_ As we end 2011 and begin a new year I look back to our special family celebration taking place on Erin’s Angel Day, April 25, 2011.  We were fortunate to have all our immediately family together in St. Louis for Easter.  We flew from Austin and Kevin and Catherine came from California.  We gathered at Megan, Jeremy, and Colin’s home in Rock Hill to celebrate this important Holy Day.  But it was especially important this year because it occurred just the day before Erin’s Angel Day! 

To honor and remember her, we bought pink and white balloons on Monday to release at Tilles Park near Megan’s home.  We gathered in the late morning with our balloons and each of us shared a personal memory of Erin, wrote a message to her on our balloons (even 20 month old Colin!), and then released them carrying our messages to her on that rainy day.  It was an especially meaningful day to us and the photo we took is shared with you on this website.  It is not often we are all together at the same time and place but Erin brought us together that day!

We love you Erin and think of you every single day!  You are our daughter, our sister, our Aunt, our friend, our hero, and we love you more today than ever!

We want to share a small miracle story with you that we have enjoyed the last two years:

When I was pregnant with Erin in July of 1988 (she was born on September 13, 1988) Tim and I went to a convention in Hawaii.  I wanted to bring back something lasting as a souvenir so I chose a small pre-packaged flower bulb of a Bird of Paradise to plant when I got home.  Erin was born 2 months later and over time I began to refer to the plant as Erin’s plant.  Megan and Kevin also had their own different plants given on or around the years they were born. Their plants eventually died after many years.  But Erin’s Bird of Paradise thrived.  The only problem is that it NEVER bloomed despite the fact that it grew larger each year.

But on September 16, 2009, three days after what would have been Erin’s 21st birthday and after 21 years of dormancy, it bloomed for the first time! There were four beautiful orange flowers.  Of course we feel Erin’s (and God’s) hand in this.  What a gift we were given.  The blooms lasted well into the winter until the first freeze.

Thinking this may have been only a once in a lifetime occurrence, I didn’t hold out much hope of another fall blooming.  But Erin had other plans.  In September of 2010, a year later, it bloomed again and this time added an additionally bloom – five this time!  We enjoyed them so much and took so many pictures.  We have posted some of the photos at this site.

Who would have imagined the significance of returning from Hawaii 21 years ago with a Bird of Paradise and what that would come to mean to our family today!  We truly do have a Bird of Paradise in Erin!

The winter of 2010-2011 was harsher than usual with many freezing nights.  We covered and uncovered the flower many nights but it sustained considerable damage from the cold.  This spring I split the plant and repotted it.  We don’t know what will happen this fall, but we hope and pray that this special outward sign of our sweet Bird in Paradise, Erin, will bloom again one day!