Haley Rae is coming home!

There are things in life that you don’t miss until you don’t have to do them anymore… in this case, I mean vacuuming up sunflower seeds and cleaning wads of dark brown hair out of the shower.  You see, I haven’t done that since Haley Rae left for Guatemala in February. 

She has really been ragging me for not blogging about her being gone, but I didn’t feel like I could blog without getting emotional and I didn’t want to make her homesick.  BUT, it’s okay if she gets homesick now because SHE’S COMING HOME TOMORROW!! 

After Haley graduated in May, I could see a change in her.  She had played year-round sports all her life and that’s really all she knew.  When all that stopped, she just didn’t know what to do with herself.  She started to college, but I could tell she wasn’t happy.  She didn’t know what to take in school.  She didn’t know what she wanted to “be”.   I prayed for her to find SOMETHING that would reignite the spark in her life.  Well, God works in mysterious ways.  We found out that Danny and Kim Lopez needed a volunteer to come over and help them for a couple of months in Guatemala, and within 2 weeks, Haley Rae was on a plane.  Between you and me, I never had a doubt that she’d stay the entire time.   I did, however, doubt that she would really love it.  I expected her to like it the first couple of weeks and then be ready to head on back to Sweet Home Alabama.  She has SHOCKED me on several levels.  First, she’s not ready to come home.  What the heck? Secondly, she has been in a pleasant and even euphoric mood every single time I’ve heard from her.  What the double heck??  If you know Haley Rae very well at all, you know that she’s…ummm… moody.  Who is this person who looks like my daughter, but is IN LOVE with a foreign country and in a perpetual happy mood?  I don’t know, but I love it.  I am so incredibly proud that she made the choice to walk away from her pretty darn cushy life into a world of unknown.  I know she made a difference in Guatemala, and I feel like Guatemala made a difference in her. 

It goes without saying that *I* am ecstatic about her arrival tomorrow night.  As a matter of fact, I’m packing a fork in my purse to take to the airport and will stab anyone who tries to hug her before me. 

There are a few other people who miss her and are happy to see her coming home too. 

Some people even made videos!

AND...Special messages from the men in her life!

So there you go, Haley Rae... your very own blog.  I hope this makes you feel special, because you ARE!