Hello Dear Friends...

Hello dear friends...

I returned from New York around midnight

 last night after spending 12 days with Carol (My MIL).

We accomplished A LOT...both mentally and physically.

Drawers were cleaned out, the basement organized,

house put on the market, paperwork completed.

While going through boxes, I uncovered parts of Ryan's past I had never seen before.

Parts of Trysten's past I had never seen before.

Parts of Ed and Carol's life I had never seen before.

I loved seeing old pictures like the one below.

Look how young my sweet husband looks!

And Trysten...what a doll.

You can see the pride on Ed's face.

Since I was going to be there so long,

Carol and I had to stock up.

On what, you ask?

On wine of course.

We spent many nights together in the family room

with a bottle of wine, talking and shedding the occasional tear or two...or three.

I will forever cherish those 12 days spent with Carol.

She's a rare bird, my dear friends.

I am very blessed.

It was very hard to leave her at the airport in Sryacuse last night.

Another "first".

My flight was delayed an hour,

so I parked myself at the only bar in the airport.

People around me were discussing their fears of not making

connecting flights due to the delay, myself included, so I decided to ask the

man next to me if he knew the latest you could

arrive at the gate and still be allowed to board.

We realized we were on the same flight out of Sryacuse

as well the connecting flight to Dallas in Chicago.

He asked what I had been doing in New York,

and I proceeded to tell him I was in New Hartford helping

my mother-in-law after my father-in-law passed away.

The bartender handed me my glass of wine

saying, "Thank you, Mrs. Soladay."

The gentlemen offered his condolences and stated that

he had been in New Hartford all day at a company called PAR Tech.

My heart dropped.

I lowered my glass, and by the look on my face, he knew what I was thinking.

He made the connection at the same moment I did.

The man said, "Ed Soladay. Your father-in-law was the president of PAR Tech."

He went on to tell me how much everyone at PAR loved and respected Ed,

and how big of a loss his death was for the company.

It's such a small world.

I finally did board both flights and made it home safely.

Because Ryan could not leave the kids at home alone to pick me up from the airport,

the car service my father-on-law has always used came to take me home.

When we pulled up, Ryan came out to help me with my luggage,

and we wrapped our arms around each other for what seemed like forever.

Twelve days is a long time to be apart...especially when the longest we've ever been apart is 3.

Did you just gag, Sass?

To say we missed each other, doesn't even do justice.

It was too late to wake the boys,

so getting them up this morning was like Christmas!

I missed those little guys so much.

Home is a good place to be.

Before I go,

I wanted to take a minute to thank everyone for the kind

words, the prayers, the cards, the text messages

during this devistating time for our family.

A special thank you to my blogger girls.

Y'all are the best.

I apologize for not commenting on all my favorite blogs.

Honestly, today is the first day

I have even logged on since before I left.

You know I love y'all though!

Wow, that was long...

thanks for

sticking around, dear friends.