catching up

Trying to catch up is just no fun. Here's a run-down of our past 6 weeks:

The Captain came home, and it felt like he'd never left. Stinky took just a couple of hours to turn himself into a "daddy's boy."

We went swimming, to the petting zoo, to the dinosaur museum. We saw grandparents and cousins. We rode on a real train. The Captain visited Dolly Babe's class and showed them pictures of Army planes and helicopters. We cuddled and played games, read stories, and watched a few movies. We went to see "Oceans," which bored the kids a bit but the Captain and I really enjoyed it. We enjoyed mother's day with both grandma's. The Captain and I even went on a date to see Iron Man 2 (awesome movie!).

Now the Captain is back at Kandahar, Afghanistan and we're getting back into our old routines. He FINALLY moved into one of the "chews," a room made out of a shipping container. He now has only ONE roommate (instead of hundreds), a floor, a window, air conditioning and QUIET. He's finally learning to sleep through the night again after almost a year of alarms going off all night long. Time is passing slowly for him, but he does finally have a firm return date. He'll leave on July 6th, and it will probably take about a week for him to get to McChord AFB in Washington. Once home he'll go straight to work for a week or two, and then his whole Brigade is being given 30 days of leave.

Our Mini cannot wait to move into our new house. Every day he asks if we can go there. The sellers are renting back through July 10th, and then we'll somehow be moving in without the Captain to run the show. Mini, though, isn't the only excited one. We're all anxious to have Daddy home for good.

Stinky has been cranky since his Daddy left, but that may be due to the top and bottom molars he's cutting. In the past two months, he's gone from 4 teeth to 10 (finally!) and pretty soon it will be 12. He's walking full-time now, and loves the slide in our backyard. It makes me nervous, but he does a great job of climbing the ladder and going down the slide backward all by himself. He's very independent, and prefers to do things on his own.

Dolly Babe was pretty emotional about her Daddy leaving, but I think that moving away from her friends, cousins and grandparents will be a tougher transition. I'm somewhat surprised that she loves school so much. During spring break, she mentioned every day how much she missed being there. We'll see how summer goes...

Here are a few pics of our family time: