Alison Michelle 21 years old

This picture was among some of the things in the parcel I got today, I always liked this picture of Alison. I look at the key she’s holding and always think how now she holds the key to my heart :)

Parcel from Cyprus

Another parcel arrived today from Cyprus. :) I get so excited when these come in. Its mostly her clothing she has been shipping ahead. There’s no cheap way to get her things here and though the post may not seem at first thought to be the cheapest way to send it,  it actually is the least expensive of any of the methods I have looked into.  This should be the last of them now I think. Alison has been shipping a box or two like this about once a week now for the last four or five weeks. It’s always the most wonderful feeling comes over me when I get one of these. Just having her things in the house now are making it feel more like she’s already here. With each one that comes in I get more excited and the reality of our day finally coming close is setting in on me big time! We’ve waited nearly three years now for this, and I swear this last month seems to be dragging on so very slowly. The day just cant come soon enough for us now. Actually in just 4 days now she will be leaving Cyprus and heading to the Uk for about a two week stopover to visit her family befroe she’s heading on to become Mrs. Garazon! :) Whooo hooo! its almost here! love you Mrs. G XXXX

too bad we dont have any video from the karaoke sessions though, I have a feeling quite a few of the girls were feeling pretty good about that time of the evening ;)

As I have often done for many other events, a countdown script for this very special event has been added to the site, you may already have seen it there in the top of the sidebar. Well actually its in three parts which should be self explanatory, but seeing as I often don’t make things clear I should probably elaborate. The first one is a countdown until the day she leaves to go to the UK to visit family and friends for a couple of weeks before beginning her new life as an Americano! :) She leaves Cyprus on the 22nd of November. The next countdown is to the time her plane leaves London to come to the US, and of course it wouldn’t be complete without the last one; the most important one of them all to me, the time her plane lands at Norfolk where I will be waiting like I have won the lottery! :) She lands in Norfolk on December 9th at 9:28 pm. I wont be late, even if the plane is! ;) I still have some counters up on various other pages and sites of mine from past events that were very special to us, our trips to see each other and I also set a countup scriot on another site that counts the days since she and I met, as I write this now it was 939 days ago that this beautiful Brit sent me a smile and a short note asking “Would you like to write sometimes?” since we both were widows and at a point very similar in our lives. Well that’s a story already told so I will let that be and just say from almost that very day, we both knew things were going to be very different for us! ;)  Well anyway here we are 939 days later waiting only for another 39 more to pass. I can’t begin to tell you how long these days are going to seem now. I cant even begin to describe how happy I am either, Its beyond words, it truly is. I feel the hand of God in all our story and a love destined from the beginning of time.

I’ll just continue to update this post with any related news instead of making new ones. and I have to apolgize for not doing much to update the sites lately too, along with us being busy getting things sorted for our reunion, there has been a lot going on with my mom as well. Another long story that, and maybe I will get around soon to expounding on all that happened, but for now she is scheduled the middle part of November to have a rather in depth surgery to reconnect her stomach to whats left of her esophagus up in her throat. No none of this was brought on by sickness but by a simple procedure done at a local hospital in August that ended up tearing her esophagus and having to be transported out to a larger hospital. She’s coming along and doing ok, well the best she can under the citrcumstances if you consider being on a feeding tube 14 hours a day, every day since the 23rd of August! Well as I say thats another story…

For now heres the itinerary as it stands now

Outbound:  Tue 09 December 08

Duration: 12:28

Departing:  Terminal 3 London Heathrow Apt (LHR), London, United Kingdom
14:00 Tue
Arriving: Terminal 4, New York J F Kennedy International Apt (JFK), New York, United States
17:05 Tue

Continental Airlines (CO 8245)
Aircraft type - 346

Connection:

17:05, Tue - 19:45, Tue -
Change plane

Stop-over duration: 2h40
Departing:  Terminal 3 New York J F Kennedy International Apt (JFK), New York, United States
19:45 Tue
Arriving: Norfolk International Apt (ORF), Norfolk, United States
21:28 Tue

DELTA (DL 6231)
Aircraft type - ER4

Stay tuned for more updates and thanks for dropping by!

I love the Brits, One in particular!

