I'm off this coming week to Virginia to help out my daughter-in-law. She's having surgery and, with my son in Afghanistan and a house full of rowdy boys, she needs all the help she can get. Hopefully this grandma can keep her cool (literally and figuratively, it's hot in Virginia this time of year for a Seattleite). I thank you in advance for your patience while I'm gone and promise that I will get your orders out just as soon as possible upon my return.
The Red Poppy Lady
As I walked into the grocery store yesterday I stopped to donate to the VFW and get my red poppy, I chatted briefly with the elderly lady handing them out, telling her my father, late husband and my son were all veterans. She told me hers too, and that she had been handing out red poppies for seventy years. Amazing! These poppies are made by veterans, and the benefits go to veterans and their families and for their memory. The association of the red poppy with war veterans came from a poem "In Flander's Field" written in 1918. We have the text of it in our reference section under Military Quotes and Songs. It would look great on our new Red Poppy Paper from Scrap Your Trip.
The Good and the Not So Good
The vacation was great. I took my grandson Jason to Washington DC for his high school graduation present. We had a lot of fun. Our favorite parts were the Museum of Natural History - that's Jason's interest -, our Segway Masonic tour based on Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, and the tour of Gettysburg, but for me there were so many moving moments. The National Archives with the Charters of Freedom including the Magna Charter was exceptional and the Changing of the Guard at Arlington leaves you speachless. I had been to DC as a child, and once briefly a few years before, but this was my first extended trip as an adult. And I think everyone should go at least once.
Now that I'm back, I took only two days to catch up on the orders. Phew! Thanks for your patience. But I am dealing with what many of you are. My son is back in the Persian Gulf, this time in Afghanistan. Here he is in training at Fort Jackson. It is odd seeing my Navy son in Army gear, but he is going to be in a support role at Baghram Airfield. Hopefully, he will return safe as will all of your loved ones.
Card Making Day at Fort Lewis
Well, it's actually now called Joint Base McCord-Lewis, but anyway, a group of us got together for Operation Write Home yesterday afternoon at the Greenwood Community Center to make cards. Coordinated by Rebecca and Sandy, the organization's founder, we managed to turn out a whopping 527 cards! Our loan male participant, Bob, is the husband of one of the cardmakers and he is in charge of stamping the back of the cards with the organizations logo and keeping us gals in line, or so it seems in the picture. Anyway, a fun day and a very worthwhile cause.
CHA and Across Time and the Atlantic Ocean
I'm off on Saturday to attend the winter Craft and Hobby Show in Anahem.
We will be accepting orders during this time (January 22 to January 28th) but not processing them until I return. Then I will get them out just as soon as possible, in the order received, which usally just takes me two business days. In the meantime, thanks for your patience.
The other day I received an email from France from a young man who collects World War II memorabilia to honor those who liberated his country from the Nazis. He purchased an old trunk from a flea market in the suburbs outside Paris and it had the name "O. L. Eckerson" on it. He did some research online and after going to the online Registry at the World War II Memorial in Washington D.C. found that I had honored my cousin who was in the Women's Auxiliary Corps and who later became a career military person and retired as an Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. He found my email on the store website and contacted me. I sent him this picture of her taken at that time as he had sent me a picture of the trunk. She was actually my first cousin once removed but was more like an aunt as she and my father and her sister had grown up together in the same farmhouse in New Jersey. Why the trunk never made it back home is a mystery, but it is certainly fascinating that it turned up again after all these years.
I have also honored my father and mother in the Registry and if you know someone who served in the armed forces during the War, or contributed to its efforts as my mother did, you can honor them too at www.wwiimemorial.com
A Bittersweet Return
I'm back from vacation. It was a fun time, but bittersweet. My son has orders to return to the Persian Gulf - Iraq, but will probably be diverted to Afghanistan. I won't see him for at least a year, maybe longer. We had a lovely Thanksgiving, nice weather (70 degrees my last day there in Virginia).
We went to Christmas town at Busch Gardens on Saturday night. It was a lot of fun. I rode Griffon for the first time (I'm a roller coaster junkie) and this one is a real screamer - especially in the front seat at night - two 90 degree drops. This picture is of me and my three Virginia grandsons, Brendan (8), RJ (20) and Tyler (13).
I returned home to the incredible news of the four police officers in our community gunned down in cold blood. Lakewood is my brother's home and where my parents lived for many years. My heart goes out to the family, friends and co-workers of those dedicated officers.
I have sent out half of the orders received during my vacation today, and the rest will go out tomorrow. Again, I appreciate your patience.
Heading into Fall
Well, the rains have started in the Northwest. We had a glorious spring and summer, the best I have ever seen in the forty plus years I have been here. So now it's time to pay the piper for our beautiful greenery. Mid-summer I lost my mother, who had been residing in Florida, so we brought her ashes up here and put her in with my father at the national cemetery. They met during World War II in Washington DC. He was in the Army and she worked for the Bureau of Ships.
She told me that she used to have conversations with a Navy commander who was kind of an outcast at the time for his strange ideas - he turned out to be Admiral Hyman Rickover, the founder of the modern nuclear Navy. My late husband worked on some of the early nuclear subs in Groton. Connecticut, and one day he was overseeing repair work on one of the subs (after a famous collision at sea) and was very intent and not looking where he was going and accidently knocked over Admiral Rickover. He apologized profusely but the Admiral just told him, "don't worry, son, just keep up the good work!" My Navy son during his enlisted years served on a Trident nuclear sub based here in Washington State and we took a family cruise and took my mother along. Back in the days of World War II and Korea when she worked for the Navy, women weren't allowed on the ships after they were commissioned. She was so thrilled to be on one. Talk about coming full circle and six degrees of separation!
We have some new custom albums available in the store, and for the first time some civil war stickers have come out. Karen Foster has a new military collection and we finally have some rubber stamps for firefighters, EMTs, police and sheriffs.
Fallen Heroes
This Memorial Day finds me having taken not my usual one, but two, bouquets of flowers out to Tahoma National Cemetery. The first for my father who has been there since the cemetery opened in 1997 and the second for my husband who was just laid to rest in January. My 14-year-old granddaughter came with me and I was glad for the company. As I mentioned in a previous post, Tahoma is called the Arlington of the West and this weekend you can see why as it is a beautiful weekend and the flag plaza looks out over Mt Ranier. There are flags lining the whole avenue and the local junior high school has placed American flags at every single gravesite. It is truly a site to behold. Our heroes rest in peace in a place of beauty.