Nate's Deployment, Day One (10 October 2015)

This sucks.

Nate drove away this morning, marking the first day of his six-month(ish) deployment. To Florida. Which is why Meagan has started calling it "Daddy's Work Vacation". As deployments go, it could be much worse. He could be somewhere where he's being shot at, for example. But for this one, he'll be in the same time zone, making communication easier, and we'll even get to go see him at Christmas. But he'll still be gone for six months. Blah.

As I told him, I have been intentionally not processing the whole thing. Even watching him leave this morning, it didn't feel all that different from him leaving for a normal day at work. It will start to set in tonight when he doesn't come home, and I go to sleep in an empty bed. (At least, the bed will start out that way--I fully expect Sean to come in during the night). Even then, he's often been gone for a week or so at a time for conferences. But several weeks in when he's still not home...well, I think that's when it will really start to get me down. There are lots of little things that I will have to remind myself to start doing: taking out the trash on Sunday nights, checking all the locks at night, winding the cuckoo clock (it's already stopped), and feeding his fish to name just a few. It will be difficult for Nate, too, just in different ways. On the one hand, I have the kids with me, but on the other hand, I have the kids with me. I won't be alone, but I'll get to deal with battles over homework and chores all on my lonesome. Oh, and suddenly enjoy the more frequent need of babysitters. Yay me. Even so, I'm not sure who gets the short end of the stick here.

So for the first day he was gone, we went out and partied. Ok, no, not really. We did go out, but it was more of an attempt at distracting the kids (they were all crying this morning when he left). We went to Windmill Farms, a little place down the road that's got quite the racket going on every September/October. They have some really cool playground equipment, in the shape of a pirate ship and rocket and train, etc, and even a teeny tiny petting zoo, which is all free. But then they also have a hayride where you get to get out and pick a pumpkin in the middle, which is ridiculously overpriced. We met up with some friends, and I shelled out for the hayride. It had two large hay-filled wagon beds pulled by a tractor; we rode in the second one. The meandering path through the woods was something else. It was muddy and had massive ruts. In places they were so deep that the bottom of the wagon beds scraped the section in the middle. In other places I thought we were driving through a river. It was bumpy and in a few places quite dusty. One little bit was called "Suicide Hill". It was steep and the tractor went down it so fast that it felt like a roller coaster. We had a blast. Here are some of our favorite pictures:

We were at the front of the second wagon, and so got a great view of the rivers of water we drove through. The kids' reactions were priceless.

A great picture of some of the ruts we drove over and through.

Meagan must've picked up fifteen pumpkins before she found the "perfect" one.

Is that a pumpkin or a baseball bat?

In the wagon just after selecting their pumpkins.

Gotta love those dimples!

You can just make out Shrek in the distance. The driver actually stopped here and asked if anyone wanted to get out and roll around in Shrek's mud puddle--it even smelled here, too--and Meagan was quite shocked. A couple of the other kids also thought he was being serious.

Self explanatory. Really.

All the kids in our group of friends showing off their pumpkins.

We almost had fights over this horse-shaped tire swing.

We didn't see the signs asking guests to keep hands away from the fence until the kids had petted several animals. Oops.

This pirate ship was just one of the awesome playground sets at the farm.

I don't think sliding down while standing up worked out so well.

Meagan discovered that this peacock loved grass. They sat there for at least fifteen minutes pulling up blades of grass that the peacock snatched out of their hands.

The night before Nate left, we drove to Young's Dairy and ate dinner, played minigolf and enjoyed some ice cream. Just before we got to the dairy, we saw this amazing field of sunflowers. I was kicking myself that I didn't have my good camera with me, because I'd been planning to take individual pictures of the kids with Nate. Meagan had asked for one to put up on her wall right by her bed. The field was a perfect place for it, so I just had to make do with my camera phone. They turned out well enough.