Andy meets Alaina!

It's another happy post!
About 5 days after we left Andy in Kentucky, he came home on leave.
We had this sign hanging on our garage to welcome him home:

He arrived late at night after a long drive.

The next evening Aaron and Laura came over to see him. This picture is typical - Laura is so happy to see her brother again, and Andy is making faces! Don't let that fool you though - he was happy to see her too.

However - there was someone else waiting to see Andy:

Here is Andy meeting Alaina for the very first time. After only seeing her in pictures and via Skype, it was great to see them together!

Of course, I took the opportunity to get a picture of all my kids together again.

Andy even had a chance to feed Alaina (and he did a good job!)

Alaina was her typical happy little self. Bob and I were pretty happy too - there's nothing like having the whole family together.

Going home!

The week went by much too quickly and before we knew it, the time had come to head back home. We had said our good-byes to Andy the night before as we planned to leave early in the morning. Saying good bye wasn't as hard as usual, because we would be seeing him again soon. He had to finish de-briefing and then would be coming home on leave.

When we left our hotel at 6 in the morning, we saw this flag with a little mist on the ground. However, when we got on the highway, we found thick fog. The visibility was awful; the fog hung in there all the way through Kentucky and part way into Indiana. We were really glad when it finally cleared. Heather checked with someone at home who told us it was a beautiful, sunshiny day. We drove all day, stopping to pick up Andy's repaired jeep.

When we got closer to home, we found that the sunshiny day was gone and snow was falling!

Our road

The tree across the street

Our backyard.
It was a beautiful welcome home from a wonderful trip!

Kentucky/Tennessee Barns

You probably know that I love barns. When we travel, I always see neat barns that I want to take pictures of and I probably drive Bob crazy, telling him "Look at that barn over there!"
So, being the good husband he is, one morning while we were waiting for Andy to get done with his daily de-briefing, he took me out driving to look for barns.
It can be hard because you can't always stop and you can't get real close but I had fun trying to get pictures of the ones we found.

We noticed lots of black barns in Kentucky

This barn was on the way to Andy's base so we saw it every day. I like the vines growing on it and the two shades of red.

This one is in such bad shape that I don't think the plastic will help much!

I like the shape and the peak on this one.

Another one that's barely standing.

And this is another one we passed every day. Such a beautiful, well kept place!