One quick week

Justin's original deployment date was scheduled for March 8th, flying out on March 10th.  While he was in California for work he got a call (or email, I'm not sure) saying the weapons training he was scheduled to have wasn't enough.  Instead, of the two week training, he was to mobilize 3 weeks early and attend a month long army training.  He got an earlier flight home that Friday and talked to his boss.  His class the next week (remote, so he was scheduled to be at home) and the one the following week (in Dallas) were re-assigned and we had one week to get ready.

My previous coping method of dealing with his eventual deployment (ignoring it) was no longer working.  It  was a rough couple of days before he got home, and the week didn't really get a lot better.

Justin's a bit of a procrastinator.  Partly because, he's just a procrastinator, and partly because he always has LOT going on, and it's nearly impossible for him to stay on top of it all.  So, taxes needed to be done.  In order to complete our personal taxes the business taxes needed to be done.  And, in order to have the business ones completed he had a LOT of paperwork to complete.  So, most of Sunday and Monday he worked on that.  And I bought a bunch of brown (military) garments.

We managed to get a few family dinners in (all that were scheduled later on)

Tuesday he spent all day at Fort Douglas.  Wednesday he and Hyrum went to the children's museum downtown and a few friends came over for dinner that night.  Thursday he and Kate went swimming.

Friday night was our anniversary.  Jodi (and my mom) bought us a night in a hotel and Jodi was planning on spending the night with our kids.  We went to dinner, Best Buy (trying to decide on a new laptop), and downtown to the Hilton.  Jodi and written an email to them about our anniversary and his deployment and they upgraded our room to a very nice suite.

When we got there we gave each other our gifts.  I have Justin a perfect card (I have a gift for picking the perfect card) and a Nook gift card (he took my Nook with him).  He gave me a framed picture of the scene from the beach where he proposed.

The hotel provided a nice dessert and card for us and we bought a movie in the room.

Then the fun started.

No, you don't have to stop reading.

Just as we were getting ready for bed our neighbors (the room next to us) arrived.  And our children.  Not OUR children, but they had at least 2 kids and a baby with them.  A couple of LOUD kids and a crying baby.  And a mom that liked to yell.  And did I mention the kids favorite activity was opening their side of the double door leading into our room?  A lot?  It was pretty funny.  Sort of funny.  I couldn't believe how long they kept up the loudness, but they did.  Seriously, we kept waking up, even past midnight from their noise.

The next morning we went to the temple and headed home.  We still had family pictures (lucky for us they were already scheduled and the early deployment didn't mess it up).  Justin had more paperwork to do, so he spent most of the afternoon downstairs while Jodi and I got ourselves ready and the three kids.

Pictures.  We went to Foto Fly.  They were great.  Kate and Milo were not.  Hyrum was a trooper (I'll never do 2 hours of pictures again, that's for sure).  Kate ran all over the place at every chance she got.  I was hoping Milo would take a little nap on the way there, but he didn't.  So, he wasn't his usual self.  To see the pictures we ended up with is truly a credit to the photographer.  Also, he went up to my mom and gave her $30 in cash and asked her to give it to Justin to use towards the cost of our session, and to thank him (Justin) for his service.  Our photographer's dad was in the Army for 30+ years.

We survived Saturday and stayed just as busy Sunday morning.  Packing, going over more paperwork (trying to teach me how to run the auto shops and take over the family finances is no easy task, we've been working on it for quite a while).  Justin went out and saw his mom because she didn't want to come to the airport, and then before we knew it, we were off to the airport.

It was a little strange, Justin leaves from the airport all of the time, and as far as the kids are concerned we've never made a big deal about it.  Kate recognized where we were as we drove up and said, "Okay, love you Daddy, see you later) as we drove into the parking lot.  Justin's dad and Denise, Bryan, Haley, and April were all there. My family all came down too, which was nice.  I managed to get a few pictures (you're not really supposed to travel in a uniform) and Trevor (the budding photographer) got a few more.

So, that's it for now.  This week has been normal for us.  He's in San Diego and we've talked and texted as often as we do when he's gone for work.  Things changed again (for the 3rd or 4th time) and he's hanging out in San Diego for another week, and skipping the month long army training for the regular weapons training he was planning on originally.  I think that puts him in Afghanistan a week early, so the end of April.  We'll see how we feel about it all then.