I remember...

September 11th, 2001.

Reed and I had left the children (Alex was almost 8 and Maddy 9 months old) with Grandma in Phoenix. We took a plane on September 9th and arrived in Munich, Germany on the 10th. My parents came to see us, just for one day. I was 7 months pregnant with Elly, and we needed to find a house in Germany where we were being relocated for three years. It was exciting, an all-expense-paid trip to Europe to top it all!

On the 11th, we had an appointment to go visit Alex's future school, Bavarian International School. We then left to go visit Reed's future employment site, while my parents drove home to Belgium. While we were at TRW in Auschau, we called Reed's mom, to check on the kids. She sounded troubled, we didn't know why yet...at that time, the second tower hadn't been hit yet.

We were a world apart from our children, while the world seemed to be ending. Our country was under attack, our strong, unbeatable, untouchable country had been hit. After that, it was uncertainty. Our flight home was scheduled for the Saturday, but all flights had been canceled. We couldn't go home and we didn't know for how long yet. I was heavily pregnant and had a note from my doctor saying I could fly until 32 weeks...I was 30 1/2 weeks!

We finished our business in Munich, we had found a perfect house to call home, a good school and left for Belgium. My brother was visiting my parents at that time, he was living in Portugal then. So we got to see him and my parents, after 2 years of being on different continents. We found out that the first international flights were starting up again on Saturday, but TRW had issued a statement that no one was to fly on the first day they started up again. Our next available flight was only on the 19th, and that's only because we were flying business class. We drove back to Germany to catch our plane, but Reed was a little too anxious and we got pulled over by the Deutsche Polizie! They wanted us to pay for the ticket right away, but we only had like $40.00 and some Deutschmarks...they took it all!

Once at the hotel, we couldn't pay the bellman, we didn't even have one dollar left! But it was amazing how people were with us. They told us over and over, as soon as they found out that we were from the US, how sorry they were. On the Saturday, my friend baptized her baby (Catholic church) and the priest mentioned what happened in NY, he knew we were there by "chance" (last minute thing, I called my best friend to tell her we were standed, and she invited us for the baptism) and came to us afterwards to offer his condolences. Reed had no idea why, because he had been snoring/drooling through the whole sermon...hey, church is church!

On our flight home, we saw a guy from our ward (small world). He told us there had been a murder close to home. The gas station owner at the corner of our street then,( University and 80th Street) had been murdered. He was a Sikh, and wore a turban...some idiot killed him because of the Muslims!!!! Senseless, of course.

Our car was dusty at the airport and they didn't charge us for the extra 4 days we stayed overseas, another reminder of how united the country was.

So I remember September 11th, for all the reasons the world remembers it, and for a few extra reasons...and Maddy had learned how to pull herself up while we were gone those extra days!

3,017 people died

6,291 people were injured

My heart still aches at the thought of these events