My Soldier and the Japan Relief Effort

This is my soldier.



(Forgive the serious face, its a military thing.)

Last Thursday he called me from work and said "Hey, guess what I just heard?"

Now a civilian wife probably wouldn't think much of this statement.

But me, being a military wife, first thought "He's going to deploy".

I replied, "What?"

Stephen: "I was just told to be ready in 72 hours to deploy to Japan for 2-3 months."

Me: "Oh"

My thoughts were going a million miles an hour trying to think of all the ways that this affects us and our plans.

I was a little upset at first, but not distraught.

Hey, I was expecting to hear that he would be deploying to Afghanistan for a year.

Three months in a non-war zone didn't sound so bad.

Also, its not like him being gone is anything new.

He has been gone twice in the last 3 years on training for two months at a time.

(These were the thoughts going through my head when he told me)

Stephen then told me how excited he was to be doing some real field work and to be a part of the relief effort.

So, though sad to be separated, I am happy he gets this experience.

So I dropped him off at the airport on Monday with a brave face and off he went to Japan.

He doesn't know where exactly he is going or what he will being doing there yet, just that they needed a chemical officer.

He was pretty sure he personally wouldn't be working on any of the radiation clean up but be doing more staff work.

I haven't heard from him yet but I am not surprised. For him to use his cell phone it would cost $3 a minute so the plan is to use skype but he may be somewhere where he doesn't have access to the internet.

So now what am I going to do?

(Being that a homemaker doesn't have much of a job when her husband is gone)

Well the deployment timing was good because I had already planned on taking a trip to Seattle to visit my friends Nick and Anna for 2 weeks.

So I leave, hopefully, tomorrow.

I say "hopefully" because I am making my first attempt at a military flight and I don't know how it is going to work out.

So I will be taking a vacation from the blog and my Etsy shop but when I get back, I will have lots to tell you and new items for my shop.

So I'll see you when I get back!

Bye!

I'll leave you with a happy picture of Stephen in uniform from our wedding day.

(This picture is of when he first saw me in my dress)