bird is the word - courage

i did this page a very soon after the word came out but then with school holidays, hubby on holidays and having the inlaws up for a week i never stuck it down. 

so i finally did today. 

this word was so easy for me to use and all i had to do was to find an awesome quote that went with my photo. 

some of you may know that my husband is in the army and has had several deployments overseas during his career. this is a photo of him in afghanistan in 2008. i was 3 months pregnant with our second baby when he left and he returned 4 days before our son was born. 

this photo was taken out on patrol. the previous night the had been involved in a firefight with the taliban. his pack has a bullet hole in it and the bullet actually went through a plastic sachet of tuna that was inside. his pack was sitting about 2 metres away. whilst out on patrol he came across a cache of weapons that the taliban had tried to hide and they were expected to have been used in the firefight the night before. 

obviously due to operational security he wasnt allowed to tell me what had happened but that he was ok and not hurt and that i wasnt allowed to get upset by the story the media would run as they like to hype everything up. due to my father in law being in the army too he was able to get a friend to drop off the army paper (that had this photo splashed on the front page ) to my house prior to normal delivery and at a special request from my father in law, the officer who dropped off the paper was to be in civvies as he knew that i would panic having someone turn up on my door step in uniform and that is not what i needed being so heavily pregnant. 

so here is the sketch that i followed

and here is my page

and a close up of the quote

and a close up of my cluster

i love to use recycled things so i have added a stamp with the rising sun on it, some hesh from my husbands yowie suit, and a broken zip with a kangaroo on it. 

thanks for looking and any comments you may leave.