{"id":745,"date":"2025-07-02T17:07:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/?p=745"},"modified":"2025-07-02T17:07:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T17:07:07","slug":"ilona-cole-guest-author-story-184","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/02\/ilona-cole-guest-author-story-184\/","title":{"rendered":"Ilona Cole, Guest Author, Story 184"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><strong>My 98<sup>th<\/sup> Birthday<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Today is Sunday, June 1<sup>st<\/sup> and I am planning a little get together with food and drink for a wonderful group of friends, right here at an Apartment Complex, called Woodland at Forbes Lake in Kirkland where I came to live, after I lost my dear husband, Hal eight years ago. This little group of wonderful individuals has been getting together evenings to visit, converse about all kinds of subjects, even politics. We tell about daily happenings, funny or sad, have happy or serious conversations. Over the eight years I have resided here, we have lost some of our dear friends, we still miss them.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tonight I baked some mini pizzas, some Spanakopitas, a fruit salad with different berries and my dear friend, Bonnie, brought a green salad. Another dear friend, Jeanette, brought a delicious chocolate cake. We had different things to drink and I also made coffee and tea. We were ten individual, congenial men and women and have become great friends. After coffee and this yummy birthday cake came the time to pay attention to the table, set up with birthday cards and gifts. I received beautiful cards, some with a generous gift, two bottles of wine and a box of the most beautiful, little pink note cards with gold Butterflies attached. Beautiful kitchen towels, dark chocolate.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Then there were two packages left. Brett, one of our little family, came and joined me to help opening the packages. A cute little bag held two sculpted, bears. A brown bear and a black bear. Had I mentioned: \u201cI love bears\u201d everyone around the table knows. Next, was a pink tissue wrapped big roll with ribbon on both ends. At my advanced age, one would think of comfort, a cushion either for neck or back. As Brett was removing the ribbons, I started to pull the gift out. It was not a cushion, No! It was a beautiful, soft, cuddly bear!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Brett is a gentleman and a good observer, who heard me say, I love bears, looking in a book of wild life in Alaska. This little cuddly bear will fit perfectly with the other two bears, I had for many years. This very special little softy, I named: \u201cSchnucky\u201d in German it means \u201cDarling\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"279\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/IlonaHeadshot-279x300-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-746\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My 98th Birthday Today is Sunday, June 1st and I am planning a little get together with food and drink for a wonderful group of friends, right here at an Apartment Complex, called Woodland at Forbes Lake in Kirkland where I came to live, after I lost my dear husband, Hal eight years ago. This &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/02\/ilona-cole-guest-author-story-184\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ilona Cole, Guest Author, Story 184&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":747,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcielsims.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}