My Dream Comes True:  In 2007 my Mom and Dad surprised us kids with a trip to Tuscany to celebrate their 55^th Wedding Anniversary. I was beside myself with Excitement perhaps my dream would come true…

When we first arrived in Orveito, a country village in Umbria, the center of Tuscan Region of Italy the very first thing I noticed were the fields and fields of tall sunflowers stems bulging in green glory just dying to bust open with yellow explosions of color and vitality.

The Anticipation to see their glory was like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning!  And as each day went by I would looked for the first sunflower to burst open and each day the anticipation killed me. Finally we asked one of the locals when are the Sunflowers Coming?

He pointed to the calendar to July 2^nd. My heart deflated like a balloon pricked with a sharp needle, we were leaving at the end of June and my dream was fading away.

But I never gave up every day I looked out the window to see if the sunflowers had greeted the morning sky.  And each day they just weren’t ready to be born.  3 days before we were leaving my sister in law and baby brother ran in the house with excitement that they saw fields and fields of sunflowers all along the highways…. I looked up at STEVE and he knew we would be going on a road trip in chasing my sunflower dream.

So we drove to the farm 1/2 a mile away, I stepped in the dirt that was manicured so well it was like stepping into to manicured chocolate powder and as I looked up at these 8 foot sunflowers and to my glorious surprise there was a HEART SHAPED Sunflower welcoming me to my dream. Now let me ask you, in all your years have you ever seen a heart shaped flower?