I hate goodbyes. I know what I need. I need more hellos. ~Charles M. Schulz

I feel that I’ve been really lucky to have Erik working in battalion full of guys who married great ladies. I truly look forward to all the gatherings that someone, somewhere along the line affectionately termed “mandatory fun”, because I really value the friendships that I’ve built with the ladies of the BN and I love to be around them. I don’t know what I’d do without some of the ladies I’ve met and the friendships I’ve made. Like I said, I’ve been really lucky.

Now it’s my experience that the period of transition that deployment brings doesn’t really end when the deployment is over. After you’ve welcome back your loved one, you have to start saying goodbye to others that you love. People leave the Army, they move, you move, and there you are saying goodbye again.
Now it’s true, the Army is a surprisingly small entity and chances are we’ll cross paths again, but that doesn’t make goodbye any easier. And have I ever told you how much I hate saying goodbye? I’d sooner just leave unannounced. As you may know, I’m a crier.

* * * * * *

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes. ~Henry David Thoreau

Yeah, I'm pretty bad about this. I really WANT to be better....

So obviously I'm not very good at blogging with Erik home, but I'm going to start trying to do better. Tomorrow.

We'll start with my random realization today:

Erik's camera cord has been to more countries than I have. This needs to be remedied. Who wants to go to Australia?

More later. And hopefully it will have a little more substance...

Erik's Home!

And I'm pretty happy about it.

Melissa's sign cracked me up!

About to head in!

Some of the coffee group ladies :)


Mandy and I were pretty excited even though it was really ungodly hot in the building, and as you can see my hair-do was really starting to reflect that.


They had this screen up in the corner so we could see the guys coming in. Would you believe they showed an Army commerical on there too? Hellooo, I think we're already committed.

The best part :)

Where Men Win Glory

I came across this on Jackie's blog the other day. It's a little long but it's definitely worth watching. Though it really hurts my heart to think about the things they saw over there and they way they had to live, I also can't bring myself to ignore it. There are still soldiers living, working, and dying in Afghanistan and we can't forget about them.

You will probably notice the 10th Mountain patches the soldiers wear. While the footage was filmed during the time Erik was in Afghaninstan and these are 3-71 soldiers, they are from A Troop. I think it's a really interesting look into the way they lived and the things they encountered. And it reminded me once again that this deployment is nothing like the last and for that I am incredibly grateful.



Jon Krakauer's Afghan Diary - Long Form from Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group on Vimeo.