day 43: sentiments from the sand

Even at the age of 31 1/2, I still secretly find it fun to get stuff in the mail.

Not credit card offers.

Not bills.

But the good stuff.

When we arrived home, there were four small envelopes and one larger padded envelope.

All for us.

All from Afghanistan.

Before ASC left, a good friend of mine made a huge stack of cards for him to take with him so that he'd have cards to easily write in and send to us. I thought that was a cool idea then. But now, that we're getting them, it's even better.

I had to interpret only one of the girls' cards; are they really getting that old that two of them don't need my help in reading everything?

My card didn't have much written inside, but it was exactly what I needed to hear from him at that exact moment in time. Tears, of course.

I had an idea what was in the larger envelope, and as we tore it open, I knew I was right.

He continued the tradition he started on his last deployment, of videoing himself reading a children's book to the girls and then mailing home the book and the DVD of the video.

That night, our storytime before bed was a little different than normal.

But a good different.