Quote from Elaine:
I am not a graphic artist, but I am a writer. I don't
have a beautiful graphic to give to you but I can
paint a word picture, so one of my Christmas presents
to you is a poem I wrote about life. I hope you will
enjoy it. It is from my heart to yours.

The Gift of Life
by Elaine Ruiz

Life is truly a gift.
It is written in our lives by living.
It is woven in our hearts by loving.
It is what we breathe, how we act,
what we wear, how we see, what we think, how we are.

To have life,
all one has to do is live it
to the fullest to understand
its wonders and abilities.
All one has to do is look at life,
to have it with in the grasp of the
hand that holds it.
Life is a dance of hearts combining in togetherness.
You are hereby being invited to the prom of life.
All you have to do is accept the invitation,
and you will waltz wonderfully with life.
swirling with the fairytales that give us
hope and lets our imaginations wander
to the land of enchantment and wonder.
You are an original.
No one else is exactly like you.
As each gentle snow flake falls
and its composition is not like the one beside it
or each of our fingerprints is distinctively our own
you are uniquely perfect and original.
You are one of the precious millions of pieces
of the jigsaw puzzle that makes the world a
beautiful picture of completeness.
Just as each of a million snow flakes never has an
exact duplicate so too we are all individuals
that build a tapestry of life and bring it alive
in our thoughts, aspirations and dreams.
So when are you going to start living?

Do not become discouraged.
Life is full of promise beauty and caring
You hold the key to unlock the treasures that are
laying before you.
Don't let the brass ring fall out of your hands.

Life is a journey.
The destination is not as important
as the travels to arrive at your goal.
How we leave this world is much more important
than how we entered it.
What imprint or legacy of life are you going to
leave?

Life is full of wonderful and glorious opportunity
with a freedom that allows our minds to gracefully
flutter in the dreams, hopes, wishes and even,
reality.
With each opportunity there is time for growth.
It does not matter if we are wrong or right,
because we are learning.

Can there really be wrong in learning?
What we will experience is the process of
becoming more in tune with humanity and
more viable to options?
What composite are we drawing of life by
learning from all we do and say, right or wrong?

Life is an adventure that will lead us to places
unknown but full of excitement,if we allow it touch
our lives in a positive way.
Life is more than just living,
it is soaring with the birds,
it is delicately caught in the scent of the rose
it is gracefully laced in the love of our lives
it is tenderly sung in the lullabies of the heart.
All we have to do is reach out and touch
to have it all.

Life is a precious gift full of aspects
that give us definition to living.
Life gives us a way to exist
that can be full of marvelous wonders
and enchanting escapades to
enrich our hearts and give song to our souls.

Life is precious
When life is lived to the fullest,
it gives us truth.
We either live by truth
or we die by its abandonment in our lives.
If we dare,life will give us beauty in truth.

Life is our best friend.
There is an erroneous assumption
or ideal going about that we need to fear life.
I say, we need to live life and never fear it.
Maybe the only fear we can ever really have,
with regard to life,is we live with the
consequences of our actions. In the production of living life,
we are the artists of our destiny.
We are painting a picture with everything we do.
We are the designer of our fate.
We are the artist of the painting of life.
We are the only person who can really give
direction to our lives.

We really never need to watch television
for we have life in front of our eyes
Gosh, we have eyes to see
ears to hear
hearts to feel
souls to dance
noses to smell
We have the best play in the world
right in our own hearts
full of drama, laughter, fun, sensitivity,
tears, love, caring, warmth
and maybe just a little bit of silliness to
bring us away from the seriousness
that we all have to much of in our lives.
Could television or the movies ever give us more
than the love and caring we carry in our hearts and
souls?

Life
full of wonder
full of awe
full of pleasure
full of pain
full of agony
but oh to fly high with the eagles
we have to soar with the birds
and we have no absolute guarantee that life will give
us anything at all or be fair
we only have the knowledge that
whatever life gives us we either
learn to stand strong or we wilt
under the pressure.

Life is a constant learning experience.
We never learn it all
and I am constantly amazed
as each day passes
how much I am aware I do not know.

In the school of life,
the participants of the world
are my teachers and the worries
of the world are my weights.
The friends of my life are the ones
who design for me the way to make
it no matter what.

It is okay to be silly.
It is okay to be childlike on the occasion that it
will free us to become better adults.
When the train of being joyful, funful, freeful
stops at the train station of your heart,

jump on for the ride of your life
calling all adults
to learn to let the child in them come
out to play and have fun.

Life is full of wonder.
It holds a mystery for us all to share.
In living life we often times forget to see
the beauty that is out there to see.
The beauty lies in the hearts of those
who know how to love and are not
afraid to reach out to care.
In the altruism of life
there is no secret for it is in that act
that we become real.

