Sunday, November 23, 2008

It's Like He Never Left...

Jesse is HOME!!! His plane got in around 10am this morning, holding over 400 soldiers from the 1st and 2nd Brigade. Unfortunately, Jesse was all the way in the back of the plane so it took a while for him to get to the hanger. I did get my first call on my cell phone from Jesse when the plane pulled in to where all the families were! It was amazing seeing the plane land and all the excitement as the soldiers got off the plane. As soon as they were all off, the families and friends went back into the warm hanger and waited for the short ceremony to begin. They opened the hanger doors and in came all of the soldiers with their gear off in formation. Some guy gave a short 3 minute speech and then the soldiers sang the Army song. After that, they released the soldiers to see families. Thankfully, Jesse spotted his mom and I pretty quickly while in formation, so we found each other in the mass chaos easily. It was amazing...seeing him in person and being able to touch him - WOW. His mom took some great pictures of us reuniting and then he spent some time getting some hugs from his mommy. It was wonderful knowing that he was safe and back home. Jesse had some out-processing to do before he could come home with me, so after 15 minutes of a visit, the soldiers were put back into formation and escorted out to go to their brigade areas on base. We were in the car going home about 2 1/2 hours later after he arrived. Jesse was so happy to walk in our house and just be himself, not a Lieutenant. He had a little reunion with Callie (she was happy to have some extra lovin') and took some time to unpack, shower and reorient himself with "home". It has been an easy transition with us - it's like he never left. We can't believe that he's been gone 5 months! Thank you God for provision of my husband during this deployment - we are blessed!

4 comments:

Our Princess said...

Praise God! So glad to see him home!

April Dunn said...

The pictures are precious, especially the one of you two!! Can't wait to see you both. Off to help w/ the Thanksgiving Feast w/ T!!

Anonymous said...

I am so happy for you both. You had the best Thanksgiving ever. Truly something to be thankful for. I teared up reading your post.

Claire said...

Aw, i love the one of you guys looking at eachother! I didn't notice that before! So sweet! YAY FOR HUSBANDS! :)

Ellie

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