Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Ohio coach proposes to rival coach on field
An Ohio high school softball coach threw a curve at the rival team’s coach when he dropped to one knee on the diamond and asked for her hand in marriage.
Glen Este High School varsity coach Tim Gregory and Milford High School coach Christy Foster had been dating more than two years before Wednesday’s proposal.
Gregory says “softball is really what brought us together.” Foster, of course, said yes to the proposal and called it perfect.
The ensuing game wasn’t, though. Gregory’s team won 1 to 0.
Read more: Ohio coach proposes to rival on field
Facebook reunites mother with long-lost son
A woman whose three-year-old son was abducted and taken to live in Hungary has been reunited with him 27 years later after finding his name on Facebook.
Avril Grube last saw Gavin when his father took him on an outing to Blackpool Zoo. That was in 1982.
Instead of going to the zoo, however, Joseph Paros took the boy to Budapest in defiance of a court order.
Despite appeals via the Hungarian Embassy in London and the British Embassy in Budapest, and an appeal to Margaret Thatcher, then the Prime Minister, Mrs Grube heard nothing more of her son.
Then last October, her sister, Beryl Wilson, typed the name Gavin Paros into Google and found a link to someone of that name on the social networking site Facebook.
A frustrating wait followed. With more than 200 million users, there was a possibility that the Facebook member merely shared the name with Mrs Grube’s son.
It was several weeks before Mr Paros, now a 30-year-old father of three, checked his Facebook page and found the message from his aunt. Mother and son were reunited at 4am on Thursday after her husband Jeff picked him up from Gatwick and drove him to their home in Poole, Dorset. Mrs Grube, 61, who is partially disabled after a stroke, said: “I couldn’t sleep, I just sat waiting for him to arrive. Even though it has been nearly 30 years, when I first saw him I recognised him. He has my eyes.
“I was so overcome and just said ‘my beautiful son’ over and over again. He was very quiet and overwhelmed. We just hugged each other. It is the happiest day of my life, there are almost no words to describe it.”
The pair managed to communicate, although Mr Paros has forgotten all the English he knew as a boy and Mrs Grube does not speak Hungarian.
Mrs Grube, who has three other children, has yet to meet her daughter-in-law, Sylvia, and three grandchildren Anastasia, 10, Thomas, 7, and Angelina, 6. She hopes they will decide to move to Britain.
Mrs Wilson, 59, had spent the best part of three decades helping her sister trace her son. Because Hungary was a Communist state in 1982 on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain it made the task of tracing a three-year-old boy virtually impossible for a single mother in Liverpool. Appeals for help through official channels fell on deaf ears.
Mrs Wilson, who still lives in Liverpool, said: “Gavin’s father had visitation rights and said he was going to the zoo. Naturally, my sister was devastated. We didn’t have people around us to tell us where to go or who to speak to. We tried our MP and wrote to Margaret Thatcher but nobody was interested or wanted to help.
“Avril endured many sleepless nights, not knowing if Gavin was alive or dead. She didn’t cope very well and had a terrible time. She has a big heart and loves her children very much. As a result her own health has suffered.”
While Mrs Wilson was trying to trace Mr Paros through the internet, he had been trying to find his English family after the death of his father in 2006. Mrs Wilson said: “I tried online electoral rolls to check if Gavin had moved back to Britain, and I tried Friends Reunited, but didn’t get anywhere.
“Then one day last October I put his name into Facebook and found him. I e-mailed him but it took a while for him to respond and when he did he gave me his phone numbers.
“I called my sister when I heard back from Gavin and told her to sit down as I had some news. All I heard after that was screaming.”
Kate And Leo help last Titanic survivor
“Titanic” stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet have pledged to help the last survivor of the sinking of the ocean liner.
The stars say they have thrown their support behind a fund that would subsidize Millvina Dean’s nursing home fees.
Dean was 2 months old when the Titanic sank beneath the waves on the night of April 14, 1912. She has been living at a nursing home in the English city of Southampton since she broke her hip about three years ago but has struggled to pay the fees.
