Let The Countdown Begin

At 3am this morning we dropped Charlie off so he could start his trek to Iraq. It's now 4am and I've got insomnia - either that or the liter of Mountain Dew is really working. Since he doesn't work on post, we dropped him off at the range so he could sign out his weapon and later they will drive back to Schofield to wait for the buses to take them to the airport. And wouldn't you know on our way off post I got pulled over by a MP who said I was speeding, 35 in a 25. Now normally I might do that, but at that time I was crying and going as slow as possible to delay the inevitable drop-off. Plus we had already passed one MP who pulled someone over and this MP had a car pulled over; both with the blue lights flashing. Even Charlie said he was watching the speedometer and saw it on 25. Anyway, it's a $55 fine but I'm going to go to court and fight it. The guy was a jerk though, I mean it was 2:15 in the morning, I'm crying, my husband is in uniform, our kids are in pajamas in the backseat, and an entire brigade is deploying right now - you would think he would've seen what was happening and cut me some slack.

We woke the kids up so they would see him leave and understand that he'll be gone for a while. Aidan is old enough to understand that Daddy is gone to the desert and he'll be gone for a long time but he doesn't know how long it really is. It was so heartbreaking to watch him say bye to them. They're fine though, playing and being too loud for 4am. Hopefully we'll be able to sleep for a little while before the sun comes up and the day really starts.

A little piece of good news is that I read an article saying there is a lot of pressure to reduce the tour length from 15 months back to 12 months. There should be a decision in 3-4 months. I'm very hopeful that he'll only have to do 12 but I'm prepared for 15.

This evening we took the kids down to Honolulu Hale to see Shaka Santa and the lights. We had a good time getting our mind off the deployment for a little bit.

Here we are in front of Shaka Santa & Mrs Clause


And here's Charlie and the kids