He's HOME!

Aaron made it home safely from Afghanistan this week!

To prepare, the kids and I had a banner made and hung it on the garage.

Gabe and Claire also wore their special Army outfits.

The day didn't go quite as planned. I drove Aaron's car on base to pick him up, since we had had it cleaned and I wanted him to see it looking so nice. Well, the gate guard stopped me and said the tags were expired?! I knew they shouldn't have been but couldn't think clearly enough to pull out his actual registration to check. He wasn't going to let me on base so I started calling people at the company to come give us a ride. Of course no one was answering. I started crying and eventually he let me on. Once we finally got to the company, the parking lots were full so we had to park in the grass.

We took a bus to the hangar and the kids were doing a good job of waiting nicely. The weather was great and by all signs, it was going to be a wonderful afternoon. Well, about fifteen minutes before the plane was to land the weather drastically changed. It started raining EXTREMELY hard. The plane approached the runway (they are SO loud, by the way), stalled, and pulled back up. The rain was too hard to land. By this point the kids were DONE and acting ridiculous.

The plane circle for another 20 minutes and then was able to land. As soon as the doors opened for the guys to make their way inside, it started hailing. They were soaked by the time they made it in. We didn't care though! 

Once they had a brief formation we were allowed to have 15 minutes of "family time" before they had to leave to do paperwork, weapons check, etc. Gabe was so, so excited to have his daddy back but was extremely distraught when Aaron left again. Claire was a little more reserved but Daddy saved some of his cookies from the plane for her and she eventually warmed up.

We took busses back to the company and had some snacks while we waited on Aaron to finish up. During this time I realized the grass parking lot I had parked on was FLOODED. I went to go move it and thankfully only the back tires were sunk down low and the car came out easily.  My brand new dress was splattered in mud and my heels were stuck in the grass. It was a mess. After two hours, Aaron was done and we were able to head home.

Since then, Aaron has been working "half days" (which really means 630-2 in the Army) but we are just so thankful he is back and safe. All of us are happier. I didn't realize how completely exhausted I was until he made it home and I started to relax. We also learned that his tags had been stolen off his license plate. That completely freaks me out considering it was parked in our driveway... and someone must have stood there to scrape the stickers off. Ugh. 

We're looking forward to block leave in a couple of weeks and spending some great time together as a family!