welcome to ft. polk, home of the heroes and us!

so, a little over a week ago we packed up and left sunny florida for ft. polk. the days since have whirl winded around and away and here we, cayman and i, are nearly a week after my parents left us, and we're doing just fine. yes, i miss them (and all of our florida friends) terribly, but as far as surviving ft. polk and the anticipation of aaron's return, we're here!

we couldn't have asked for a better house! our townhouse is beautiful and each day i'm finishing up little projects to make it feel more like home. i even hung the curtains, all by myself! i'd like to take credit for the towel bars in our bathroom, but for the sake of saving the wall, the great guys at maintenance have been called in for assistance. our neighborhood is great too! we share a wall with the post's catholic priest who is also a soldier! super neat-o guy! and since they arrange streets by paygrade, everyone on our street is about our age (or no more than five years older) and has kids ranging from cayman's age to elementary school. so we're always outside playing with the neighbors' kids. and cayman and i have decided to tackle our mud garden and plant flowers! pictures and stories to follow.

it feels good to be back too! sunday at church was tough though. the last time i really remember sitting in our church was the sunday aaron deployed. i remember attending the morning service and them asking all the soldiers who were deploying to stand and then asking when they were leaving. aaron said, 'tonight,' and with those words i thought i was going to die. but a year later and just a few weeks shy of homecoming, i sat there. sure there were a few tears in my eyes, some because it felt so good to be 'home' and some because i was remembering 'us.' sunday school class was good too. of course it was tough because i could see the flag pole with our yellow ribbons (each deployed soldier from our church has a yellow ribbon with their name on it and it's tied to the pole until the come home again). and seeing julez's picture from her last visit was tough. but then being in a room full of women, wives, mothers, spouses of soldiers, i felt like i was surrounded by people who understand me, who know me, who are me. and it was good.

and of course it's good to be back with my friends. and to be able to finally be able to participate in all those neat family activities the military has set up for us. more stories to come along with pictures! God is good, all the time!