My Voyerism and Exhibitionism Finally Paid Off!!

I was planning on posting about my second day in Chicago today, but it will have to wait because I had a very pleasant surprise today. In blog land I follow a lot of different blogs. I follow Baby Loss Blogs, which have led me into finding some amazing blogs on adoption and infertility. I also follow a lot of military wives' (milies) blogs. A few of them actually overlap. I of course have my favorites, the ones I like to call my "blog crushes". As soon as I log on, I filter out those blogs and get updated on them before reading the other updates. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from one of my "crushes". I was ecstatic just to see her name pop up into my INBOX, but I was over the moon when I read why she was contacting me.

Her husband is an officer in the Army, just like Foster, and they are PCSing (moving in civilian terms) to a new base. They happened to be passing through my city in approximately three hours and wanted to know if we wanted to meet up. As I checked the time of the message, I noticed I still had about 2 hours, so I called Foster to see what he thought. I explained to him why this woman was so important to me. You see, not only is she a fellow Army wife, but she also lost her daughter Olivia around 36 weeks gestation about 9 months ago. She was one of the first blogs I started following. She seemed so strong and she inspired me, because I had Foster home to help be my rock, but 2 weeks after she lost Olivia, Priscilla's husband had to return to Afghanistan. I immediately had a huge amount of respect for them as a couple. PLUS this was not their first loss! Reading her story made me stronger.

To top it all off, it just so happens that Foster had today off of work because he had just returned from a grueling trip of white water rafting and needed a day to recover. It could not be anymore perfect! We could have a double lunch date! When Foster agreed, I called Priscilla and we made arrangements to meet.

About two hours later, we walked into Olive Garden and I recognized them right away. Once again, just as I was nervous about meeting Holly from Caring for Caleigh , I was just about as nervous to meet James and Priscilla. However, those nerves dissipated quickly as we all started talking. Of course our children came up, but we talked about so much more. We talked Army, moving, dogs, and more. Foster and James had a lot in common, and I found out that Priscilla and I have even more than I thought in common. As if being mommies to angels, dog lovers, blog writers and wives to officers wasn't enough, we both majored in Psychology. It also took her quite a while to finish school, so she completely understood why I was still not finished.

After numerous bowls of soup, bread sticks and salads, we headed out to the parking lot to meet one of my favorite characters on her blog, their basset hound Obadiah (Oba for short). He makes me laugh so hard when I read stories about him, and I was honored to finally meet the little man in person. He is just as cute in person as he is in pictures, and he just LOVED Foster!!

Although we will be living hundreds of miles away, I hope to continue a friendship with this family, and I pray that both our families will be blessed with a healthy, beautiful bundle of joy soon. I am so happy that we got the opportunity to enjoy a meal together and get to know each other, for it is such a blessing to have people like these in our lives.

Visit her beautiful blog, and get to know Priscilla, James and Oba, at Missing Olivia ~ missingolivia.blogspot.com, and I am sure you will understand why their story has been such a huge part of my healing.
Thank you Priscilla for the wonderful surprise!