Shortly after arriving my Uncle Mike, the youngest of the three, invited the others into the next room where he had a gift prepared for each of the families, including all seven grandchildren.
When my parents, aunts and uncles cleaned out grandma's house and decided what to save and what to auction off, one of the items that Uncle Mike saved was a book about birds. Within its pages he discovered that my grandmother had been using this book to press various flowers between sheets of wax paper.
Martha Stebbins was an amazing woman who was (among many many other things) a wonderful gardener and very creative when it came to the art of arranging dried flowers. She was very adept at taking something beautiful with a rather limited lifespan and preserving it in a way that it could be enjoyed and passed on for much longer than you would expect.
Without anyone in the family knowing, including his wife, Mike framed ten of grandma's creations, named them and decided which couple each piece would belong to.
Below are photos of those creations grouped by family-
These four were made for Uncle Steve & Aunt Barb, Crystal & Mark, Rachael & Steve, and Amanda & Rob
These were created for Uncle Mike & Aunt Sue, Jeni & Rick, and Michelle & Rod.
And these were created for my parents(Judi & Joe), Danielle & I, and Becky & Jesko.
The one on the top is aptly named "Mother and Daughter" and will hang in my parent's home. The one on the bottom left is entitled "Considering the Options" and will hang in my home and Becky's is called "Pristine".
So obviously my grandmother not only found a way to preserve something fragile and beautiful, but she passed that gift on to my uncle. He has given each of us something very tangible to remember my grandmother by and also a beautiful symbol of our common connection to her and the beauty that was her life.
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