Originally written November 12, 2009.
I put my doll Cambria into the Traveling Doll program, and she went on a journey across the country to many wonderful host families who took care of her, played with her, sent postcards and pictures, and filled her scrapbook with memories of her adventures.
But a sad thing happened, something that has never happened before in the Traveling Doll program.
My final host, for whatever reason, decided not to return my doll to me on schedule. I tried to be compassionate and patient with this person, but after an extremely long time, I felt like I kind of knew deep inside that she simply was keeping something that did not belong to her.
The moderating team gave her an ultimatum. She could return the property, or pay the cost of replacing the items, or she would be banned from our community of doll collectors. She failed to meet the deadline, in fact did not respond to any of our phone calls, emails, etc. and so was banned.
After this transpired, the entire communtiy of doll collectors poured out their sympathy to me. We all love dolls, and yes we do get attached to them, and to lose one is....well, really sad.
So I got a Private Message from a moderator not long ago where a moderator said.. "I have a small gift for you, it's already purchased so you shouldn't say no"... I was like, oh, well okay then....Although I didn't understand why I was getting a gift... because, I mean, the Mods ALREADY did a LOT for me by trying so hard to get Cambria back...that was more than they had to do...so I thought they had done plenty and they didn't need to do anything more for me!
But, you know, just a small gift, and it was already bought and a mod told me you better not say no. So I thought, hey I guess it is something to look forward to anyway. I was really down about not getting Cambria back. So I figure if it is something small and it will give me something to look forward to, then okay.
Then today something came.
A box.
A big box.
A big BIG box.
The kind of big box where you think, "I wish I had a camera, because I'm pretty sure I'll want to capture this on film!"
And, ladies and gentlemen, you know as well as I do that we all know the shapes of the A.G. boxes and what each shape means...
I was like, "No, it couldn't be..."So I open the box, and the first thing I see is a box that an outfit would go in. I open that, and what's inside? The current JLY meet outfit.
Hmmm, I think. That outfit comes on a doll.
And the box is just the right shape...so I dig through the packing peanuts.
Then my doggie thought they must be white Cheese Puffs so he stuck his big head inside the box and tried to eat packing peanuts, and since I couldn't be sure if he'd gotten one or not, I stopped all the opening of boxes so I could google the phrase "What if my dog ate packing peanuts?" and found out some very interesting information about the canine digestive system. I don't think he ate any, but don't worry, according to the websites they just work their own way out.
So I got to go back to opening now. When my dad saw all of this, he said, "Well it looks like Christmas came early for you!!" So I kept digging through the peanuts (with doggie safely in the other room, haha) and pulled out a long rectangle box....well you know what kind of box that is...I took the lid off with my eyes shut because I couldn't bear to look because I didn't know what was in there or how I would feel about it.I opened my eyes when the box was open, and there was... Big giant blue eyes just like mine and wavy brown hair parted on the side just like mine! She seemed to float out of the box because she was wearing an angel costume...she even had a halo!
She said to me (okay, she didn't really but go with it) "Hello, my name is Cambria Angel. I am just like your late beloved friend Cambria only I am better because I came to you with lots of love from all your friends at AGFMB. I didn't know you had so many friends. Did you know you had so many friends?!"
I gave her a big hug and then admired her angel outfit she was wearing. Then I noticed that wasn't all...(as if that wasn't enough!) down in the box was more stuff!!
There was Two books. One about an angel in a school play!! And the other about how to have fun with your doll!
There was a complete outfit including a red cap, red shirt, jean skirt, jean shoes, and purse and fake leather jacket....somebody had replaced the outfit I mailed out Cambria in (everything was almost exactly the same, it was amazing!) In fact, what is funny is that at first I thought it WAS the same outfit...I was like, "How did they get Cambria's outfit?" LOL Then I realized it was a new one but it was like identicle to the one that is gone. That was really cool! That must have taken a lot of time and effort to find.
Next came a big bag with even more stuff...
There was a doll-sized American Girl Place bag with a brand new AG tee shirt that said "Kindness Counts" on the front!
And an AG keychain to put pictures in!
Also there was a super-cute brown bag with a pretty note on the front and inside was doll-sized food, like cookies and a pink doughnut!
It was sooo cute!!
Plus, best of all.....there were a BUNCH of cards, some of them beautifully hand made, and all full of warm wishes and nice thoughts and love from everyone in my doll community.
The big card said this whole package was a gift from NINETEEN members here.
It was... AMAZING.
I spent time looking at everything and playing with it, but I took the bag of cards and put that in my purse so that wherever I go I can get out my cards from you guys and look at them to feel happy. Those cards were awesome!!!
Cambria Angel was happy to get here for Veterans Day and there is a veterans memorial down the street from my house so I am going to take her there for her first photo opportunity.
See I want her to travel but for a good long while she is just going to travel around Cincinnati with me, lol! No long trips for her for a good long time.
