Day One - February 1, 2010

Good evening and welcome back! Day One is finished and in the books - I'm not going to start counting how many days are left, that will just drive me crazy!

Actually Day One happened a week later than it was originally scheduled to happen. My wife was scheduled to fly to San Antonio for a week of training beginning January 23, 2010 but that course was cancelled. She was supposed to fly to Ft. Lewis on January 30, 2010 but we had a snow-event in the Norfolk area that caused the airline to cancel all flights. They pushed her flight back from 6:00 am Saturday morning to an evening flight Saturday then later cancelled. She finally departed around 6:15 am Monday February 1, 2010. She did call to say she was safely in the barracks and all of her luggage arrived with her so that crisis was averted!

We left the house this morning just after 3:30 am to go to the airport. As I said, it snowed Saturday and the roads were still an issue Monday morning. We had 8" of snow at our house. From what I was able to gather, a snow like this only happens in the Norfolk area once every 20 years or so - I don't really blame them for not having a ton of equipment or supplies to clear the roads. The highways were relatively clear but other than that, the roads were pretty well iced over.

Dropping my wife off at the airport went amazingly smooth. The girls had a chance to say good-bye to her and she was able to get into the terminal. We've been through military related separations in the recent past so, if there is such a thing, we are relatively used to seeing her leave for extended periods of time. It still hurts to see her leave.

Monday was an in-service day for the teachers at the girls' school so once we returned home, the girls crawled back in bed and grabbed some more sleep. I tried but without much success - had a lot on my mind, going over things and making sure we were really ready. I found myself checking the United flight schedule and following the trail of her jet periodically through the day. We were also able to keep in touch with texting on our cell phones. I realize there will be a day when we will no longer be able to be in contact so these days are better than those will be.

The weather actually warmed up Monday and made it to 51 degrees. I had already shoveled the snow and ice from our driveway, deck and porch Sunday afternoon so we took it easy most of the day. With the streets still covered in ice for the most part, the city shut down most of the services in the area like the library so we stayed home.

Laundry never rests and I took care of those three loads, put away all of my wife's things (clothes, jewelry, jackets etc..) and kept the house neat. We do have an unofficial schedule where we work hard on one room per day just to keep ahead. Our house has 8 rooms and 2.5 baths - the bathrooms get scrubbed thoroughly every other day and we rotate through the rooms - two of the smaller rooms are combined on Friday and the spare bedroom is done in conjunction with the master bedroom on Saturday.

Of all the things we have done to prepare, I think the most important thing is that we've found a wonderful church home. Trinity Baptist (www.trinitybaptistchurchva.org) is a small independent baptist church but filled with the most loving people we can imagine. I cannot imagine going on a journey like this without the support of a group of people like we have there. I have been blessed many times over in the fact that I get to lead adult Sunday School and together with my wife, we are the Youth Directors. Church and a strong prayer life will be critical to our success. I'm doing a daily devotional from Oswald Chambers titled "My Utmost for His Highest." Today's reading was subtitled "The Call of God" and referenced 1 Corinthians 1:17. The girls are working in a daily devotional as well - their subtitle tonight was True Power and referenced Psalm 18:27-32.

I had the chance to speak briefly with my wife in the evening as she was in the barracks. That will be the hardest thing to get used to - not being able to talk to her when I want - her schedule dictates that. We do have Skype installed and ready to use once she is able to get to her computer, perhaps this weekend - for now we are using either text messages or quick phone calls.

With the girls out of school, we had three full meals to deal with plus snacks. I'm working hard on this area!!! We don't have checklists or anything like that all over the house but we do have a menu posted on the frig - the down side to that is if you are planning something for supper the girls don't like, you get to hear it all day long starting with breakfast!! Breakfast today was cereal, milk and an apple for everyone. We all took our vitamins then had a full glass of water. Lunch - well, we cheated and had Sonic for lunch but with good reason - normally when we come home from taking my wife to the airport, we hit 7Eleven for a donut - we didn't do that today so we had a make-up lunch. Mid afternoon we had bananas for a snack. For supper I cooked breaded parmesan pork cutlets, green beans, corn, hashbrowns and we had rolls. Everyone had all their glasses of water during the day.

We are addicted to Phineas & Ferb on the Disney Channel - with our cable package we get regular Disney and Disney XD - they had two hours of P&F today and we caught about 30 minutes of that. We also have NetFlix and watched Evan Almighty - we all enjoyed it!

One of the main reasons we have been successful in the past is that I'm a morning person and she is an evening person. I pretty much feel life should end at 9pm and really felt the effects of the early start to the day. Looking forward to day two!