Unexpected news

Okay, I know it's been about a month, but life has so gotten in the way recently. I don't even remember the last thing I wrote about, so I should go check before I can too much farther. Be right back.....

Okay, that didn't take long. I guess it was when everyone was sick. Both the boys finally got over their ear infections and life finally seemed to be better until over President's Day weekend. Here is a quick run down of the weekend. We decided to go to Kansas City to help my Mom with her computer that weekend. Michael had a hearing test that morning at 8:30 am. Well we get there about 8:00am and the lady working registration is late. We were told we had to be registered at least 15 minutes prior to the appointment time...needless to say we were late.

We finally head down for the hearing test around 8:30am. And Patrick and Kaitlyn are just being obnoxious so Robert decides to take them back to the car and watch a movie, while Michael and I go to his appointment. Michael did GREAT! He does have what looks like some possible hearing loss or damage, but nothing that should affect his speech!!! WOOHOO, that is great news! We were told just to keep an eye on it and if we start having anymore problems to come back.

Great news, we got to breakfast and finally hi the road to Kansas City around 11am. So we spend the rest of the day in the car. When we are about an hour from KC, it starts to snow. Not to big a deal since we've dealt with that before, but it's coming down pretty good so we have to take it slow and it adds another half hour to the trip. Anyway, we finally get in and then weather is pretty good the rest of the time we are there. We got her computer up and working and everything.

Well everything went down hill Sunday morning. We were getting ready for church and the phone rings. We missed the call, but listened to the message and it doesn't sound good. It's one of my uncles and he sounds pretty upset. My Mom calls him back only to get the news that my cousin, 32 years old, has died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. We are all devastated.

It's so surreal. I mean you never expect it to happen to your family, and when it does you really don't know how to take it. Since this war on terrorism began we've been waiting for it to touch our family somehow and now it has. And while I know I can take comfort in the fact that the Lord doesn't make mistakes, it's still not easy to understand why he died so young. I mean his life was great. He got married like two years ago and just had a little girl in October! He will miss all of her life. And she loses out on one of the greatest blessing in life...her father raising her.

It really made me think about all the blessing God has given me in my life and how thankful I am for everyday I spend here. I hope we all remember to tell those we love, "I love you today". Because we never know when they might be taken from us.

Hug your little ones tight and give them extra hugs and kisses tonight.