A new chapter begins

Well the honeymoon is over.... Jeff left on a 6-7 month deployment today:(
It's a sad day here in the Carter house! We have lived here just a month shy of a year, and let me tell you we have LOVED every minute of it. Really, honestly and truly, this has been the best year our family has had. Perhaps it's because we were together, all of us in our complete family. We really love his area. This is my favorite house that I have every lived in, it's amazing. It's perfect. We love our neighborhood and the people in it. And we have all made some amazing friends here, quickly. Like I said, we have loved it here.
Well.... all good things must come to an end- or shall I say, new beginning?

With the kids in school and Jeff deploying our lives will be full of changes. The last time he deployed the big kids were 1 and 3. They really have NO memory of his deployment. So they really have no idea what to expect. We have prepped them as much as we can, but their spacial idea of time is not quite capable of understanding exactly what 6 months entails. But I think for the most part, they "get" it.

Jeff's send off wasn't exactly what we had hoped for either... Originally it was supposed to be Friday, around 2pm. So I was going to pull the kids out of school and we were going to take him to the air strip. They were going to be able to see the giant airplane and have a "proper" send off. Wellllllllll Friday got pushed to Saturday and Saturday to Sunday. Then Sunday was just all over the damn place! First 4:30 am, then 7, then at 6am "the flight crew needs rest, we are on a 12-24 hour stand-down".... excuse me, huh?

So we went back to sleep. Well not less than 20 minutes later he gets a call that says, "we are leaving NOW, on a fast track, be at the command in 30 minutes!" What? No! Wait, that's not fair! The kids were still asleep. So I had to bust them out of bed and wake them up to say goodbye to their daddy. There would be no airport trip, no seeing the plane, nothing. It was a total letdown after such a giant build up! So there we were, saying goodbye to Jeff at 6:30am, blurry eyed and in the rain. It sucked. Really, did they have to rush it? Did they have to not give time for the families to come say a "proper" goodbye and have a "send-off"???? It's nice to have the closure of seeing them get on an airplane... but hey, we've never had that... so what am I talking about? ;)

The kids took it VERY hard initially. Very hard. We spent the day in our pajamas. The whole day;) Watching movies, playing games, cleaning closets. It was a gray, rainy day and we took advantage of it and did nothing at all.

My good friend Lindsay, dropped by this morning with two bags full of goodies for us! It was just what we needed! Whenever the kids go to her house (Kamryn's) they devour her fruit snacks and chocolate chip mini muffins.... and that's exactly what she brought them! I think we downed the whole box within about three minutes. She also brought me my favorite things- a bottle of wine and a pint of Ben & Jerry's.... you gotta love good friends! Specially military ones who know exactly how you feel:)

All in all it was a good first day. First of many. And guess what blogger? I'm back;)