Since the beginning of the year, Ben has been in and out of trainings to prepare for his deployment to Afghanistan.  The plan was that he would go to his last training, come home for a couple of weeks, and then deploy.  A few days before leaving for that last training, he was informed that he would not be coming home for that time.  That left us scrambling to finish all of the things we thought we still had weeks to do, and next to now family time.  By sacrificing nearly two full nights' of sleep, he was able to finish almost everything so we could spend some time as a family the day before he left.

After running an errand at the base, we decided to treat the whole family to lunch at Red Lobster.  Apparently it was not meant to be our treat.  When one of the managers asked if the kids were out of school early, we told him that it was our last day together before Ben left for training and deployment.  Word really got around because another manager took down our names so she could buy us dinner when he got back, the restaurant gave us free dessert, and two ladies at another table paid our bill.  On the way out, the first manager caught up with us to thank us for bringing our family in and gave us $40 in gift certificates.  You can imagine how much crying happened in the course of that lunch.

Of course, Ben had to show off his weapons before we sent the kids off to bed that night.  Although the entire episode had a running dialogue on gun safety from Ben, I was still somewhat uncomfortable with the whole thing.

We were at the airport early the next morning.  I think Sydney was the only one who really understood what this goodbye meant.

We miss him a lot already, but the last couple of weeks have gone by so fast, I'm praying that's how the whole time will pass.