So if you haven't already figured it out, the gift from you is named Cambria Angel.
See I thought of naming her a whole new name, but it seemed disloyal to original Cambria if I just got a whole new name and forgot all about old orginal Cambria.
But then it didn't seem right to let a new doll have my old doll's name, either. So it seemed right to give her the old doll's name COMBINED WITH a new name that is just for her.
The Cambria part is to replace the doll I've lost, and the Angel part is to recognize that she is a new doll seperate from original Cambria.
And since she arrived in an angel outfit and with an angel book and cards that said she was a special angel to be with me, then I thought she can be Cambria Angel!
Tonight Cambria Angel is sleeping in my bed and tomorrow she is going to have her first full day of being a loved dolly of mine.
She is just sooo special to me now because I know that she came out of the generosity and the love of friends. I don't know what else to say except THANK YOU.
I am so overwhelmed with emotion at it all.
I feel like you all have just reached out and put your arms around me and I can't believe the amount of support that you provided, it is incredible...
How in the world did you orchastrate 19 board members coming together to give this to me, without me ever knowing??
And Moderator (you know who you are)...a "small" gift? What a liar! :-)
Everyone here is so special...19 people from this board all pulled together to do this.
Jeanied said it best when she said that Cambria Angel is a reminder that life can be very good and people can be kind beyond belief....thank you all.
Oh and I also want to say that I am not going to wish anything bad on the host who kept my doll. I hope no one else will either, because at church last night the teacher for my class was saying that:
"You are the only Bible some people will ever see, so make sure that whatever you say and do, it will glorify God"
And that got me thinking that..it's not enough for me to not SAY anything bad about Cambria's host....I shouldn't even THINK anything bad about her.
I should just hope that whatever she did with Cambria, that it will work out according to God's plan.
Maybe she still has Cambria, well maybe that is God's way of convicting her to eventually turn to Him with her troubles.
Maybe she lost Cambria somewhere, well then maybe someone found a new doll and that was a blessing to them like finding a treasure.
Maybe she sold Cambria for money, well then maybe whoever bought Cambria from her needed a doll more than I did.
The point is, I don't know what happened and I probably never will.
But what I DO know is, God works out all things according to His will and in His own time.
If original Cambria ever does come home to me, then I will ask the Moderating Team what they want me to do with Cambria Angel...
Maybe we could put Cambria Angel and all the new things she came with in a Christmas Basket for a child to pass along the joy she brought me.
She certainly has a talent for bringing joy!!
I am excited to spend time with Cambria Angel. She sure is special.
But a sad thing happened, something that has never happened before in the Traveling Doll program.
My final host, for whatever reason, decided not to return my doll to me on schedule. I tried to be compassionate and patient with this person, but after an extremely long time, I felt like I kind of knew deep inside that she simply was keeping something that did not belong to her.
The moderating team gave her an ultimatum. She could return the property, or pay the cost of replacing the items, or she would be banned from our community of doll collectors. She failed to meet the deadline, in fact did not respond to any of our phone calls, emails, etc. and so was banned.
After this transpired, the entire communtiy of doll collectors poured out their sympathy to me. We all love dolls, and yes we do get attached to them, and to lose one is....well, really sad.
So I got a Private Message from a moderator not long ago where a moderator said.. "I have a small gift for you, it's already purchased so you shouldn't say no"... I was like, oh, well okay then....Although I didn't understand why I was getting a gift... because, I mean, the Mods ALREADY did a LOT for me by trying so hard to get Cambria back...that was more than they had to do...so I thought they had done plenty and they didn't need to do anything more for me!
But, you know, just a small gift, and it was already bought and a mod told me you better not say no. So I thought, hey I guess it is something to look forward to anyway. I was really down about not getting Cambria back. So I figure if it is something small and it will give me something to look forward to, then okay.
Then today something came.
A box.
A big box.
A big BIG box.
The kind of big box where you think, "I wish I had a camera, because I'm pretty sure I'll want to capture this on film!"
And, ladies and gentlemen, you know as well as I do that we all know the shapes of the A.G. boxes and what each shape means...
I was like, "No, it couldn't be..."So I open the box, and the first thing I see is a box that an outfit would go in. I open that, and what's inside? The current JLY meet outfit.
Hmmm, I think. That outfit comes on a doll.
And the box is just the right shape...so I dig through the packing peanuts.
Then my doggie thought they must be white Cheese Puffs so he stuck his big head inside the box and tried to eat packing peanuts, and since I couldn't be sure if he'd gotten one or not, I stopped all the opening of boxes so I could google the phrase "What if my dog ate packing peanuts?" and found out some very interesting information about the canine digestive system. I don't think he ate any, but don't worry, according to the websites they just work their own way out.
