Welcome Home #3, #4 and #5!

It's way past my bedtime, but tonight was so exciting I'm taking the time to write this as if I were telling myself a bedtime story.  As if yesterday weren't cool enough, I got to say "Welcome Home!" to three friends today!  After work I headed to Mankato to have dinner with Dean, Bri and their very new daughter, Claira.  Dean got home last week and I certainly couldn't turn him down on his invite to dinner with the fam!  While I was waiting outside, a woman noticed my sweatshirt (with the 2-135 Battalion Crest on it) and asked if I was welcoming someone home.  I explained my evening and clarified that my husband would be home pretty soon.  She told me her son would be home the next day and as we got to talking I realized her son is in Trevor's platoon-small world! 

The little boogers even paid for my meal...and let me drive his awesome new car (my dream car!).  A year ago, I didn't know these two at all (and obviously Claira wasn't here yet), but like I say over and over, I've been blessed to meet some pretty awesome people through all this deployment stuff and I wouldn't have had it any other way! 

After dinner and the test drive, I went to Angie's house to keep her company while she waited to pick up Chris.  

We had a tiny glass of wine to cheers the end of the deployment-not quite yet for me, but close enough!

Chris and Angie's daughters think he'll still be gone for one more day and boy will they have one awesome wake up call in the morning!  Once we got the update that the bus was in the Le Sueur area, we thought we better get to the armory.  Unlike yesterday, it was a pretty small crowd coming in tonight, so we found Jen and Hunter right away.

Just melts my heart!

 Group photo!  Poor Hunter was tired, cold, and his cool sign started to blow away (we saved it).  But when the camera came out, he said "cheeseburger!" every time.  And when asked what he was going to say when Daddy got off the bus, he'd say "Welcome Home, Daddy!"

They're here!!

So close!

 Finally.  (PS-love Jason's face in the background saying "hi" to Hunter!)

 So many hugs!

Family photo!

 I think Chris was humoring me after all the camera flashes.

Welcome Home, Dean, Chris & Jason!!