Snowflakes, Shannon and Squidoo

I’ve reached my goal of creating fifty Squidoo lenses (webpages). The one below is the fiftieth. Take a look at it. My sister, Shannon first introduced me to the Snowdays website back when I lived in Texas. That’s the basis for this Squidoo lens.

Making Snowflakes Online
Remember folding a piece of paper and cutting bits out of it to make a snowflake? It was a lot of fun. Now you can make one like that online and even send it with a message to a friend. No little bits of paper to clean up afterwards with these snowfl…

You can go to the Snowdays website and look at all the snowflakes people make and the messages they put on them. Down in the left hand corner you can FIND-A-FLAKE. If you put in Shannon and Belle Plaine, it brings up Shannon’s snowflake from 12-02-03.

You can bring them up by number also. On 12-06-08, I made a tribute snowflake for Shannon. It is number 7217122 if you want to see it. You can even leave a message on it. If you put in Ginger and for the location Florida, it brings up 2500 flakes. I didn’t make all of those as there are a few other Gingers in Florida apparently. My specialty was twinkle flakes, so if you click on one of the Ginger flakes and it opens with a little twinkle to it, then that’s mine.

I checked and found some of mine that you can see. Twinkle ones: 4576440 and 2462900. I also made figural ones. Here’s a Halloween one: 2689996. While there, I made a few new ones for old times sake, but I can see that I’m out of practice.

Anniversary of a Loss

It’s coming up… the third anniversary of the day my younger sister died. It’s easy to remember since it falls so close to my birthday. I find the day a bit daunting.

I feel sadness welling up in me as I think of her life cut short and so suddenly. The quandary is how to get through that day and how it affects others. Should I make a special call to my other sisters and my parents? We could talk about Shannon’s life or not, maybe just reassure ourselves that the others are OK. Maybe if I don’t call, they will be busy with their lives and not pause to remember and be overwhelmed by the sadness. Perhaps it’s better not to bring it up. Maybe they won’t even notice the date until it’s past, and won’t have to work their way through all those emotions again.

If I don’t call, will they think I don’t care and don’t remember? Will they feel all alone in their loss and pain? In previous years, I posted a memory piece about my sister on the Our Echo webpage. Our family regularly posts family stories there, so that seemed a natural way to share. Many of us are writers so writing about Shannon was a natural outlet for our feelings. Click on this link to read more family memories of Shannon Martin Hyle. Her maiden name was Shannon Marie Martin.

I like this photo of Shannon getting her face washed by her daughter Diana