Deployment Day

Kerry should be on the plane now. I haven't heard anything to the contrary. He doesn't have his cell phone any more (it's been given to Emily) so if there was a hold up of some sort, I don't know about it.

He had to report in at midnight. We told everyone to take a nap so that they wouldn't be as tired and grouchy since we would be out way past our bedtime.

Katie really took to that idea and slept for three hours.

Emily, who can usually nap every day, was only able to sleep an hour. I tried to nap, but was too keyed up to sleep. Ben flatly refused to try (and yes, he was the grouchiest of us all at 2:00 this morning).

Kerry brushed the girls hair for them since he won't be able to do it for a while.

This was really a job that I pawned off on him because I was busy,

but they all enjoyed it.

As I said, he had to report for formation at midnight. Being the "Type A" personality that he is, we arrived 45 minutes early. No one else was there.

Surprise!

He said, "I was sure other people would be here already."

So, we sat in the car and waited for midnight to roll around. It was raining buckets, so we couldn't get out and walk around.

Midnight finally arrived and he left to go find out what the plan was. The plan turned out to be that they weren't supposed to be there until 1:00 AM.

We went to the shopette and got snacks and then sat in the car some more.

At 1:00, Kerry had to go to formation and then draw weapons. We sat in the car and waited until around 2:00 AM until he got done. Ben and Emily fell asleep, but Katie, being nap-fortified, read a book.

We finally joined Kerry under an overhang. It was chilly and wet.

We took a lot of last photos while we waited.











Finally, we just had to leave.

Katie had the hardest time. She cried all the way home.

When we got to the house, we found our Build-A-Bear animals on our beds. Kerry had hidden them after we made them so we hadn't seen them in a while. He had recorded two voice messages for each bear and had them put inside their paws. When we squeeze their paws we hear Kerry talking to us.

I expected the messages to be sweet, but he outdid himself. He did one sweet message and one funny message for each of us. It was wonderful because we had been crying and there we were all standing in the hallway listening to each others bears and laughing. We really needed that.

The girl's funny messages are the things he won't be able to tell them to do this year, "Hey you! Eat your broccoli! Do your homework! Stop growing!"

My funny message says, "Put some socks on Woman! Your feet are like ice cubes!"

It's almost like having him here........*sigh*