DADDY COMES HOME!!!!!!

This was a day we had been looking forward to for a long long time. March 19th Nick came home aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. We are so proud of him and all the work he did while he was out there, but we are SO happy to have him back home with us. It was a long wait and of course it decided to be a cold rainy day, but that didn't seem to matter to any of us (well maybe it mattered a little bit to Courtney, haha) It took several hours from when the ship pulled in to when they were actually let off the ship, which seemed like forever at the time since we could see him and Kaylee the whole time waving at us. But the moment we were all reunited is a moment I will never forget. Here is Courtney waiting for her dad. The crowd went crazy with screams and cheers as soon as we saw the ship come around the corner. It was such a great feeling.

Since we waited for them for four hours we had a lot of time to kill with taking pictures.

Finally the time came for them to get off the ship. Can you see them?

We had to fight our way thru the crowds, but the girls didn't seem to let that stand in their way getting to their daddy.

Nick could not get over how big all the girls looked. Brooklyn wasn't even talking in complete sentences the last time he saw her so it was a big shock to him.

There was a lot of hugging and kissing going on...

Here we are!

This is my favorite picture!

Funny story about this picture... There were so many people around that we decided to try and get a good family picture together when we got to the car since there weren't as many people there. So we sat all the luggage down in front of the car and stood back to get into position. After the picture Nick grabbed a couple of the bags and loaded them into the car while I got Brooklyn strapped in her car seat. After everyone was in the car I drove forward to pull out of my parking spot and felt a little bump. Nick said, "Did you just run over a child or something?" Knowing that of course I hadn't I kept driving forward and felt another bump. There was a guy walking past our van waving his hands to tell me to stop, he bent down and picked up one of our suitcases to show us that with all the excitement we (well mostly Nick, haha) had forgotten to put all the bags in the car. Nick was so embarrassed that he didn't even walk back to put it in the trunk, he just opened the door and threw it in the car. I asked him to look under the car to make sure that was the only one we/he had forgotten and he said he couldn't see any. Just to be on the safe side I reversed back into my spot so we could really make sure. As I backed up there was another bump as I drove back over the first piece of luggage that I had already ran over one. So he got back out of the car and picked it up, over course that bag was his helmet bag. His helmet was ruined, but we got many laughs about it on our way home. So this is the picture that resulted in all that drama. :)

Thank you to my friend Kim who came with me that day and waited all those long hours to be able to take these pictures for me!