Deployment Positive Thursday- Week 3

This morning I came into work (a few minutes early for once) to discover the door to the office locked. Seriously. LOCKED. There are only four of us who work there, but I am always the last one in since I work fewer hours than my bosses and co-worker. And I am the only one without a key. At first I checked my emails on my iPod (since I could still get the wifi signal even though I was outside of the door) to see if anyone had emailed me, but of course not. I was kind of miffed, but knew eventually everyone would be in. So I went to sit in the truck and wait for everyone to come in (yeah, I'm still driving Andrew's truck, have you seen all the snow we have in Central PA? No way do I feel like digging my car out from underneath all of it! Plus I feel a lot safer in "The Silver Bullet" as we call it).

As I was sitting there, just listening to some music, I thought about how nice it felt to just sit and think. Life has been out-of-control-busy lately--and believe me, I'm thankful for that--but it was the first time in a long time (definitely since deployment started) where I could just be alone with my thoughts. It was so liberating, in a weird way, to just sit there and know I didn't have a million things I needed to go and do right away, or be in a rush to get anywhere, or finish another project for work. None of that. Just me and my beautiful country music and my thoughts. I thought a lot about this deployment and how it is so much different than I ever expected a deployment to be, how lucky I have been to be able to talk to my wonderful fiance every day for the past week and a half, and how nice it is to have settled on a date, ceremony site, and reception location for our wedding. Nothing was pressing, and there was nothing I could do about the fact that I wasn't at work. It was a beautiful morning gift.

Eventually my bosses and coworker all came in (my bosses are a married couple and went to a late breakfast and my coworker had a dentist appointment) and I got right to work and had one of the most productive days I've had in a while. I had a task at hand and clearing my mind earlier in the truck really helped me to de-stress and just focus on my project.

My morning gift wasn't even the best part of my day, though! Two more little gifts were creeping my way, in the hours to come. The first, was a call from an unknown number around 2 this afternoon on my cell phone. I almost didn't pick it up, but boy, am I glad I did! You'll never guess who was on the other line; none other than a certain Ranger friend of mine: Andrew Dolan! I couldn't have been happier for our 3 minute phone call! And can I please say that this call was infinitely better than the last call I got from an unknown number with Andrew's voice on the other end. Bahhhhh I still get chills when I think of that bad time in Ranger School. But this was a happy call (once we got past the awkwardness of "who's this" "no, who is this" nonsense) and I am so thankful for it!

My third gift today came at dinner time! Andrew's parents and I went out to Shannon's house but before we ate, Mom and Shannon were acting kind of weird. They got the camera out and told the kids they had a surprise... for Aunt Tina (that's me!!)! Totally unexpected that I would be getting a surprise. They made me stand in the corner with my eyes closed while they brought down my early Valentines Day present. I literally screamed when I opened my eyes to see the face of my solider, right where it should be at just over 6 feet off the ground:

Just to be clear- this is just a cardboard cut-out! He is not actually home with us!

I honestly could not have asked for a better Valentines Day gift, or a more loving family! The kids and I were so excited, it was like actually having Andrew there eating dinner with us. They couldn't get enough of their new, fake Uncle AJ! I couldn't get enough of him! It was such a happy moment! I even asked Gavin while we were eating dinner, "Whose God-daddy is that?" and he said with all the pride, love and excitement an (almost) three-year-old could possibly have: "This is MY God-Daddy!"

Love these kids. Love this family. Love my soldier.

Dearly.