Perfection...
Who made up perfection for us to
try to conquer.
As long as we are human we
have the right to err.
"To err is human,"
the neat part of that is
"To forgive is divine"
and in forgiving we are open
to the endless possibilities that
will weave in our lives a gentle
tapestry of warmth to never
leave us cold.

Life is full of unprecedented happenings.
If we have a child like faith in the things we
can't see
If we have hope in the happenings of our lives
If we find a way to believe in ourselves
we can take the complicated aspects out of our
life and learn to live life the way it was meant to be
with a simplicity that allows us to be real.

Life is full of things that hurt.
It is how we view those things in our lives
that makes us who and what we are.
Wouldn't it be better to find the positive aspects
and grow from them than to constantly
be looking for the bad and negative and never
know the true meaning of joy?

Life....what is life
It is full of the respite of
soft sounds of the ocean as
it gently caresses the shore
Full of the neglect of hearts
that go without love
and wander aimlessly through
this world never really knowing
its true fulfillment.
Full of a resurgence of what is vital to life:
love, caring, warmth.
and a rebirth into the conversion
that we are important by virtue
of the fact that we are more than
simply an insignificant factor of life.

Life is not measured by
seemingly senseless actions
or the wrongs we do
or the mistakes we make
Instead, life's measuring stick
is how much love we have returned
and by the quality of love we have
in our hearts for those in our lives.

Life is full of positive energy
if you chose to find it.
We live life the very best when
we are think of the good and not the bad.
That way we see the sunshine through the
clouds, or the forest through the trees.
In that forest that we miss because we complicate life
are the beautiful fragrant flowers,
the squirrels running up the trees
the bears hugging each other
the birds chirping happily
the crickets singing
the frogs croaking
and best of all is the quiet blanket of peacefulness
that only nature and God can give us

It is so much easier to accept myself
when I surround myself with those who love
and accept themselves just as they are.
Eventually if you view life with optimism
it will rub off on those around you
and then our world feels good with us.
The key is how we view what we experience.

I believe in miracles.
I rely on them.
Life really only moves forward
from the angels that watch over us
and the miracles of life that
are performed for us
even when we are not aware
that they exist.
Think...when was the last time you knew that if you
had not stopped what you were doing you would have
been injured?
Or what about the tiny child who reaches her hand up
to yours in faith that you will not hurt her?
What about the quest for life that takes you to the
end of the road and you do not know where to go
and you look behind you and see only one set of
footprints and know that you were carried through you
roughest test of life?
Miracles they do exist.
You are the best example of that miracle
for when God created you, He made the most
wonderful miracle of all time.

You are the best you that could ever exist.
You are God's creation
and as such you are perfect in all the ways that are
important.
It is okay to acknowledge the you
that exists and realize that you are
a valuable person who contributes
to the universe simply by being you.

You are the angel of life
and you are the person who
can make your life be what it needs to be.

Ask yourself,
how do you tell good from bad
evil from heavenly?
The bad is like something pulling you
to do the wrong thing
and then in the end when you decide to
do the right thing, you know
that good has one.
The Mary Poppins in all of us surfaces occasionally
to give us peace and understanding.
Why what better compliment with life than that of
the appearance of being someone who is good and
thoughtful?

We are all like a diamond in the rough
constantly being honed and developed
so that the sparkle of our personalities
shines forth in a brilliance that
gives the world a brightness it could
find no where else.
You are a valuable person and
entity in this journey called life.

Life is a gift. All you have to do
to experience it to the fullest
is unwrap the package
and it will show you its
beauty.
Take the challenge
take the journey of life
to the fullest degree you can.
Make it all a celebration of life
and living, not of dying and negativity.
The gift is yours to take.
All you have to do is believe
experience and you will have it.

Life is the journey.
Your heart is the destination.
Love is your friend
And beauty is the blessing
that you will always have
when you have a friend in your life.

Merry Christmas to you my friend
My life, such as it is,
is full of the blessing of your presence
and my heart is forever thankful
that you took a minute of your time
to reach out to me and let me know
that I was valuable as a person and as a friend.
To you I say:
I send hugs, love and caring your way
to the end of time in friendship wrapped delicately
with the warmth of the shelter of feelings that
are real and hearts that are genuine.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.

Please visit her web site devoted to child abuse awareness
http://www.geocities.com/desireeishopepoetry/index.html

Apply for one of her awards
http://www.geocities.com/raggedydollproject/AwardsHP.html

Visit the hope campaign to help stop child abuse
http://www.geocities.com/desireeishopecampaign/

     From me to you!

     Thanks, Wolfmama!

     
Wishing all a Merry Christmas
from Norma and Family
Samantha's Site


This is from a lovely lady that I know from
another group. She is without a doubt one of
the sweetest persons that I have ever known.

     Thanks, Leslie!

      I love this, Deb! Thanks so much!

      Beautiful, Barbara! Thanks

     Thanks, Maidenfair!

     Thanks, Lalia!

     Thanks, Emmie!