In October she sold several Titanic mementoes to raise cash.
DiCaprio and Winslet said in a statement that they hoped Dean could rest easier knowing that her future was secure. The Millvina Fund was launched Monday in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Read more: Kate And Leo help last Titanic survivor
Awaiting first Mother’s Day after ‘gift from God’
About 12 years ago, Bill and Susan Armbrecht decided to call it quits on trying to have a child.
“We used to avoid going to church on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day because it was too painful,” Bill Armbrecht recalled.
On Sunday, Susan Armbrecht will celebrate her first Mother’s Day. Their daughter, Allie Grace, was born Sept. 28.
“I believe that we wouldn’t have this child if it wasn’t for our faith,” he said. “I truly believe that this baby is a gift from God, the desire of our hearts.”
The Armbrechts had tried for years to conceive. Recalling the fertility treatments, she said, “Bill had to chase me around the house to give me shots.”
They considered adoption, but the cost proved prohibitive.
“The doctors couldn’t tell us why we couldn’t have children, and we couldn’t figure out why we couldn’t have children,” she said.
One day early last year, she felt a little strange and decided that her symptoms must be menopause-related.
Wanting to rule out pregnancy, she used one of the tests sometimes given to female patients at the Alabama Orthopedic Clinic, where she served as a technician in pain management.
Surprised and unsure when she saw the result, she asked a nurse to interpret it. The nurse said that she was pregnant.
On the way home that day she purchased a greeting card, put the test results in it and placed it in the kitchen where her husband could find it.
“Is this for real?” he asked.
As the months advanced, the Armbrechts read everything they could about pregnancy in older women. That information caused some concern, but they decided against medical tests such as amniocentesis — used to identify potential birth defects and other problems.
Instead, the Armbrechts relied on their faith.
Susan Armbrecht said that she experienced a smooth pregnancy, with no morning sickness and little weight gain.
Allie Grace arrived three weeks early, a situation her father jokingly blames on the excitement of the Alabama-Georgia football game played the previous day.
“She heard all the yelling and screaming and said that she wasn’t going to miss the rest of the season,” said Bill Armbrecht, a Crimson Tide fan and owner of The Brick Pit, a local barbecue restaurant.
Sitting in the living room of their west Mobile home recently, they played with Allie Grace and joked about being simultaneously amazed and sleepy.
Bill Armbrecht said he hopes their experience will encourage other couples who still want children, but fear parenthood is beyond their reach.
Allie Grace’s parents now playfully compete about their daughter’s future: Mom wants her to be a ballet dancer and a cheerleader. Dad wants her to become the first female field goal kicker on scholarship at Alabama.
“What fascinates me the most is that every day I’m holding this little girl, it’s like holding an angel,” he said. “Those blue eyes look up at me and I feel like I’m holding an angel.”
“She wakes up at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. and she’s smiling,” Susan Armbrecht said. “You can’t be mad at a baby that’s smiling at you. She’s a good baby. I said if God was going to give me one this late in life, he’s going to give me a good one.”
Read more: Awaiting first Mother’s Day after ‘gift from God’
Girl’s dream to end childhood hunger gets national attention [Video]
Here’s one from one of my friends, Joey Sovine.
Ten-year-old Katie Stagliano dreams to end childhood hunger across the world.
The 4th grader from Pinewood Preparatory School in Summerville was recently featured in NBC Nightly News “Making a difference” segment.
Her dream began in her backyard where a 3rd grade project turned into a 40 pound cabbage.
“We decided that my cabbage was too special to be eaten so I contacted the organization fields to family. They are an organization that brings extra crops from farmer’s fields and other places to people in need and they told us that Family Crisis Ministries’ soup kitchen would greatly appreciate it,” explained Katie.
The 40 pound cabbage went on to feed over 275 people and triggered a dream that is spreading throughout her school.
With help from environmental science teacher Michael Newman, a garden has been constructed on the school’s property where Katie’s classmates help to grow food for the homeless.
