Love Stories

First of all, happy belated Valentine's Day! I was busy doing things I love yesterday. Sort of. I mean there was work first, but the our boss got us heart-shaped pizza for lunch. So what's not to love about that?

From work, I raced back to Rapids so I could practice choir a few minutes before our Ash Wednesday church service. Yes, Lent is here. The ultimate love story, right? 

Singing went well and then we had practice to learn a new song to sing this coming Sunday. By time I got home to see my valentine, it was after 8 p.m. We exchanged gifts AND he had a Shamrock Shake waiting for me. What's not to love about that? I will have to make that last a few days!

After that, I had a few hundred hockey photos from the night before to edit so it was definitely straight to bed and no blogging when I got done at 11 p.m. – on a "school night" as we say.

Woke up this morning to a sight I do not love. I know I shouldn't be surprised to see snow – it is February after all – but I was loving the mild temps and DRY commute. It was a bit on the slick side this morning!

Tonight, as I previously blogged about, we went the Rapids airport to hear author John Armbruster share his experience writing the book Tailspin – a nonfiction account of WWII vet Eugene Moran's survival of falling 4 miles in the air after being shot down by Germany fighter pilots AND being a POW. 

As I also mentioned previously, we got ahold of the book a few months ago because our friend's daughter is married to Moran's grandson. Tonight I got to talk to him and asked it he knew about any of this story before the book was done. He said his grandpa died when he was about 20 and all he knew was about the 4-mile fall.

Mr. Armbruster (I'm just going to call him John) had quite a display there tonight. Lots of newspaper articles about Moran and various artifacts...

Including a letter to Moran's mother when he was first declared missing in action.

Very interesting to look at.

And interesting to hear the story and see pictures and hear actual audio of Moran telling John about some of the things that happened in the Rikki Tikki Tavi aircraft.

Loved that John signed all our books and loved that there was a good crowd in the airport hangar to support him and learn more. As someone who loves reading (and writing), that was great to see and be a part of.

If anyone wants to borrow our book, you can. Otherwise it's available on Amazon and quite possibly Target and Wal-Mart. One of my sisters is reading it on Kindle right now and texted me how intense it is. I said, yep, and I feel badly that even though I say "Thank you for your service" to veterans, that I didn't give a lot more love and attention to those WWII survivors.

I'm sure there's a lot of untold stories out there. We're glad John was able to share this one.

Hug your loved ones! And appreciate them for their sacrifices – big or small.