I figure I should include a warning at the beginning of this post – this one won’t be all sunshine and rainbows and happy Disney stuff. I’m also going to keep it pretty short – the next post will be back in a Disney park.

Our alarm once again went off way too early – but I woke up excited! My Dad was going to be arriving later this evening (with almost everyone else flying in tomorrow), and we were going to Trattoria el Forno for breakfast – a place I’d been looking forward to trying! Luke got up and headed in to take a shower, while I grabbed my phone to quickly check my social media, and see if anyone had any last minute questions about anything before coming to Florida. There was a single text message from my Mom, that was timestamped from the middle of the night – “Call me when you wake up.” I immediately knew it wasn’t good news, so with my heart sinking I called her. It was even worse than I could have imagined.

The evening before, my uncle was in a snowmobile accident, and had to be airlifted to a hospital in the major city I live in (he lived a few hours north of me, in a much smaller city). My Mom also informed me he was currently in a medically-induced coma, he had brain injuries but the full extent was currently unknown – but it wasn’t good. A little background – there was only an 11 year age difference between my uncle and I , so he was more of a big brother when I was younger. He had moved across the country while in his 20’s – and was the sole reason I also moved across the country (I initially lived with him before moving a few hours south to Edmonton). This was tough news.

Luke finished his shower, and started to get mad because I hadn’t started getting ready, and we were going to be late for our breakfast reservation. However, he only had to take one look at my tear-stained face to realize something was wrong. I had lost my appetite and didn’t want to leave our room at that point, so we actually ended up going back to sleep for a few hours. We did end up getting hit with a $20 no-show fee for our missed Trattoria el Forno breakfast, but I did not care about that in that moment – and I didn’t have it in me to call and try to cancel that morning.