Welcome Home Andy!

Warning - lots of pictures today. :)

Finally it's the day we've waited for! Andy was in Afghanistan for a year and we were so excited to see him again. We got to Fort Campbell and were bussed to a hanger set up for these homecomings.

Here's a few shots of the hanger, filled with welcome home signs.

Bob and I, anxiously waiting. We had to arrive 2 hours before the plane was expected, so it made for a long wait. There was someone monitoring the flight, and he would come out every 15 minutes and tell us how far away they were.

There were lots of kids running and playing during the wait. It reminded us of the sacrifice of so many families. These young kids were without one of their parents for a year, and those parents were missing their kids for that same time.

~~~

Finally they announced that the flight was 15 minutes away and we were allowed to go out on the flight line to watch it come in.

Here's Bob, holding up the sign we took along.

Finally the plane comes in!

After it lands, there are things to do before they let them off. First, the Color Guard has to march in.

Then some army officials arrive. Some of them go into the plane to give instructions, then they come back out and prepare to shake the hands of each soldier as they walk onto U.S. soil.

And here they come...

240 soldiers file out of the plane

Where is Andy?

Here's the soldiers view - it was just as hard for them to pick out their loved ones out of that crowd!


We were sent back into the hanger and the soldiers got into formation.

They opened the hanger doors and they marched in.



As they march in, everyone is looking for their soldier.

And there he is! What a wonderful sight!

They open with prayer...

and have a short ceremony.


Then, finally it's time! They release them to the families.

Happy Dad and son

Heather is so glad to see her brother.

They gave us 15 minutes together, then the soldiers had to get into formation again.

They marched back out to begin the business of debriefing.
We stayed in Kentucky for the week and I'll share some of that this week.

I'm Back!

I'm back from my time away and can now tell you what I was doing.
Andy is back from Afghanistan!
We went to the big Welcome Home ceremony when his battalion flew in to Kentucky, but couldn't put it on the internet until after they arrived for security reasons.
We were planning to drive 2 vehicles down there; a rental car for us and Andy's jeep.
However, one hour into the drive our plans changed:

Yes - that's Andy's jeep. Although we had it checked before we left, it developed some problems and had to be towed. We spent an hour waiting for a tow truck, and then packed everything into our car for the rest of the trip.
This was a reminder of how God watches over us. We had planned to drive the jeep down and rent something to drive back up. We had trouble getting a rental, so we ended up with 2 going down. We were complaining about driving separately and the cost of gas for 2 cars. You would think we would learn! - God knows best! What trouble we would have had if we hadn't had another car to finish the trip in.

The remaining drive went smoothly and we arrived in Kentucky a little after 6pm. This was the scene behind our hotel room.
Tomorrow I'll share pictures of the wonderful homecoming!