{sad and busy weekend}

This weekend was a sad one. Our good friend Chris left for his 3rd deployment on Saturday. My heart hurts for his wife (and one of my greatest friends), who is 2 months pregnant, and their two children. Having gone through the deployments twice myself, once with her as a friend to lean on, it pains me to know that she's going through this yet again. Tom and Chris have done so much together at the same time that Sam & I are used to commiserating with each other as to the lousy common sense the command has and horrific timing of field ops and events. She's going to be with family while he's gone and I hope that brings her and the kids a sense of comfort and stability.

I took over 80 pictures at the barracks while we were waiting to see him off. I wanted to capture happy moments with him & his family, but once the buses arrived you could feel the mood of everyone drop and the tension of the impending goodbyes rise. I looked at Sam and noticed an odd look on her face and took one look in the direction she was facing, saw the buses and my heart fell. I immediately asked her if she was ok and offered to take her daughter so that they could have a moment alone. I know how it was when you were so busy with chasing the kids around, trying to keep them happy but out of the way of the Marines who were busily trying to get last minute things done, by the time it came to send the guys onto the bus it felt like you had no time. I tried very hard to keep it together, but as Chris made a last round to say goodbye to those of us that were there for him I couldn't contain it. Tommy asked me if I was sad and I knelt down to explain (he vaguely remembers Tom leaving last time, he was 3.5y when he left the 2nd time) what was wrong. I told him that that moment, saying good-bye to Chris, was almost as sad as saying good-bye to Dad. That Chris was very important to us as a family and how I felt sad that his kids were going to miss him. At that moment, I felt even worse because he then began to cry, which in turn made me cry more.

I won't post pics of the day until I have the ok from Sam, but here is one of the four boys hanging out together. I'm also trying out my new watermark for my photos, let me know how it looks.


I've had some time on my hands since the house is quiet and went browsing the WWW. Found this abso-freaking-lutely cute hybrid craft idea. I swear I am going to try a hybrid project here soon. Maybe I can convince the family that a quick trip to Michael's won't kill them. lmao I really want to try a project like that, it's adorable and seems super easy to do. I only need to buy 98% of the materials required to do it. ;)