He's HOME!

Yesterday was a crazy long day of waiting and waiting and waiting for Ben to get home, but we survived!

We left the house about 3:00, all clean and pretty.

Alison made her own banner so Ben could find her in the crowd.

 

It took us 1.5 hours to get to base because of traffic and a train.  We picked up some Auntie Anne's and navigated around the base to the pier and got there right when Ben thought it would at 5:00.  After waiting in the car for awhile, we ventured down to a small tent they had set up by the pier.

Alison could not contain herself.  She often hides her emotions well, but this day she was done missing her daddy and just wanted him off that ship.  She's in the pink jacket in the picture below and kept jumping out of the tent to try and get a glimpse of the ship.  She was not convinced when I told her there was no way she would miss the giant white ship coming in.

 

When we did finally see the ship pulling in, we all went out to watch.  It was so good for the kids to see where daddy has been and finally understand the concept of "coming into port".

 

The kids and I stood in the rain for 3 hours, waiting for Ben.  It was really hard, but they were troopers and it was all worth it the second we saw him.

 

We dashed to the car, which is impressive for Ben because he was carrying about 150 lbs of luggage, and dried off/changed the kids into pj's.  After a quick stop at Chick-fil-A, we were finally home and eating dinner together at 9:30!

 

I never want to see rain again, but thanks to the abundance of it, we're stuck at home and have lots of time to catch up.  Actually, I'm just going to sit and stare at Ben for awhile, so get ready for tons of pictures of him.