Life is good!

Okaaaaaay!!!!

First things first - R is HOME!!!! Woooohooooooooooo! Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (doing the white chick, lip-biting, look like an idiot in 'da club boogie). Okay, enough of that, now I'm sweaty. Yuk!

You gotta love the military. Gotta. Love. Them. The flight they booked him back on had him arriving at the airport at 5:45 am. Translated into my language, that meant that the kids and I had to leave here around 3:30 am. As much as I love my husband and as much as I missed him, having to get myself and our two little ankle biters up and at 'em at that hour meant I was going to take the extra 30-45 minutes that it would take to shower and goop up for him and sleep instead. Sorry, hon, you know I love you, but I figured you'd much rather have me coherent and alive at the airport.

Laughingly, I thought the kids would sleep in the car. Umm..not so much of the sleeping. A lot of singing the ABC song, though. And we did get to see the sun come up, which was amazing. And the kids were so happy to see their dad. And he was so happy to see us. Awwwwww......

So, oddly enough, we had to call his command from the airport, an hour out and 20 minutes out from base. I guess so we couldn't sneak in any alone time before they got to welcome him back?!? Of course, I forgot the list of phone numbers on my way out the door (HEY! At least it wasn't my ID or money this time). Of course, R had an extra copy with him, boy scout that he is. All's well that ends well, and the welcoming committee was kind of nice, truth be told. And after he got instructions for what to do and when to do it, they let us go. All of this before 9 am. So the Army isn't the only one that can get things done before noon or 10 am or whatever the commercial used to say.

The Friday after R comes home is the big USAFE Information and Technology Awards banquet. R won Information Assurance Program Manager and Office of the Year and is now up for the AF wide award. No idea on when we'll hear about that, but I hope the awards ceremony is somewhere cool - like NYC. Or Colorado. Ohhhh.. or Vegas. (And, umm, grandparents, we are taking bids for who gets to keep the kids if we get to go.)

At the last minute, we were able to find someone to keep the kids for us, so I got to go with R to the ceremony, which was held at USAFE headquarters which is about an hour and a half from here. My husbands coworkers were also there, including she-who-abandoned-us-in-Paris. Not that I'm bitter or holding a grudge. As an interesting note, the Officer's Club lost our reservations along with Sgt Chase's reservation and then had the gall (from my perspective anyway) to act like they were doing us a favor by letting us attend. (Insert eye roll here). Customer service, people. Let's practice it. I overheard one of the event staff telling one of the Lieutenants that there was enough food for 180 folks, but now with the three of us being added, there were going to be 183 of us, so team from our base needed to eat light. Seriously, that's what he said. The LT told the Major (not the yucky one that I've been struggling with over T's evaluations) and he just laughed. I offered to go hang out in the car, I think R was going to take me up on it, but Major said not a problem - sit and enjoy. Frankly, my plan was to head to the Chili's on base, have a nice big margarita and wait for the event to be over. The best laid plans....

The award ceremony was great, we had a good time, it ended on time, the guest speaker was amazing, and I was more social than I'd been in a good while. Don't know how that happened, but I felt a lot more like myself than I have in a while. Course, that could be because R was back...

More posts coming soon. :)