Homecoming

I can't even tell you how excited I was to watch this plane land the other afternoon.

And I wasn't the only one.

"Look for the white hat", I told Mya and Oliver as they pressed their faces up against the glass window as everyone piled off of the plane. "That'll be daddy/uncle Terry".

So we waited...and waited.

Until finally we spotted that white hat and cheers could be heard throughout that little airport.

My parents have always taught us that "Love is showing up".

So we show up for people.

We show up for each other.

We make a point of being there for the big moments and being there for the small ones. We change our schedules around, we show up when we might be tired, we show up when we know it will take extra effort. We just show up. Because love is showing up.

And we all did for Terry that day.

This is one very missed guy.

And when he finally came around the corner, it brought tears to my eyes as Mya caught a slight glimpse of him as he came through the doors and screamed "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" and tore as fast as she could over to him and jumped into his outstretched arms.

This one little girl missed her daddy desperately.

Along with her little brother.

And me too.

We survived the week without him. But man is it ever great to have him home again. 

Unfortunately though, after the excitement and happiness of picking him up from the airport, things went downhill pretty quickly.

As we all piled into our separate cars and headed back to our house for a pizza dinner, the rain began to come down. Slowly at first...just a few raindrops splashing on our windshield. But it soon began to come down harder and the clouds started to roll in and turned a dark grey quickly.

As we all sat down to eat we heard the wind blowing and the rain started crashing down, falling in sheets as the trees outside swayed aggressively in the breeze.

All of sudden the lights went out, all power gone...and we were left eating pizza over candlelight.

But as the rain began to really pour down, Jen went to the back door for a moment and just as she did, we heard her scream.

I came running, not knowing what had happened...but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

I opened the door as the storm wrapped around our house, and looked out to see our HUGE gazebo hanging over my neighbours shed, completely destroyed.

 This gigantic thing literally flew over the fence, flipped upside down and landed in a pile on top of their shed.

What was once a lovely, shaded sitting area in our backyard turned into a heap of cushions thrown all over the place.

I still can't believe that the power of the storm was strong enough to throw this heavy gazebo right over the fence. Unbelievable.

Not to mention, expensive.

But as the storm settled and we were still left without power, we brought the sidewalk chalk out and tried to make the best of it.

Then tackled the huge job of fixing the mess of the storm early the next morning.

As I sat there feeling sorry for myself for a moment, realizing the expense of a new gazebo and realizing the sheer waste of our old one, I reminded myself of how lucky we were. Thankfully no one was hurt. This flying weapon could have literally killed someone in it's path. It could have caused even more damage than it did. A new gazebo is relatively easy to buy again (minus the fact that this particular gazebo is currently sold out at every single store). But a person is irreplaceable.

Then when I took a drive around our neighbourhood, I realized that we were only one of many who were affected by the storm and it certainly put my feeling sorry for myself quickly in to check.

My parents backyard was a prime example of the damage that wind and rain can cause.

After a fine effort of tackling this beast of a tree with dad's little chainsaw...

and creating this huge pile, ready to be chopped up even further...

they finally gave in, realizing that needing to rent a huge chainsaw was completely necessary (and pretty much impossible with everyone working on their yards this week).

But this mighty little chainsaw, and these two determined guys managed to get most of the job done.

Not exactly the way that we expected to spend our first couple of days with Terry home. But so thankful that this was the only true damage that our family experienced. A gazebo and some huge trees to deal with are nothing compared to what could have happened.

So happy to have my hubster home. And grateful that we have power on again. Hallelujah.

Erica xo