Katie has now helped to feed over 800 people and hopes to inspire more people to grow food for those less fortunate.
Watch this story: Summerville kid dreams to end childhood hunger
90-year-old couple does duet [Video]
Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. He’ll be 90 in February.
Chihuahua blown away by 70-mph winds reunited with owners
Tinker Bell has been reunited with her owners after a 70-mph gust of wind picked up the six-pound Chihuahua and tossed her out of sight. Dorothy and Lavern Utley credit a pet psychic for guiding them on Monday to a wooded area nearly a mile from where 8-month-old Tinker Bell had been last seen. The brown long-haired dog was dirty and hungry but otherwise OK.
The Utleys, of Rochester, had set up an outdoor display Saturday at a flea market in Waterford Township, 25 miles northwest of Detroit. Tinker Bell was standing on their platform trailer when she was swept away.
Dorothy Utley tells The Detroit News that her cherished pet “just went wild” upon seeing her.
Read more: Blown-away Chihuahua reunited with owners
The lake that Cupid made
It seems an unlikely place to find such a symbol of romance. But Mother Nature chose this bleakly beautiful Arctic landscape to leave her mark in the form of a stunning heart-shaped lake.
It has emerged as climate change melted the glacier that covered the area. Blocks of ice trapped during the glacier’s retreat caused the ground to cave in, creating a heart-like hollow, some 120ft by 90ft, that then filled with rainwater or snow melt.
The picture was taken by French photographer Bruno Mazodier on Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago.
The Norwegian island 620 miles from the North Pole is the most northerly inhabited-place on Earth, although people are outnumbered by polar bears.
Dr Bryn Hubbard, of Aberystwyth University, said: ‘The glaciers all through this island chain have receded, but the heart shape is an anomaly. You would do well to find another.’
Read more: The lake that Cupid made (after global warming had melted the glacier)
Couple dress as Shrek and Princess Fiona for wedding
Keith Green and Christine England spent three hours in make-up to walk down the aisle looking like the cartoon characters from the hit animated films.
Mr Green, 44, and his 40-year-old bride were covered in green paint and full costume and wigs and married in front of 100 guests also dressed as characters from the film, including the Donkey and the Gingerbread Man.
The new Mrs Green, a hospice nurse, of Barnstaple, Devon, said: “Every girl wants a fairytale wedding and I got one – with a bit of a twist. It was a real laugh.
“The idea just came to me. I knew what we would go as them because Keith looks just like Shrek. It was funny because when we said our vows Keith had these green ears sprouting from the top of his head.
“I tried to convince my teenage son to dress up as the Donkey but he wasn’t having any of it.”
Mr Green, a builder, said: “It was a very strange experience to say the least, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. We love the films and my wife tells me I have resemblance to Shrek.”
The couple hired a make-up artist to make them look like the characters – voiced by Mike Myers and Cameron Diaz – in the hit films.
The bride’s mother Annette England, 66, said: “It’s not necessarily how you imagine seeing your daughter get married but it was great fun.”
Read more: Couple dress as Shrek and Princess Fiona for wedding
Narnia comes to life for blind child
Great story from my friend Phillip Murrell.
Today, we got a look at The Lions Narnia Braille Trail.
It’s the second phase of Darrell’s Dream Boundless Playground at Warriors’ Path State Park in Kingsport.
The new addition is a Braille trail that surrounds the existing playground.
It features eight sensory stations telling a story based on “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” fantasy by C.S. Lewis.
The playground, along with today’s new addition, is a place where children of all abilities can enjoy nature.
“We think it’s important to provide….remove barriers for people who are blind and vision impaired and to removed those barriers so they can play right alongside and learn from one another and their friends,” said Lions Club President Doug Haseltine.
The additions at the boundless playground don’t end with the Lions Narnia Braille Trail.
A tree house will open this fall. It will be accessible to children with and without disabilities.
Watch this story: The Lions Narnia Braille Trail Opens In Kingsport
