A Visit to the Cemetery

WINTER 2002, Christi 4 1/2. She didn't want to smile as you can plainly see.
Since my teachers' meeting was moved up today, I had to take Shayla with me. Thankfully, one of Christi's best friends was home today also and Sarah's sweet mother offered to let Shayla play at her house instead of going to my meeting. On the way to Findlay, we told Christi that we were short on time or we would stop and play in the snow with her. (When I spoke with Shayne via cell phone who also drove by the cemetery today, he told me he wanted to stop and build Christi a snowman, but the snow was too fluffy.)

Shayla had a fabulous time with precious Sarah and I just wished Christi would have been there too and I wondered what was going on in little Sarah's young mind. On our way home, Shayne called to tell me Shayla's swimming lessons were cancelled. Since he called right before we approached the cemetery I figured that was our clue that we needed to go make Snow Angels on top of her grave. I pulled in and Shayla and I were so shocked and surprised by what we saw we didn't think of making Snow Angels - until we ran (brrrrr!) back to the van yelling our "Hail Mary" prayer outloud because we were so cold we couldn't stand there any longer.

Much to our surprise and delight, we found an INCREDIBLE grave blanket. It's HUGE and GORGEOUS. It's all green and covered with an abundance of lovely holiday ornaments. I don't even want to think how much it cost and we cannot imagine who did something so generous, but we loved it!! Additionally, we noticed something orange and black (our school colors) under the small pile of snow. We uncovered it and discovered a Seneca East pom pom. It was the sweetest thing. At that time we were still ohhing and ahhing, and then decided how cold we were so we literally ran to the van to head home shouting our prayer and thanking God for glorious, thoughtful and compassionate friends who have so richly blessed our lives by sharing their love!
On this cold winter day it's fun to look at warm summer pictures (Christi 3 years old, Shayla 1, Summer 2000)
Shayla got a big kick out of this picture the other day. I explained to her this was taken while we were waiting for Shayne to come home from work so we could drive to Florida in June of 1999. (Christi 2, Baby Shayla)