Fanciful Quilts

Everyone has a story. Some stories will make you weep. Some stories will make you sing with joy. Some stories are better left unwritten or unspoken. This story will probably only touch the heart if you're like me - the lady who cries over the old Hallmark card commercials. This is simply....the story of the rose. On 27 July 2008, my beloved Riley & I celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary. Yes, there is indeed an account written of our 37th. On the day before he was to leave to go back to Iraq, he disappeared for several hours. No explanation before or after other than "I have something to take care of". Sometimes it is better to just leave things as they are. On the first Tuesday after his departure, there was a knock on the apartment door. I opened the door to find myself facing a middle aged gentleman who held out a single red rose in a vase and with my answer "Yes" to his question "Are you Sharon?", I found myself holding the vase - befuddled ...

Today at 6pm, I will be hugging my beloved once again before he flies back to Iraq. This time - it's a little harder to say 'see you soon' than it was in July when he was home. Perhaps because his dad isn't with us any longer - or perhaps because we just enjoyed being together so much. We saw a touching movie "Fireproof" yesterday. This is a movie that every married couple should see - or anyone thinking of getting married. Yes, it's a faith-based movie and it carries a beautiful message of what marriage is meant to be. This movie gave me pause to think about love. Love transcends all - and if there's always love in thought, word & deed, how could we not succeed ? No one said it would ever be easy. You'll always face someone or something that demands more love than you think you could ever give....but if it's there, deeply cemented within, the more you give - the more you'll be filled with it. I see now that my beloved husband has a lov...

On Thursday, 9 October 2008 at 6:30am, my cell phone rang. I knew in my heart this wasn't going to be an ordinary call. No "good" calls come early in the morning. Indeed, this call was not a good one. It was my mother-in-law. It's time to try to get Riley, my beloved husband, home from Iraq as soon as possible. The hospice nurse believed dad had less than 48 hours left. Red Cross was contacted by 7am - information relayed as best I knew. A call was placed to Riley's unit - Riley was contacted and the cell phone was ringing off and on for the next five hours. Riley's stateside company was called .... phones were buzzing all over the world to get Riley on a plane home. I decided I would leave early Friday morning. That plan was quickly cancelled. At 4:30pm, the call came through from one of Riley's brothers. Dad was gone. By 5pm, our son & I were on our way to Wellington, with a quick stop in a suburb of Columbus to our daughter's & ...

On the 30 th of October, my sister & I went to the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Now there's a drive for you. Yahoo directions took us through scenic Ohio, then Indiana and then Kentucky...or was it Kentucky, Indiana and back through Kentucky? It seemed like a very, very long trip - a scenic one though. It's a beautiful place - very clean, very well done. A little pricey ($23 for adults.... but children under 5 gain free access - but I imagine they have to be with their parents....!) And to the right of the building is the botanical garden. We were there for perhaps three hours or more - saw everything that was to be seen - including the bookstore and a great 22 minute film entitled "Men In White". Film presented a good case for creation vs evolution . It was shown in a reality theater. Never having the pleasure of being in a reality theater before, I was quite startled when the seats moved when thunder on the screen rolled - and when it rained on screen, we were...