I do!

will add some more later to this post, its early morning and I just got the call from her getting out of the interview. i really knew it would be approved, but until you hear it officially its just not the same. Well I am off to having some coffee to wake me up a bit (like I need the extra caffeine to get my heart racing faster!) and shes having lunch with her good friend Agneta now in Nicosia. It was ever so kind and thoughtful of her to take Alison today, shes been a good friend for so many years to her and I am so thankful she has such good friends around her too. And it is always thanks to God and our angels for making our dreams come true, heaven sent this love has always been, will always be. I’ll speak more later! Whooooo hooo! lol

Well I should start with getting the news. Both of us had signed up at the USCIS website to receive email updates about our case when any action was taken. Well there are only two instances of action in this particular petion, one is the receipt of it and the case pending, and the last one is the approval notice, we get NOTHING in between which only served to make us that more anxious waiting for word. Yesterday (I’m editing this a day after I made the post) was a busy day for both of us, with me working and then planning to go to the hospital after, and Alison at the time entertaining a friend for dinner at her house. With all the things going on with mom I have been keeping up with the family and friends by email a lot and have been in a habit of checking it on my phone a lot here lately. Well something told me to check it yesterday, one of those feeligs we get, and to be truthful I just thought it was someone wanting to know about mom or something like that. Well I knew alison was busy , but she still sends some kisses right often too :)

Anyway being in the state I was I was sort of in one of those worried states and when i saw the name “CRIS” whch i recognized from signing up at the USCIS site, my heart just seemed to stop and turn 

iPhone inbox

180 degrees around! I never have felt so much jubilation as when I saw that notice! I stopped right then and sent Alison a text (I started to cal her but her cell has been going south for a while now and the battery goes very fast on voice calls unless she is plugged into the charger. Here’s the text I did send, excuse the French ;)

 Those few minutes of texting and then her trying to call and speak were like something I hvae never experienced before, both of us jumping up and down likely and telling everyyone who would listen! well everyone knows how badly we wanted this day to come,andnow its here and soon when she is called to go to the embassy there, she will have her visa to come! :) We will have our Christmas together this year! :-) 

You know its seemed like an eternity waiting for this thing to be approved, and looking back now its was just 3 months, well i say just… to us it seeemd so much longer. From what i have seen though the average waitign time now is close to 10 to 13 months and I was so down we wpuld end up seeing another year go by, but somehow God and our angels pulled off another one and made us even happier than we have been :)  But its nothing will compare to that day she gets off the plane here and I hold her in my arms and knowing its for good! Love you baby! XXX

As long as we live, they too will live;
for they are now a part of us, as we remember them.
To live in the hearts we leave behind, is not to die.

The tide recedes, but leaves behind bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down, but gentle warmth still lingers in the land,
The music stops, and yet it echoes on in sweet refrains…
For every joy that passes, something beautiful remains.

The month of August will always be a month that in some ways remain more significant than others for both Chester and myself , its been 4 years now since both of us lost our spouses , the loves we had shared our lives with for so many happy years ,
never dreaming at that time in 2004 we would have another happy day without them , how wrong could we have been , well it certainly wasn’t easy , and for sure we spent many miserable dark gloomy days and nights grieving ,
Throughout that time I really did pray a lot to God , he is always there listening
Nicos and Gretchen , I believe with all of my heart that they were there in heaven together , planning a way to bring the two lost and lonely people they had left behind in the world together to share one very deep and devoted love , And they did , they made sure even though we were a huge Ocean apart that we found each other and found a love that could only be described as heaven sent

Today I didn’t want to stand at a graveside and be sad, I wanted to close my eyes and whisper a prayer of thanks for the love we had and the love we have received now , as the little passage above says in the last line
‘ For every joy that passes ,something beautiful remains ‘ and that beautiful something is the wonderful love Chester and I share today and forever more .

Also the beautiful collection of images on the video I found on You Tube just made me realize that no matter how difficult things can be around us in life , we are strong inside when we have Gods Love , the snow didn’t stop those flowers blooming and neither did the grief stop a new love forming for us , we are truly blessed.

Nicos and Gretchen - , As long as we live, they too will live for they are now a part of us as we remember them.

I can remember Alison having a puzzled look when I told her the name of the restaurant we were going, and I think she even had me repeat it a couple of times. As she said it was only a couple of days later she realised what I was actually saying. (thats another thing I found out, we have a twang and use the z sound a lot) I thought somewhere on the pc I would have a picture of the place as its been a local favourite for years and I’ve been there often. Sadly they closed down a few months ago. after 20 years in business. It wasnt really a fancy place but it had a very homely feel to it and the food was usually very good and plenty of it. During the season there was always a long wait for an open table, but thankfully they had a small porch on the front with a few benches and chairs to sit and relax while you waited. Even in the off season it stayed busy as there aren’t but a handful of restaurants of any quality in Currituck County. Speaking of those benches, in this picture you can see they have a pleasant view of a nicely kept lawn and landscape, not to mention making a great place to have a sit after dinner and surprise someone with a ring! :) I tried to find a link to a website that had a picture of the place on it but I couldn’t. I did find a nice review someone had taken the time to write here

By Patricia B. Mitchell, 2004.

