Deployment

As usual, its been a long time between posts. However, I have a feeling that is about to change. Unfortunately, in the near future, I'll be using this page to update my husband on the daily activities of our children.

I've been putting this post off for a long time, because the situation has changed so many times in the last 6 months, I wanted to make sure we actually knew for certain what was happening before I blasted an announcement out to everyone. Now we are a week away from departure, so I'm assuming its not going to change again. (Of course, you never know....)

Long story short... in March hubby got accepted to a very exciting position with a top-notch unit. Unfortunately, the job doesn't open until Summer '09. He was supposed to remain in place until then, but his job was promised as a retention bonus to another soldier, forcing him out of the position. The Army's solution was to create a job in Afghanistan and send him there on an augmentee tasking. He is still technically assigned to the Recruiting Battalion, so technically, that is where the kids and I are supposed to be staying while he is gone. However, with no military infrastructure, no family readiness group, and no family nearby, we decided that we would prefer to move the kids back to Wisconsin for the duration of the deployment.

So, at the beginning of June, we put most of our stuff in storage, loaded up the car and a U-Haul trailer and drove 2,000 miles back to "home". We'll be living with my parents, which I haven't decided how I feel about yet. I love my parents and get along with them quite well. However, I haven't lived at home for over 10 years... its going to be a big adjustment for us all. But in the long run, I think its the best thing for the kids, and its going to be great to have the extra help and live-in babysitters. Maybe now I'll have some time to take some classes and work on some professional development, so I'll be ready to get back to work one of these years!!

Anyway, for now, we are savoring our last few days together before Dad takes off. He will be leaving Wisconsin to go to Fort Benning on July 5th and then departing for Afghanistan from there after completing CRC. We are not looking forward to it, but we're ready for it. Gabi says she's going to "miss my daddy when he goes to "up-scan-iz-scan"".

Me too.