Girls on the Go!: Dad on the Go Returns

Happy new year everyone! It has been quite a while since I blogged. In fact, my mother accused me of retiring. But the Girls on the Go have been as busy as ever and I am ready to start sharing our adventures once again. One reason that I was blog-less is this:

That would be Chad, the Dad on the Go, playing his drums. In an "undisclosed location" in Southwest Asia as part of his deployment with the Air Force band. Chad was gone for three months and I was ~~overwhelmed~~ ~~swamped~~ just a little bit busy. Blogging was one of many things that fell by the wayside, along with regularly cleaning the bathrooms and sleeping in on weekends. It was a time of major transition for me. Both girls were in school all day for the first time, and my commitment as a MOPS group coordinator had ended. It seemed like I had so much time on my hands! Except that Chad left one week before school started, so I had more to do than usual, and I felt like everything needed to be finished before the girls came home from school every day so I could give them my full attention. And just as I was getting the hang of it, he came home!
Which I now remember is the topic of this post.
Chad was not due to be home until the first week of December. The girls had the week of Thanksgiving off of school, and staying home the whole time sounded like the fastest way to lose my mind, so we went to Nana's house! We were all looking forward to seeing family members we had not seen in a long time. The moment I took the last bag from the car in to my mom's house on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, my phone rang. It was Chad, saying they *might* be coming home early. How early? He wasn't sure, maybe Friday. There was lots of e-mailing back and forth for the next two days. Then he called on Tuesday, saying they were on a flight out of their home base and would be home on Thursday! Of course I was very excited. I was also anxious about traveling on the day before Thanksgiving, and disappointed that I would not see my family. But I knew from his return from deployment in 2009 that the moment of greeting him at the airport would be worth it, so we had our pumpkin pie with Nana and Les on Tuesday night and drove home on Wednesday. (Thankfully the roads and traffic were not bad and the girls were good passengers.) We met up with our "deployment buddies" at the airport and got a pass to go through to the gate. The girls were excited!

"Abbey! I see a plane! Is that Daddy's plane over there?" "No, Elliott."

"Abbey! How about that plane over there?" "Still no!"

"Are you happy Daddy is coming home?"

Finally, after what seemed like all day but was actually about an hour, the plane arrived. Before we could even walk to the gate, our friends' husband/dad was off the plane. So, Chad must be next? No! Chad was the. last. person. off the plane! There were cheers from some of his coworkers, big hugs from Abbey and Elliott and a few tears from me.