He's Home!

This past week has been a crazy combination of hurry-up-and-wait, anticipation, anxiety, and finally, relief.  I left on Wednesday for Lawton, and arrived in plenty of time to freshen up for my dinner date with other 1-31 FA BN Foxtrot BTRY family members.  We met at Olive Garden and I had a wonderful visit with people who had shared my summer experience and whose family members knew my own - it was amazing.

Wednesday night, D called at 9:43.  "I have seven minutes," he said, "So we can't talk long."  He continued, saying that they had recently learned that the Family Run would basically consist of the battery running in formation, and the family running in a formation behind them - meaning we wouldn't get to visit or run together, so I opted to sleep in instead - which D totally understood.  I returned to my hotel room after visiting for four hours with the family members I'd had dinner with and went to sleep.  Or tried to go to sleep, anyway.  Seems like as soon as I laid my head down, I'd think of something else I needed to look at on the map or google.

I slept fitfully, at best, and woke up at 6:30, fifteen minutes before my alarm went off.  I had a little breakfast from the lobby of the hotel and then began to get ready - after my shower I got a text message:  "Wish you would have been there this morning - wasn't like we thought."  Turns out that the soldiers got a good 20 minutes to visit during the run time and I missed it!  Nothing I could do about it at that point, though, so I continued getting ready and arrived at Ft. Sill 30 minutes early for the day's activities.

The first part was a short family orientation - basically talking about what the soldiers had been doing, and some jokes about how now they could all do their own laundry - and a citizenship ceremony, where 8 soldiers became citizens of our great nation.  This all ended about 9:15, 45 minutes ahead of schedule!  The second part of the on-base portion was a demonstration - select groups of soldiers demonstrated different skills they had fostered this summer, like physical fitness and battle buddy/taking an enemy drills - and then several soldiers were promoted.  This all ended about 9:50, and had been scheduled to end at 11:00, so as the soldiers marched back to the battery area to change from ACUs to ASUs (the camos to the dress uniforms) the family members were all abuzz with the likelihood of getting our soldiers early.  Oh, but wait - this is the Army we're talking about here.

So, we waited until 11:15 for our soldiers to march back to us, where they were released for Family Day.  That first embrace - I can't even describe my feelings.  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.  I wanted to jump for joy and never let D go again.  Then I remembered that I had on makeup - and had been standing in the Oklahoma sun and wind for an hour - and he was wearing a white shirt... oops!  We met one of D's battle buddies and his wife and brother for lunch at Red Lobster, then headed back to the hotel to hang out.

End of Family Day, before he reported back to the Battery Area for formation.

When it was time for dinner, D had requested fast food so we had Whataburger and then I took him back to Ft. Sill and dropped him off for the night.  My mom and step-dad arrived and luckily I had them to visit with or I'd have been a mess Thursday night.  As it was, I barely slept, waking up much earlier than my 9:00 alarm.  We checked out of the hotel about 10:45 and went to have lunch with the D fan club - his parents and some close family friends.  

Graduation was scheduled to begin at 1:00, so we arrived at about 12:30 and got seats in the balcony.  The entire class was seated in the lower level, so I went down to take a picture of D, even though he couldn't look at me or react, calling "I love you," in Korean as I walked away. 

Before the ceremony.  See how they're all staring straight ahead?

Specialist D, stating his name and hometown!

The ceremony was emotionally charged and awesome, but my favorite part was obviously the end, where, after standing in the heat for a bit, I got to load my D in the car and drive him home with me!

Let's go home!

Now, we're at home, luxuriating in each others' presence.  Forgive me if I don't update again for a while!  :-)