Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: brother

Today, 3 January 2016, I am doing something that usually I never do – post photos of my kids (at any age). It’s something that I feel I just need to do. Today is the first anniversary of the death of my older daughter and I am posting this mosaic of photos of her with her brother (older) and sister (younger). I created this and printed it out to give to several of her special friends when I saw them at the Celebration of Life service that was held for her, and others to be sent. The first 9 photos were taken when we lived near Muscat in Oman, Middle East, for six years, and the rest were taken in Calgary (not my home in the last photo). I don’t really want to add any details here, but if anyone should want to read more, the link below gives more detail. flic.kr/p/qD8TEb I am so tired out from all the Christmas Bird Counts I’ve been doing since mid-December, so short of sleep, and can’t think of what to write here, so I will let the photos say what they wish to say. Also, I have to leave home just before 7:00 am this morning, for the seventh and last Christmas Bird Count that I take part in. I think you’ll agree that Fiona had plenty of smiles to share : )

I was indescribably happy when I received an e-mail from one of my great friends in Birmingham the other day. The subject line said "John's drawings". I've never clicked on an e-mail so fast in my life! My friend, Anne, had come across two of my brother's old drawings when she was going through more of his papers. At least 30 years ago, John had sent two of my children a post-card sized drawings each and these have been treasured ever since. I had asked John to please, please send us more drawings over the years, but it just never happened. I even "said this to John", in words that were read out at his service : ) Even though he was an amazing artist, everyone else had more confidence in his artistic ability than he had himself, as so often can happen. To suddenly find two of his drawings "in front of me" is absolutely priceless. I suspect these were done many years ago, perhaps when he was in College, and he would no doubt say it was "just a doodle". We can't thank Anne enough for her careful search through endless piles of papers, making sure that nothing important to us is missed. Later: oh, boy, does it never end? The moment (today) I more or less finished copying and pasting about 4,500 e-mails into Word Documents thanks to the corrupted Inbox, I plug in my two external hard drives, determined to start doing some long-overdue backing up. I got a message saying something about data being lost and that it might be a Microsoft (?) problem, data couldn't be saved to my G drive (external), though I hadn't even started to add new stuff. Then I got that nasty blue screen with the white text! Finally managed to get my computer back and running - but I don't think I will plug in my G drive again for now. Lol, what I would really love is to have a week, or even just one day, without constant stress of one kind or another!!!! I've totally forgotten what it feels like!