Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Welcome Home!

7:15 Sunday evening. That was the plan. There is this website that updates the ceremony time for the Soldiers coming home (they land a couple hours earlier to turn in weapons, do some administrative things, etc).

Early in the afternoon, they changed it to 11:30pm. I cried.

It ended up saying 10:50, and it worked out just fine. I laid Sophie down for bed like usual- except in her new outfit for Daddy- and got her up about 10:15.

Being at an Army Airfield (Jon is now working not at Ft. Stewart but at Hunter Army Airfield), the ceremony was held in an airplane hanger- it was really pretty cool! There were already hundreds of people there when we arrived (I talked to a few who had not seen the time change and were there at 6:30...), but we got a great seat- well, Sophie was in her stroller- and we waited.

There were big doors for the planes that were open when we first got there- about 10 minutes before the ceremony they closed them. Finally... everyone standing and cheering (as you can see in the video, the bleacher I was standing on was shaking so much from people jumping that I had to move down...), then, they opened them. The Soldiers walk in in formation, which is pretty awesome. Jon and I had already decided on a general area where I would sit, and he was very close to me! I saw him right away, and we just smiled the whole ceremony.

So, without further ado, here's the video. I recorded it in several small segments, but this is by far the coolest one, because you can see them coming in. I'll write more about our week later, but basically we have had a great time, and Sophie and Daddy are getting along famously! :-)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Did I miss them coming in, or is this not the video you thought it was?

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