Week 3 52 Ancestors... Favorite Picture with a mini Hero story.

 Well not my favorite of all but one I love. 

When Aine was 6 months old, we had just moved to an apartment, because of our rental agreement of no children with our duplex. Why I love this picture is the interaction of the Hero and Aine. They are both in Heaven now, and always had a loving relationship. When he was starting to fail in his health, he laid down in the back of a Suburban and endured the bumpy roads, just to have time with her and her 8 children. I am so glad we made that trip because it was the last time she got to see him. It meant alot to her.

When We Need An Uplifting Hand Angels Appear to Help US

I was an only child.  My parents kept close to their extended family so my cousins began to feel like extended brothers and sisters.  When I moved,  what seemed far away, we lost contact.  I developed some wonderful friends that filled the loss of family.
In my picture on the right is my cousin from Oklahoma with his daughter, in the smaller picture are cousins from two families.  The darkheaded girl on the end is who I will be speaking of.  The butterfly is symbolic of a special friend that I don't have a picture of.
I was very blessed by each of the pictured loved ones.  When my sweetheart was in the throes (this is a great word to describe the pains of fighting cancer) of struggling with pain, doctors, chemotherapy, and all the fields of battle in cancer. These wonderful angels jumped in to lighten our load.  My cousins and I had not seen each other for several years, but the ties are very strong.  They couldn't be there with us, so they did what they could, such as sending funny jokes for us to laugh at...that is a biggie.  There were calls to check on how we were doing and share something funny.  I can't tell you how much it meant to my sweetheart to get those emails, and calls because he worried about me.  He didn't want me to be alone, and he was uplifted by their response to our need.  They have not stopped now that he is gone.  I still get the funny emails and calls.  I am very thankful for their loving gifts.  I pray for them to be blessed for their unselfish giving of time and love.

This is from Lori's writing prompt.  I have put a link to her blog on the side bar.

I purchased several elements from StoneAccentsStudios to start creating my own family digital scrapbooks

The gingham background and the butterfly are from http://scrapsationalscraps.blogspot.com/ .
The quickpageframe is from mITSYBELLE  

Sometimes We Need To Know We Were Appreciated

An older sister who had gone away to college and came back home to prepare for her wedding was given this letter from her little sister ten years younger than herself. Aine, if you click on the letter, it should let you enlarge it to be able to read it.

Our creative speller was very expressive, however we frequently needed her to verbally translate. We discovered in our family research, she had a prominent ancestor who was also a "creative speller" many generations back, Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Massachusetts. That was a fun fact that helped her.

However, back to the thought. When you are older and start looking back over your life, you often wonder, "did I impact anyone, did I make a difference for anyone?" Having a letter such as this preserved for you reaches across the years with a hug from a loving sister that said "I admire you." It hasn't changed and there is even greater love today between the two. I am glad I found this in some old school papers as I was cleaning out the attic area.