Weekend of 603d

My pumpkin candle is lit, and I'm eating carrot-sweet potato-ginger-lentil soup. The windows are open, because it's in the 70s. Aah, fall.

We had a great weekend- albeit incredibly busy! Friday evening we had a farewell dinner for Jon's Commander. That basically entails an hour of mingling, a nice dinner (it was at an Irish pub instead of the typical roasted chicken-beef stroganoff meal we're used to having at these events!), followed by another hour of speeches and gift-giving. It was cool to meet some of the spouses of the guys Jon deployed with, but I could do without the hour of speeches...

After that we went out with Aaron & Jenny. Aaron was Jon's roommate in Iraq, and Jenny and I also became good friends while they were deployed. They're leaving in a few short weeks to go to their next duty station- sad to see them go!

Saturday was the battalion "Welcome Home Party"- basically a 5-hour long picnic. It was pretty fun. Jon got to push Sophie on the swing which she LOVED!! She had been on one before, but not since we were up north over the summer, and never with Daddy! Somehow everything is just more fun with Dad around...

Sunday after church we headed over to Aaron & Jenny's- Jenny & I went to the Commander's wife's farewell with the spouses (Aaron and Jon stayed with the kids- I could get used to that! ;-). Another chance to talk and eat food- gotta love it! I think the chocolate chip cookie dough cheese ball was the highlight, but maybe that's just me... Dawn went out of her way to make me feel welcome in the unit, even joining in the middle of the deployment, and I appreciated her a lot. She has a son about 6 months older than Sophie, so it has been fun to watch the kids grow! It was great to get together with all these spouses one last time, as many of them will be leaving soon... only in the Army are you one of the "old hats" after 6 months in a place! :-) We came back, made homemade pizza, and hung out past Sophie's bedtime... again...

Anyway, that was our weekend. Lots of fun!

As soon as I can find my camera cord I'll be posting some pictures of Soph... now that Jon is home, I'm not so diligent about taking and uploading pics. The fact that I haven't been able to locate my battery charger since Michigan might just play into that too...

Ok, much to catch up on- later!