Daddy's Home!!!

Caleb after his bath

Daddy and Malachi

Daddy and Malachi

Travis, Caleb (his feet hanging down barely between Travis'), Joseph, and Samuel on the sky ride

Austin (far left), Me, Betsy, and the back of Malchi's head on the sky ride

Caleb on the train with daddy

Austin on the train

Samuel on the train

Joseph taking a picture of me, as I am taking a picture of him

Travis and Caleb ready to ride the Himalayan ride

Caleb riding the rocket ride

Daddy and Caleb on the carousel 

Daddy and Caleb sliding down the slide

Caleb asleep in the swing daddy put up

Malachi happy to have a daddy

Caleb happy to have his daddy back home

So in the wee hours of the morning on Monday.  I woke up at 1am, fed the baby, and woke up all the other kids and we drove to the Special Events Center on fort carson, to welcome home Travis.  I really wish the army would time these things better.  Anyway we got there about 1:30 in the morning.  Caleb was not too happy, since he was still not feeling very good.  When we got there the bleachers were already full of waiting families, so we stood off to the side, and waited for Travis.  A news crew, came and asked me if they could film our families reunion and interview us.  I said "yes", so they put a mic on me, and asked everyone's names and about our family, the deployment, and Malachi being born without his Daddy there.  All the soldiers arrived right at 2am, and marched in, there was a quick ceremony, and they released the soldiers to find their families.  No one could see Travis.  So we walked from one side of the gym to the other side, then back to the middle, to wait for him to find us.  We still couldn't see him, and the gym was starting to thin out.  Several soldiers were also looking for Travis for him, and Joseph and Samuel walked outside to where the baggage was to look for him, as well as several other soldiers.  They finally told us, that he did indeed come in, but nobody could find him.  The camera crew gave up, following us around, and went and interviewed someone else.  Finally someone said they saw him walking home, so we got in the car and drove home, looking for him the whole way home.  A few minutes after we got home, Travis arrived on our doorstep, having walked through the park to get home, carrying all his bags, thinking we had decided to sleep instead of coming to get him.  We were sure excited to see each other, and took a while to get everyone back to sleep.  Caleb kept saying how "daddy was somewhere, but we couldn't find him, but now he is home".  Malachi looked at Travis as if trying to figure out how he got out of the screen he was used to seeing him on, then smiled and was quite happy with him.  This week has been filled with being together as a family, and as a couple.  Travis has been holding Malachi a lot, and changing some diapers.  Wednesday night, Travis and I went on a date, with just Malachi and had a nice couple of hours together.  Travis cleaned out the car, put a swing up in the garage, got all his stuff put away, and helped organize our bathroom.  Travis had to go back to work for a couple of hours on thursday, but then had the rest of the day off, and no work friday or today, due to the veterans day holiday.  Caleb has been sick with diarrhea, and stomach pains, so I finally took him to see the doctor on friday.  The doctor wanted to get some stool samples, so I got the fun job of scraping poop off caleb's diaper and into 4 different vials to be tested, and taking them back to the lab.  We haven't gotten any results yet, but Caleb is doing much better now.   On Saturday we went to the "north pole, santa's workshop" amusement park, and had a great time.  The kids loved riding the rides, and Caleb and Daddy rode all the rides together.  Travis and Joseph went to a Veteran's fireside together last night, and are officially home teaching companions.  Caleb has been making lots of messes, like a good two year old.  Last night, we found that he had taken everything out of one of the cupboards, and two of the drawers in our bathroom (the one we had spent hours cleaning and organizing) and thrown them on the floor, including over 200 q-tips.  This was right before Travis left for the fireside, so he told Caleb to clean it up, and Caleb spent the next hour picking all the q-tips up and putting them on my computer desk, and picking everything up off the bathroom floor and throwing it onto the floor in my bedroom.  He was so proud of himself , he came and told me "mom, I did it! I cleaned for you".  It was so cute, I didn't have the heart to tell him, that now my bedroom needed to be cleaned, I just told him great job, and thank you. We are so happy to have Travis home, it makes everything better!!