You Are In Our Thoughts And Prayers

I'm Back...although if I knew what I was coming home to, I would have stayed gone...LOL! Our trip started off on the wrong foot. Normally we take our dogs with us but since we were going to stay with my sister in law for the first 2 days we decided to board them. We boarded them at our vets office. When we dropped them off, Triskett got so excited she piddled on the floor. We noticed that her urine looked very dark so we asked them to run a test on it and sure enough, there was blood in her urine, the vet said she had a urinary track infection. I wasn't going to go on the trip but they convinced me that this was not uncommon and she was in the best possible place, they would take good care of her and make sure she took her meds. Of course I called every day to see how she was doing and I was told she was doing fine and her urine was starting to clear. After our visit with my sister in law in North Carolina, we stopped at my oldest son's in Tennessee. My goodness how the girls have grown! He lives just outside Pigeon Forge, one of our favorite places to visit! Since the girls were in school, we only stayed 2 days then off to Virgina to see my father in law. We met up with my sister in law and her husband. We had a great time. We had fantastic weather and GREAT food. In fact I put on 5 pounds! It's always nice to be back home, and sleep in your own bed! When we picked up the dogs, we were told that Triskett had finished her meds and her urine was clear. When we got her home, the first place she wanted to go was outside to pee, when she took longer than usual, I took a look and it was nothing but blood! I called the vet and they told me that sometimes that happens with stress but to come back and they would give her more antibiotics. We we got there, I insisted that the vet see her and when he felt her bladder he said he thought he felt something strange so he took an Xray.. It's too late to make a long story short but it turns out that she had a bladder stone the size of a grape! They did surgery yesterday and hopefully in a few days she will be back to her normal self.
What prompted today's card was, late Sunday night the doorbell rang, it was our neighbor, she said that her husband passed away Sunday afternoon. He was in the hospital since Thursday with pneumonia and he just wasn't able to breathe. I'm sure there is more to it than that, but I still can't believe it, he was in his 40's and the picture of health. Not having any sympathy cards for some one special in my stash of cards, I knew immediately where I needed to look for ideas. My blogger friend Lillie is the queen of sympathy cards. If you get a chance, check out her blog, she does AWESOME work. When I went looking for ideas and seen this card, I said "HEY...I've got that Cricut cut file and butterfly...so here it is...

The card base is a Cricut cut file using the George cartridge that Linda Davis on the Cricut Message board offered more than a year ago, I downloaded it but never used it until now. The background layer was embossed with Cuttlebug Script Texture embossing folder and I added a piece of vellum on the inside of the card to show through the lattice work. The sentiment was computer generated using AltastGreeting font and cut with an oval/scallop Nestibilities and added the small butterfly cut with Martha Stewart 3 Butterfly punch with a flat back pearl added. The large butterfly is the Cuttlebug Butterfly Embossing Combo Die that I cut twice and glittered the embossing on the top layer and added flat back pearls. The flowers were cut with the medium and small Marvy Daisy punch, a Michael's dollar bin punch and added flat back pearls. The leaves are EK Mountain Fern Punch. I added a ribbon bow using the Bow Easy and added a cross. That's it for today...It's good to be back and hopefully I'll be back tomorrow. The next card on my agenda will be a Thank You card for my sister in law's hospitality while we were in North Carolina. Enjoy your day and thanks for stopping by. I promise, next time I won't be so long winded...LOL!