Finally Home

It honestly has been so great having Jared home. We both agreed that during the deployment, time dragged on and on, but now looking back, we can't believe that a year has already passed. We made it through our first deployment together while being married. I actually feel like this deployment made our marriage stronger. We had a lot of trials to work through....it is not always as easy as you would think to have a relationship through a computer. We feel very blessed to have the people in our lives who helped us get through this deployment. I will always be in debt to my parents and Robyn (I either talked to one, or all of them on a daily basis).   Thank you for all the thoughts and prayers on Jared's behalf this past year. He made it home safe, and now we are just going to cherish the time we have together...until the next time he has to leave!

All the soldiers in Jared's platoon received End of Tour Awards. It is always nice to see a smile on Jared's face while being deployed. There are not too many pictures like this, so I have to cherish the ones I get :)

This picture was taken a few weeks before he left Afghanistan. One of the guys actually took it because of how great his smile is. I thought that was hilarious. Jared has always been known for his cute smile, and his "lady killers".

One of the Army wives hired a professional photographer for her family for the welcome home ceremony. I didn't even see that she took this picture of Jared and I until a few days later when she tagged us in it. That was such a great feeling running towards him!!! Jared and I experience things like this that not a lot of people get to feel. Granted at this time, it had only been since January since I had seen him, but I still had butterflies ALL NIGHT LONG! His ceremony was at 4:45AM, so the night before I got only about 2 hours of sleep. The anticipation was killing me. I kept thinking about how amazing it is going to be to have my husband home on a daily basis. No more phone calls in the middle of the night, no more worrying, no more being alone.

We had our countdown written on our white board at work. Luke is my boss's son-in-law. He was also serving in Afghanistan, but he is in the Air Force. We changed it every morning, and we always tried to beat each other in changing the number. It was WONDERFUL seeing that number go down every day!