Kelsey comes home on Mother's Day! Her plane was scheduled to arrive on May 10, 2009 at 10:30 p.m., so I had everything all planned for her homecoming surprise. I went to Dick's Market to buy some of her favorite foods (fresh fruit, soy milk, Nutella and graham crackers, etc.) and ordered yellow balloons. We made her Welcome Home signs, complete with "Welcome Home" in English and Hebrew. I didn't pick up the balloons until 10 p.m. on Saturday night so that they would be fairly "fresh" when she finally saw them late Sunday Night. The house was clean, her room was already for her to slip in between her covers after a loooong travel day. We were ready for this girl to get home. On Saturday night, we closed the house down and turned off the lights by midnight. I was waiting for Kelsey to call us from the airport in Vienna, so I knew the phone would be ringing in the middle of the night. Steve and I had just settled down in our bed and as I was slowly drifting off to sleep....the phone rings. I know exactly who it is. It's my darling girl and I get to hear her voice one more time before she boards her plane and begins her last league of her 5 month journey. She will be home this time tomorrow night! I'm am so excited I can hardly stand it! I answered the phone and started asking Kelsey about her flight information and she interrupts me to ask me to go out to the front porch to get something her friend, Ali (who went to Jerusalem with Kelsey, but got home a week earlier) was dropping off. Kelsey wanted to make sure it got to our house safely. I told her I would run out and check, and as I am opening the front door I can see that I caught Ali as she was just barely leaving the "package." But wait a minute. That's not Ali standing there. My brain has momentarily frozen as I slowly begin to realize that KELSEY is standing on our front porch--a DAY early!!--holding a sign: Happy Mother's Day
I love you MOM!
I just grabbed that girl and hugged the living breath out of her! I did not want to let her go. We were both laughing and crying and screaming and soon the rest of the family was running downstairs to get their hugs and screams of joy out as well. We brought in her luggage and just sat on the couch and talked with her and hugged her and talked some more, looked at pictures, looked at the souvenirs she brought back and hugged and teared up. Finally at 4 a.m. we pulled ourselves away from each other to get a few hours of sleep. As I lay in Steve's arms, while trying to drift off to sleep, I wept in gratitude to have my baby home and to have our family back together, all in one piece, once more. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
