Brian is home!

Since it's taken me a while to get a blog up (I've been a little busy) you probably all already know that Brian is home. Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!! He got home on Thursday, the 6th...into Ft. Riley, Kansas and we got back home to Toledo last Sunday.
On our trip out to Kansas the kids and I stopped and spent the night in St. Louis with our friends the Prengers. Kathryn is about 18 months old now so her and Ian had fun playing together. The weather was nice while we were there so the kids got to play on the swing set and in Kathryn's cool house and we took a walk down to the nearby pond to see some ducks. They also had fun coloring at Kathryn's little table and playing with all the fun toys in the living room. Our friends Tara and Ryan also stopped by for dinner so it was great to see them too!!
(Sarah, I got some of these pics from your website but they show up small here for some reason....oh well...they were so cute!)

We arrived at Ft. Riley on the 5th and got settled in to our hotel in Junction City. Brian didn't get in until 1900 on the 6th so we spent the day going to the park and visiting with our friends the Cooks. Ian had sooooooo much fun playing with all of Ben's cars and trains!!! He still talks about it and asks all the time if we can go to Ben's house...it makes me sad that we live so far away from all of our friends.

When the time finally came to go get Brian we drove to a building in the middle of nowhere on post and waited. Ian was having fun running around the bleachers when we first got there but once the soldiers finally started to march in I tried to make him sit still with Alexis and me...that didn't go over too well. He just wanted to run right out into the formation and he kept yelling "Daddy!" Oh boy. Luckily, once they all marched in only a short speech was given and we were finally able to run over and greet Brian. Ian was so excited and Alexis was kind of just looking around like "what is going on here?" It was well past the kids bedtime at this point but Ian was so excited he didn't know what to do. When we got back to the hotel he was jumping all over Brian and everything was "Daddy! Daddy!"

On Friday and Saturday, Brian had to go in and do some more redeployment stuff so the kids and I got to see the Cooks again which was good because Ian asked every time we got in the car if we were going to Ben's house...hehe. There was also a little drama every time Brian got out of the car to go anywhere...it was a little hard to explain to Ian that Daddy would be right back but I think after a while he started to realize that Brian really was going to get back in the car with us again.

Early on Sunday Brian went in to sign out on leave and then we packed the car up and drove straight through back to Toledo. It was a long day but we were so happy to finally be back in our own house again. Neither of us starts work until Dec. 1st so we have been enjoying our time together until then. We have been doing a lot of shopping too! We got a new fridge and range for our kitchen and a new LCD TV for the living room. Brian brought the Rockband set for XBox back from Iraq with him and we have been having a blast playing that as well as playing with our Wii. Ian likes the drums for Rockband:

The kids have adjusted pretty well to having Daddy back...especially Ian. For the first few days home he pretty much wanted nothing to do with Mommy. Everything was "Daddy this and Daddy that" but he's seeming to get used to the idea that Brian is here to stay now so it's ok if Brian leaves the house or can't play with him every second. He loves that Daddy reads him books every night before bed though: Alexis is still very much a Mommy's girl. She has no problem with other people holding her or changing her or feeding her or putting her to bed but if she is crying she always wants Mommy. She thinks Daddy is very funny though...he is always doing crazy things to make her laugh so she is definitly having fun with Brian too: