Working my way back…

It’s been a long three months since my last post from…Arlington, Virginia.

Since then, we’ve packed up and moved cross country to…Laramie, Wyoming.

We arrived in Wyoming mid-August and I’ve been unpacking hundreds of boxes and trying to get 0ur new home in order. It’s coming along…slowly.

We’ve lost square footage and lots of built-ins, but it’s a nice house and…I have my own craft room! My room is in the basement but (a really nice finished basement and) here in Laramie most of the new homes have half the house in what is called…the lower level. And it’s an entire room…whereas in our home back in Arlington, I had only half of our guest bedroom.

I have yet to unpack everything (and I lost storage space…2 dressers that we didn’t move with us) and yesterday afternoon I realized that I’m missing all my x-mas stuff. Yikes! I thought the movers had moved all my stuff into the craft room. So I need to go…box hunting.

There’s so much I’ve missed the past three months---so here’s to working my way back…

With Deepest Sympathy…finding the right words

I find sympathy cards difficult to send…it's hard to find the right words to say during a time of sorrow.

Creating a sympathy card is equally difficult…I don’t want it to be bright and cheery nor do I want it to be all dark and gloomy…and it has to be heartfelt.


This past week we needed a sympathy card for a young man who was my son’s age and a school mate. I wanted this card to be special…just like he was known to be. I know Hallmark has tons of cards out there with touching real life sentiments, but I wanted this card to be completely and totally from our hearts and not some mass produced sentiment...written by a group of people sitting around a table somewhere…no matter how poignant or touching.

At the same time, though, I thought…how can I possibly be doing something so trivial as making a card!!! Or…how can I possibly send my trivial creation to a family whose heart is breaking?!

I thought about this long and hard…all the while working on this card...and then it hit me! I was creating from the heart. I had thought about what I wanted to say…how I wanted to say it…and the look of the card, especially since this was for parents of a young boy. I didn’t want it to be too adult or somber...nor too bright and juvenile.

Somehow, I don't remember why...I thought about butterflies and their short but beautiful life span and went looking for butterfly poems and found this, which I absolutely love...even though I’m sure it’s written (or even mass produced) on Hallmark cards everywhere!

Thanks for letting me share…

For Will...

Today I am so very sad. I learned this morning that a young neighbor boy (nearly 13 years old) who had been a classmate of my 12 year son passed away in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday morning. I actually saw and heard an ambulance arrive on their street, but hoped and prayed it wasn’t for him. Sadly…it was.

His mother shared so eloquently in their online journal this morning… “It is raining here today. It must be the whole universe crying with us as we write to tell you that Will died yesterday morning.” Yes…indeed we are all crying for Will...and for his family.

Will had been diagnosed in early December with lymphoblastic lymphoma. He had not been feeling well for a few weeks in November but his Doctors thought he had a viral infection and then the flu…it was a shock to everyone when he was diagnosed with cancer.

Will was one of those tremendously nice and likeable kids…always smiling, always polite and with a wonderful outlook on life. He was sweet and gentle and never seemed grumpy. He was an avid baseball player and fan. You just knew he would grow up to be a nice adult and a good person.

It seems impossible that this boy, whom we first met in Kindergarten, is now gone. I cannot even begin to fathom how his mom and dad must feel, because even though we weren’t close friends or neighbors, I feel as if we too have lost a member of our own family. There’s heaviness and emptiness in my heart.

Will was initially in my son’s grade when they started Kindergarten, but we decided to have our son repeat a grade because of dyslexia and as he was nearly a year younger than most of the boys in his class. But we would chat whenever we saw each other at school, at the bus stop or in the neighborhood and his mom and I volunteered for some of the same school functions and always exchanged information on how our kids were doing. I can’t even imagine…

So this post is for Will. In honor and memory of his short lived life, and for his parents and his brother, his aunts and his uncles and his grandparents and his friends, who loved him and will now miss him. I hope his parents find some solace in knowing that their young man touched so many lives and so many of us share a piece (albeit tiny in comparison) of their heartache.

So after school today, I hung on to my young boy for so many extra minutes and told him (again) just how very much I love him, and how very much he means to me.

Thank you for letting me share my sadness…

Cozy fire...or...I can’t believe I got this shot!!!

This is what I’ve had going since mid-afternoon. It’s April 15, and in Northern, Virginia, it’s raining and a chilly 42 degrees. We had some left-over wood sitting on our front porch that I really didn’t want to have to bother moving to the carport…so since the weather is cooperating, thought I would burn the wood. Now it’s all gone. But not before my son got to have one last read sitting in front of the fire!

Tomorrow it will be in the high sixties and 72 on Saturday.

Hope you have a nice evening, wherever you live...

On a Clear Day...but not today

This is what we woke up to on Friday morning (but I never got around to posting). It was very dense and hard to see and I thought it was pretty neat and erie looking.

Actually, I wasn’t awake (or quick) enough to grab my camera and take the shots before the fog started to dissipate....oh well.

You can barely see an outline, but usually you can see a house, which is way across...on the other side of the street...from the house behind our house (if that makes sense).
This is what you see on a clear day.

Normally I can see my son’s bus as it comes down the street, but not this morning. He had to walk to the bus in the dense fog.

This is what you would normally see…double yellow lines in the road (just above the chimney).

Hope you have a great day…

A HUGE Life Decision...and a Thank You!

It’s been nearly a month since my last post. I’d been sick since mid-January…first with a bad cold/virus and fever and then bronchitis…and have since been left with some residual respiratory ailments.

More recently, however, my husband and I have been consumed with a huge life decision…“Do we leave the D.C. area (where we’ve lived for the past 25-30 years) to move to a small University town in one of those big box states?”

The immediate answer should be a resounding “yes,” since it would fulfill my husband’s dream of being a full-time Law Professor. Yet…the cut in pay, a questionable seller’s market and a 12 year-old whose life is rooted here…make it a difficult decision.

I’ve spent the past two weeks scouring the internet to learn as much as possible about our potential new home town. Now this weekend, we’re going to visit. I’m keeping my fingers crossed (that we’ll fall in love)!

So the crafting and the blog posts have fallen (once again) by the wayside.

To reduce my stress level, I’ve been stopping by some of my favorite blog sites and have also happily chanced upon some new ones that have left me...“all-a-twitter.” So many talented and awesome ladies out there…and generous to boot!

So thank you kind and generous ladies, who have helped to erase...momentarily...the worry lines from of my forehead as I wonder…”what’s in store for us this next year?”

And really…shouldn’t there be a card lurking in (or come out of) all of this?