we associate as "hers" since so much of what we bought for her unintentionally turned out to be yellow).

So we got to the nursery and the roses looked decidedly sick and there were no fruit trees. Next stop - Big W. The first thing we found was a lime, the second was an olive. As soon as I saw the olive tree it just felt right. Especially when I read the care instructions and it mentioned the olive being a symbol of peace and happiness. We walked around with the olive in our hands but kept going back to the lime as well. We stood and talked about it for a moment and decided to get both.

Just as we walked towards the limes to pick one up the kids came running over excitedly saying "there's a butterfly". We turned around and there was the most magnificent blue butterfly fluttering directly above where we had just been standing as we decided to get both plants. I turned to hug Michael and found myself sobbing. Stood there in his arms, weeping into his shoulder in the nursery at Big W. Didn't care.

Our trees have now been potted up and they are both beautiful.