Whew

In just a few hours he will be home again. I have to say that this deployment was very difficult. I wasn't surrounded by my support group, since we moved 3 hours away from my closest friends. It made it harder for me to deal with the day to day stuff. I miss being able to just sit with a friend and chat about annoying things the kids are doing. I miss being able to get an afternoon away because the kids could go home with someone else.

Now, sure, the 2 older ones are at school all day, but Tally is always with me. I did some math the other day, and in her entire nearly 13 months of life (and if you add in pregnancy that makes almost 2 years) I have been away from her for about 6 hours. TOTAL. I just don't have anyone to leave her with. I want to, I really want to. No, I need to. For my sanity.

In a few moments I am going to get up and start mad dash cleaning of the house. We've got about 6 hours until his flight gets in, an hour and 15 minutes to drive there, and showers to take.

We are all ready. All of us are ready for him to be home again.

Yesterday at the grocery store I was putting the shopping cart back in the bay in the parking lot. A soldier was standing behind his SUV and asked if he could use the cart. I said "Sure" because I was done with it, and there weren't any in the bay. I unbuckled Tally and she reached up, to the soldier. She doesn't usually try to get strangers to pick her up. It was very cute. Now I just hope she will try to go to her daddy when we pick him up today.