Celebrate!

I recently had the opportunity to go to St. Charles, MO and attend the retirement celebration of my dear dear Kindergarten teacher and friend, Mrs. Jill Aul. I was so excited to see her, especially since the last time we saw each other I was in my wedding dress! Let me tell you a little bit about this woman (I know she reads this blog so she'll be utterly embarrassed...) She truly is the epitome of what a teacher should be. One of my favorite memories of her (and favorite memories in general) is when I was in kindergarten and we were learning about the letter "E." It also happened to be show-and-tell, and according to the rules of show-and-tell, everyone had to bring something that started with the letter "E." Since "The Little Mermaid" had just been released, it seemed like every other person brought in an Eric figurine (I'm pretty sure they were giving them away in the McDonald's happy meals at the time). Anyway, I vividly remember her sitting on her chair in the circle and saying, "Wow, I think you all must love 'The Little Mermaid!' Do any of you know any songs from the movie?" Umm...YES!! I knew not only every single song in that movie by heart, but if she had asked I could have quoted the entire movie word-for-word. Can you tell I was obsessed? Then she asked if anyone would like to sing one of the songs for the class. Umm...YES!! My hand shot up in the air and she called on me to sing a song from the movie. So I sang, "Part of Your World" for the class for show-and-tell that day. Ever since then, Mrs. Aul called me Ariel. To this day, she still refers to me as "Ariel." I love it.

She is one of the kindest people on the face of the planet. When I moved from St. Charles in 2nd grade, Mrs. Aul came and got me out of Mrs. Holtmeyer's class (who was on the opposite end of the spectrum as Mrs. Aul was so you can imagine how appreciative I was for her getting me out of class!) She got down at my eye level and told me how much she was going to miss me. This was the kind of teacher she was. Over the years our families have stayed in contact, and my relationship has changed from "teacher/student" to just friends, and I am so lucky to have a friend like Jill.

Anyway, I was on the way to see my teacher for the first time in years, and I was so excited! Then I looked at the weather report - tornados. Yikes. I was a little concerned about driving in tornado weather, especially because of all the destruction that has happened recently in Alabama and Joplin. I know that tornados are nothing to mess with. But, I was so excited to go that I decided to brave the weather and hope for the best. For the first two hours of the four hour trip, it was smooth sailing. Then I stopped for gas. As I pulled into this gas station, I listened to the radio and the radio broadcaster said that anyone who was in the particular county that I was in needed to take shelter immediately because there was a huge storm coming with a tornado in it.

I felt lucky that I had stopped at that certain point and decided to go inside the gas station and wait for the storm to pass. I lugged the boys inside just as the rain started coming down. And then we watched this horrendous storm start wailing outside. It was crazy. Luckily, we were safe inside a concrete restaurant attached to the gas station, and even more luckily, they had this cool big rig for Jake to play on!

After waiting for about an hour for the storm to pass, we thought that we were in the clear and were about to get back in the car, but then, all of a sudden the manager of the gas station came running in telling everyone that we had to get into the bathrooms of the station and cover because there was a tornado coming right toward us!

About 15 of us piled into the bathrooms and we had the kids crawl under the vanity to make sure they were covered. Of course, we were all terrified, but I tried my best to make it a game for Jake so he didn't get too scared. Not only did I end up having the responsibility of calming Jake down, but I also had to calm down a woman next to me who was basically having an anxiety attack. I kept assuring her that we were in the safest place we could possibly be, and reminding her about how lucky we were that we weren't driving through the storm! She wasn't hearing much of it, though, and she since her cell phone wasn't working, she insisted that the lady next to her call her husband, kids, parents, etc. to tell them that she loved them and etc. etc. Needless to say, she wasn't helping calm the rest of our nerves very much...

Luckily, the tornado missed us and we ended up getting back on the road in about 20 minutes. I just prayed the whole way that we wouldn't get caught in any more tornados!! Finally we made it to St. Charles, and I went to the school for the celebration. When I got there, I was a little confused because there were no cars in the parking lot, and the doors were all locked. I had my mom check online to see what was going on, and sure enough, the party had been CANCELLED because of the tornados!!

And so, I turned around and drove back home. YEAH RIGHT! I wasn't braving tornados and storms just to turn around and go home without seeing my teacher!! So, I found the yellow pages and called her up! Amazingly, she lived just around the corner from the family friend's house where I was staying, so I piled the kids back up in the car and drove over to her beautiful home.

It was a wonderful reunion! I was almost glad that the celebration had been cancelled because I didn't have to share her with the other 500 guests that they were expecting that night!
Jake, our little photog, took this picture of us:I loved being able to chat and reunite with my teacher. It made braving the tornados and storms all worth it.

The next day, Jake, Eli, and I all went over to my brother Justin's gravesite and we put flowers on his grave.

It was actually a pretty emotional experience for me because Jake is the same age that Justin was when he died of meningitis. I feel so blessed to have my boys in my life.

I also felt blessed to be able to do this service for my parents who haven't been able to put flowers on Justin's gravesite since leaving St. Charles.

All in all, we had a fabulous, emotionally charged, whirlwind trip, and I left St. Louis feeling so grateful for the blessings of all the people in my life. Be they family, friends, or kindergarten teachers, as Jill said on our way out, "This is what life is all about, these relationships that we form with others." It was nice to be reminded of that.