Penny Gallop Bowden and Hagan Fischlschweiger are co-owners of Pots On ’N’ Kitchen restaurant, located on the Currituck mainland, just over the Wright Memorial Bridge in Harbinger, North Carolina. My family and I dined here on a recent Outer Banks vacation. Tanya Neeland, a relative, was hostess that night.We enjoyed our dinner in the family-oriented eatery with the “funny” name. (It comes from a frequent statement of Penny’s mom which meant, “Please come in and eat with us. The pot of food on the kitchen stove is ready and available.”)The restaurant was established in 1987 by Ginger Gallop Bowden and her cousins, sisters Joyce Hines and Katherine Johnston. (Katherine is now 88, but still comes in to peel a pot of potatoes every morning.) I had some of those potatoes, mashed — very thick, rich and buttery. Daughter Sarah had the potato casserole made with cream cheese and chives.A large choice of vegetables is offered with the entrees, which range from fried shrimp to pork tenderloin dishes.Sarah and son David ordered the fried shrimp. David says that the shrimp and the cole slaw he chose were both the best he ever had. Jonathan had fried clams, husband Henry opted for a garden salad and a bowl of gumbo, and I chose broiled sea trout.Rather than bread, diners are served sweet corncakes (flat, like pancakes) along with the entree. Cheerful Nancy Barfield, our waitress, took good care of us.David selected Hershey Pie for dessert, which he graciously shared around with other family members who were eyeing the slice of pie greedily. (I was one of those eyers.)Wine is available. The restaurant offers a child’s menu.Lunch is also served, plus a hearty “country” breakfast. The restaurant grows its own blueberries, so fresh blueberry pancakes are summer favorites.

well you can see from the review even the northern tourists who come down find the names of things funny down here. I was reading her explanation of how it got the name, and I can attest to it being true. I knew all the women who opened that restaurant very well. I was working in the late 70’s at a small little supermarket there in Harbinger, and all these women and their families lived probably within a mile of the store, so I saw them nearly every day coming in to shop. It was a very rural and small community then, just a two lane highway then and still some dirt back roads. Ginger was also a school teacher, and both my kids had her. And Ginger was also one of the women who helped to organise the wedding reception when Gretchen and I got married. Anyway just getting t the what I was going to say this woman has a fairly deep almost coarse voice for a small lady (years of trying to quiet the kids I imagine!) and she also has a very southern country accent too and I swear I can hear her now saying to us many times to Come on over and eat, the pots on ‘n (the) kitchen (well the “the” was actually spoken, but we Southerners sometimes speak a bit lazily and dont clearly pronounce very single word as we should, and if you’re not used to it you dont hear the very quick soft ‘th’ sound we put in… why waste extra energy on long useless words like “the”? LOL) Ginger and Joyce are retired now, Katherine passed away late last fall (autumn). Alison, I remember back then telling you that Dennis’ aunt had passed away, do you recall? (Well this Katherine was his aunt. For anyone else reading Dennis is a friend of mine I have known since I’ve been here. We get together Tuesday nights for a couple of games of chess and to visit. I guess by a lot of standards Pot’s On wasn’t a very old local landmark, but it is one of the last that were owned and run by the people whose families have been here for years. Sad in a way to see it closing. Things here have changed so much since I first moved to Currituck. There’s at least 5 lanes now of highway all the way from the state line to the tip of the county, and I would guess well over 95% of the farms are gone. All being rezoned for housing or business. Well thankfully there is still a lot of woodland and I am personally blessed to have a nice lot with a bit of privacy around me still. Alison may laugh at me saying we are growing too big, but we really are. By comparison to Limassol we are “out in the sticks” Oh I wish she could have seen the place 30 years ago. We used to stand at the window or on the deck and see not one, but 5 or 7 deer every evening come walking out from the woods behind the house and cross through the yard heading into the thicker woods for the night across the street. Foxes too. I even saw bear tracks in the back once but never the bear. Whippoorwills used to sing through the whole night, oh it was so peaceful really. Well its progress isn’t it. Nothing we can do but get used to it. Well in some ways we are still out in the sticks. Theres not much here as far as fancy restaurants, or big shops, any large malls are an hours drive away. Well I’m not complaining, I like it like this. And I’ll like it a whole lot more when my beautiful Brit is here with me! :)

Finally having a day off again and just catching up on mails and trying to get up with my daughter in Florida. shes in Jacksonville and that tropical storm, Fay is supposed to be coming near where she lives. Its setting rain records all around that area and of course I want to make sure shes ok and staying safe and dry! well at least safe, hard to stay dry when you get 20+inches of rian isnt it! YIKES!