Deployment

Well, it's been just about a week since James left on his/our first deployment and hopefully our last. He left at about 6am last Monday morning and arrived safely at his first destination late Tuesday afternoon after their original Monday flight got delayed. So to continue the drama, one of our good friends and the wife of the Chaplain that deployed with James' unit late Tuesday evening was taken to the local German hospital and ended up in a diabetic coma with a bronchial lung infection that ended up infecting the rest of her body and organs so much so that some of them starting failing and at one point she had to be revived. I heard about all that Wednesday morning. Anyways, her name is Heather and she has two kids, Daniel (12) and Belle (3) who still don't know all the grim details of what was going on with their mom. Her husband, Scott, was flown home and got back here sometime late Wednesday evening, I believe and her parents are now here as well. She had progressively been getting better all week and I just learned this morning that she is no longer in a coma and all her vitals are normal but she is still fighting a lung infection so the are keeping her sedated and have moved her to another hospital that has doctors who specialize in the lung area. So praise God that she is doing better!

Needless to say this last week has been pretty rough. I cried when throwing out some left over "special" food that I had made for James during the last couple weeks he was here, I never thought throwing away a little bit of food would make me cry. And cried a little when doing laundry this past Friday 'cause it was the last little bit of his clothes that he wore while he was here. Yea, I know, pathetic right, well all I gotta say is YOU try dealing with a 15 month separation for the first time and knowing that your husband will be going to a war zone! :P

I do have some things to look forward to, like my mom coming in April, YAY!!! She's gonna be keepin' me busy busy for the two months that she's here. (BTW mom, I dunno if we'll be able to do all your trips on this visit but we can certainly knock out a few of them!) Then when she leaves I'll either start taking a couple of college classes or go home, haven't decided yet so we'll see. Regardless I have an idea of when I'll be seeing James again, roughly around Christmas time. I just hope and pray they change the deployments back to 12 months. I know 3 months may not seem like it would make a whole lot of difference but it really does when you are experiencing it. Anyways, I've also got a few knitting projects that I'll be working on over the next few months so that will keep me busy as well.

So far I've found a great circle of women, some from church and some from my FRG (family readiness group) that I'm comfortable enough to hang out with so they should be keeping me pretty busy too. For a lot of them this is also their first deployment so we can all get together and cry if we need to! Though I much prefer to cry alone but that's just me.

I've already talked to James twice since he's left and it's so wonderful just to hear his voice. He is doing well, he says it's like being on a long field exercise in the desert. And he has a Starbucks closer to him than I have to me and he's in the FRIGGIN' DESERT!!!!!!!!!!! Unbelievable. He's gonna send me a picture of it and I'll post it up here once he does. I'm so jealous. Oh well, such is life I suppose. Anyways, I know a lot of you are praying for us and we are both so thankful that we have you as our prayer warriors 'cause I know we'll need them. I'll keep you as posted as I can to what's goin' on with him and all that so check back every so often for updates! I love you and thanks so much for your prayers!