In Honor of Patriot Day: 9-11

To honor Patriot Day today, we all dressed in red, white and blue to show our support for this wonderful country that we are blessed to live in and be a part of. We watched the footage on MSNBC of 9-11-01 and it just sent chills down my spine and brought back all of the feelings of what I was thinking and feeling when that happened to our country.

The girls were really interested and wanted to talk about what happened to our country. Their teachers at school spent alot of time talking about it and answering the kids' questions. The girls were so sad for the people who lost their lives on this day and for their families. It was touching to see them so moved by this tragic event and to see it really begin to hit home at what was really lost on that fateful day.

Of course, none of us will ever forget where we were when we first heard about the hijaking of airplanes and the attack on the The Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Mike and I were on our very first cruise headed to the Mexican Riviera. We were with my brother and sister-in law, Mike and Connie, and our friends, Jared and Kim Hill. We were all headed up to breakfast when one of the ship staff came running down the hall and said, "Your country is on fire!" So we all went back into our room and turned on our TV in our stateroom and watched the news footage from our room. We saw just as the second tower fell. It was so surreal and knew that this could not possibly be happening. We then watched President Bush's speech at the news conference.

When we went up for breakfast, the entire ship was deserted. Most people had stayed in their staterooms and watched the news in their rooms. Every room on the ship had the news conference on. There was no music by the pool, no one was swimming. It was in the middle of the day and there was hardly anyone around. It was a very eerie feeling.

We were sitting on deck on pool chairs and the staff were walking around inspecting and checking out the life boats. So we pulled one of them aside and asked if they ever did that in the middle of a cruise and they said, "We have never done this on a cruise before. But in light of what just happened to America, we are taking precautions just in case." Wow! Talk about chills up your spine. That night, our ship went through a tropical storm and the ship bearings weren't down so the ship tipped so far down that waves crashed onto some of the decks on the top floors of the ship. There were people that stayed up all night in their life jackets on the deck. That certainly added to the surreal feeling of the day.

But I do have to say that the foreign travelers on the ship were so kind and expressed their concerns to us while we were on the ship. And then when we arrived in Mexico, the people there were so nice and everywhere we went, people told us how sorry they were for what had happened to our country.

When the cruise was over, we drove home from LA and our friend Kim Hill called her family to check in. When she spoke with her Mom, she told her that one of Kim's best friends from growing up and High School had been killed in the attack on the Pentagon. It was really sad.

When I think about the events of 9-11, there is such a deep sense of sadness for those that lost their lives and for their families. At the same time, it was comforting to see how the country came together with one purpose and the amount of patriotism that was shown afterwards. It just goes to show how resilient this country is and how it can overcome anything. I love America and we are so blessed to be living in this wonderful country!