The Marine Mom Quilt: A Local Woman’s Touching Christmas Gift [Photos]

Lots of my friends share photos of their Christmas gifts on Facebook.  But this one really caught my attention, stood out and made me want to salute.  Jennifer Blair's son, Kaleb, is a Marine.  Naturally, through the years, Jennifer collected a variety of "Marine Mom" shirts to show immense pride in the work her son is doing for our country and to demonstrate the vast support he and his fellow troops have at home.  Well, this Christmas, Jennifer's staff collected those shirts and found an amazing and touching way to showcase them.  It's the Marine Mom Quilt.  Check it out!

Jennifer's son, Kaleb, is a Marine and was stationed at Camp Lejeune North Carolina with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment G Company.   Kaleb, a Team Leader, served deployments to Afghanistan, Romania, Bulgaria, Israel and additional countries in the Black Sea region.  Throughout the course of his military career Kaleb received a variety of special honors and medals.  Among them: the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal w/ 1 Star, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon and more.  He, according to his proud mama, was also honored with one of the American flags that flew at FOB Geronimo in the Helmand Province in Afghanistan.

Kaleb has completed his time in service and is about to attend college, where he will major in Homeland Security.  And, he was able to make it home for the holidays . . . a Christmas his mother will never forget.

While Kaleb carries with him proud memories of serving in the United States Marine Corp, his mother is now the proud owner of an amazing keepsake.  A few months ago, Jennifer told a friend that she would love someone to take her "Marine Mom" shirts and make a quilt out of them.  The friend said "bring them in and I'll see what I can do."  Jennifer did, then promptly didn't really think another thing about it.  That is until Christmas . . . when she learned that her staff at the Cabinet for Health and Family Services paid for the quilt to be made.  And, as you can see in the pic above, it's pretty awesome.

One look at the quilt and you can see that Jennifer had a lot of Marine Mom shirts.  In her words, "One thing I had no problem with was buying t-shirts and supporting my son."  You'll also notice other shirts Jennifer purchased to support different military groups.  Combined they resulted in an amazing quilted tribute to Kaleb and one of the coolest and most meaningful Christmas presents of the year.