So I got to go back to opening now. When my dad saw all of this, he said, "Well it looks like Christmas came early for you!!" So I kept digging through the peanuts (with doggie safely in the other room, haha) and pulled out a long rectangle box....well you know what kind of box that is...I took the lid off with my eyes shut because I couldn't bear to look because I didn't know what was in there or how I would feel about it.I opened my eyes when the box was open, and there was... Big giant blue eyes just like mine and wavy brown hair parted on the side just like mine! She seemed to float out of the box because she was wearing an angel costume...she even had a halo!
She said to me (okay, she didn't really but go with it) "Hello, my name is Cambria Angel. I am just like your late beloved friend Cambria only I am better because I came to you with lots of love from all your friends at AGFMB. I didn't know you had so many friends. Did you know you had so many friends?!"
I gave her a big hug and then admired her angel outfit she was wearing. Then I noticed that wasn't all...(as if that wasn't enough!) down in the box was more stuff!!
There was Two books. One about an angel in a school play!! And the other about how to have fun with your doll!
There was a complete outfit including a red cap, red shirt, jean skirt, jean shoes, and purse and fake leather jacket....somebody had replaced the outfit I mailed out Cambria in (everything was almost exactly the same, it was amazing!) In fact, what is funny is that at first I thought it WAS the same outfit...I was like, "How did they get Cambria's outfit?" LOL Then I realized it was a new one but it was like identicle to the one that is gone. That was really cool! That must have taken a lot of time and effort to find.
Next came a big bag with even more stuff...
There was a doll-sized American Girl Place bag with a brand new AG tee shirt that said "Kindness Counts" on the front!
And an AG keychain to put pictures in!
Also there was a super-cute brown bag with a pretty note on the front and inside was doll-sized food, like cookies and a pink doughnut!
It was sooo cute!!
Plus, best of all.....there were a BUNCH of cards, some of them beautifully hand made, and all full of warm wishes and nice thoughts and love from everyone in my doll community.
The big card said this whole package was a gift from NINETEEN members here.
It was... AMAZING.
I spent time looking at everything and playing with it, but I took the bag of cards and put that in my purse so that wherever I go I can get out my cards from you guys and look at them to feel happy. Those cards were awesome!!!
Cambria Angel was happy to get here for Veterans Day and there is a veterans memorial down the street from my house so I am going to take her there for her first photo opportunity.
See I want her to travel but for a good long while she is just going to travel around Cincinnati with me, lol! No long trips for her for a good long time.
So if you haven't already figured it out, the gift from you is named Cambria Angel.
See I thought of naming her a whole new name, but it seemed disloyal to original Cambria if I just got a whole new name and forgot all about old orginal Cambria.
But then it didn't seem right to let a new doll have my old doll's name, either. So it seemed right to give her the old doll's name COMBINED WITH a new name that is just for her.
The Cambria part is to replace the doll I've lost, and the Angel part is to recognize that she is a new doll seperate from original Cambria.
And since she arrived in an angel outfit and with an angel book and cards that said she was a special angel to be with me, then I thought she can be Cambria Angel!
Tonight Cambria Angel is sleeping in my bed and tomorrow she is going to have her first full day of being a loved dolly of mine.
She is just sooo special to me now because I know that she came out of the generosity and the love of friends. I don't know what else to say except THANK YOU.
I am so overwhelmed with emotion at it all.
I feel like you all have just reached out and put your arms around me and I can't believe the amount of support that you provided, it is incredible...
How in the world did you orchastrate 19 board members coming together to give this to me, without me ever knowing??
And Moderator (you know who you are)...a "small" gift? What a liar! :-)
Everyone here is so special...19 people from this board all pulled together to do this.
Jeanied said it best when she said that Cambria Angel is a reminder that life can be very good and people can be kind beyond belief....thank you all.
Oh and I also want to say that I am not going to wish anything bad on the host who kept my doll. I hope no one else will either, because at church last night the teacher for my class was saying that:
"You are the only Bible some people will ever see, so make sure that whatever you say and do, it will glorify God"
And that got me thinking that..it's not enough for me to not SAY anything bad about Cambria's host....I shouldn't even THINK anything bad about her.
I should just hope that whatever she did with Cambria, that it will work out according to God's plan.
Maybe she still has Cambria, well maybe that is God's way of convicting her to eventually turn to Him with her troubles.
Maybe she lost Cambria somewhere, well then maybe someone found a new doll and that was a blessing to them like finding a treasure.
Maybe she sold Cambria for money, well then maybe whoever bought Cambria from her needed a doll more than I did.
The point is, I don't know what happened and I probably never will.
But what I DO know is, God works out all things according to His will and in His own time.
If original Cambria ever does come home to me, then I will ask the Moderating Team what they want me to do with Cambria Angel...
Maybe we could put Cambria Angel and all the new things she came with in a Christmas Basket for a child to pass along the joy she brought me.
She certainly has a talent for bringing joy!!
I am excited to spend time with Cambria Angel. She sure is special.
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