The last time....

Our lives are filled with "last times" right now. My friend Angie kept telling me this was coming, and it felt like forever away. But here it is. Our last weekened together, our last going out to a movie, our last going to church as a family, our last time just hanging out around the house. I know it's not "THE LAST TIME" in reality. It's just the last time for awhile....15 months to be exact. Unless we count his 2 1/2 weeks of R & R. The date we will be looking forward to for months, a date we won't know for quite awhile yet. I loved it at church yesterday, they brought up all the soldiers that were deploying soon to the front of the church and prayed over each of them. It was very emotional seeing all of the people up there, some of them look so young. Some of them are my friend's husbands and my heart aches for them. But we will have each other and that is what this Army family is all about.




I remember watching Bruce pack up his stuff last time and wondering " I wonder what he is thinking, I wonder if he is scared, I wonder...." I just kept thinking what if that was me getting ready to leave my family for 6 months to go into war. And yet he looked so calm, and confident. He was a rock and kept me calm. He'd been trained to do this, and now he was ready to go. He's always been a soldier throuh and through. He loves his job and he does it well. We are so proud of him and will anxiously be awaiting his return.

It's so hard to wrap my mind around the fact that Bruce will be gone for so long. I know it's hard on the boys. I know that DJ gets it, how long it will be. But I'm not so sure about Adam and Jack. Sure they know that Daddy is leaving for a long time, but I'm not sure they truly understand how long. We've done the short TDY trips before, and really those are nothing. By the time you get to really really missing them, they are home. This is Bruce's 2nd deployment to Iraq, but the first time was only 6 months. I remember thinking how am I going to survive 6 months with three little boys 6 and under? I look back at that now and think wow I did it. I may not have done it with the most grace or anything, but we all survived, we were healthy and not too strung out. :) I learned a lot from the last deployment. I learned a lot about myself, and I'm sure I will learn even more the next 15 months. And besides the boys are all 3 years older this go around so life will be much easier, and they all start school on Wednesday.