Some mornings it takes me just a second to re-orient myself and pull myself out of bed. Saturday morning was one of those mornings. My eyes opened (although I wasn’t really awake yet) and I could see that it was still dark outside and then I remembered “Ah, that’s right, it’s Saturday! I get to sleep in - yay.”  Long deserved after a week of very early mornings.

Just about then my teenage son knocked on the bedroom door and said that he had just received a call from work and they needed him to come in early because they were expecting to be extra busy. So, I sat up, rubbed my eyes and waited for a second for the neon time on the Tivo across the room to come into focus. It was 5:34a.m.

I pulled on my slippers and just put a big winter coat on over my jammies to drive him to work. The air at 5:30 is so crisp and still and my little corner of the world was just waking up. As I drove him to work I looked around and marvelled at the beautiful red skies in the west (some good storms ahead for sure) and the sleepy blue skies in the east that faded into an almost white skyline where the sun was due to peak up over the horizon at any time.

The skyline and the hills looked almost like hollywood sets the colors were so vibrant. The quiet of the morning was absolutely peaceful. All of my kids are healthy, the new puppy is near potty trained and all was right with the world.

It made me think about all of the families around the country waking up on a morning like this who have family members in the military and who may be overseas fighting for my children and for the peace and freedom of children all across the country. My family will never be able to thank all of them personally - they will probably never the know the faces of my kids. But on this morning I couldn’t help but be thankful for all of the families who are out there with family members fighting for me and my family so that we can enjoy the peaceful winter morning on a very quiet Saturday in February.