Desi is back!

Friday I was looking forward all day to being at the airport when Desi arrived home from Hong Kong.  I even told some of the third graders I work with about it.  Exciting times!

Braeden and Emma met us here (Adam would be joining us later because he was refereeing).  We took Loki (which is a gutless rattletrap it turns out) and I drove.  Because I'm not crazy.

We were merrily rolling along and then we hit traffic.  Terrible traffic.  The ambulance came up the side and there was clearly an accident up ahead.  Turns out there were multiple accidents and we crawled.  At one point Mark said, "Hey, we're moving now!" except we were only going 25 mph.  It just felt like a really fast pace.

Emma was texting her aunts and I realized we weren't going to make it to the airport on time.  We aborted that mission and went instead to IHOP which is where we were all meeting for dinner.

Because of the magic of Facebook, I did manage to steal some pictures of the airport scene which made me feel both better and worse.

I really wanted to be there.

Here's the big group--minus us. :(

I love this one of Hyrum pointing proudly, the joy on Robert's face and that wild swirl of hair as sisters hugged:

I also loved this one of my sweet Mama:

This picture captures Desi perfectly.  Such a bright light of sunshine in the world.  Here she is greeting Edgar:

My mom called us to see if they should wait at the airport or what.  I said, "No, we gave up and just went to IHOP."

Braeden and Emma and Mark laughed loudly at that (and if you've heard Braeden laugh, you know what I mean).

I realized it did sound kind of bad to the people surrounding us--like IHOP is where you go when you've hit rock bottom.

(I sort of felt like I had hit rock bottom.)

But then people started arriving and Desi bounded in and hugged me tight and had way more energy than anyone should have after flying in from Hong Kong.

We settled in and ate french toast and it must be said, that cheers a person up.  Adam and I sat in a booth across from Marianne and Robert and drew sketches of the reception plans on one of those little adhesive papers that was wrapped around a napkin.

(It was a small sketch.)

It was wonderful to chat briefly with people.  I'm looking forward to next weekend and having more time to see everyone.  It is a tiny bit intimidating to contemplate executing my lofty (literally--I want to hang some stuff) plans for the reception, but Robert said, "I'll do anything you tell me to do."

So there's that.