A Walk to the Park

It was a beautiful day again today and with not a whole lot on our to do list I decided to take Finley for a walk down to a nearby park. It's about a mile from our house and actually part of my plan was to see how the walk was (there are some nice hills) and also to check out some of the other facilities around park for future use.
Actually, this was Finley's first playground and swing experience too. He has used indoor baby swings and has never been a huge fan of them but he seemed to enjoy outdoor swinging. I want to get one for the backyard but wanted to see how he liked it first. We played at two playgrounds, one little one and the "big" nice one. The bigger playground was quite crowded today but Finley enjoyed watching the other kids. It won't be long before he is playing and running around there on his own!

Side note about Nate: He made it safely into Kuwait...not sure exactly when but he dropped a quick email me this afternoon (midnight Kuwait time) just to let me know they arrived safely. He was headed off to try to shake the jet lag and get some sleep. He hopes to give me a call tomorrow if it permits. It's weird because though Nate has been gone for 2 months already he was still in the US where I could text him or call him if need be. We chatted on the phone at least once a day and I just felt the way I normally do when he's been away training or long drill weekends. Now it's a whole new feeling. One I am already familiar with from previous deployment overseas but for some reason it still kind of hit hard with me that this is the "real" deal now. He is overseas, in a foreign country and I guess it's a feeling of loss of control of the situation. I am sure Nate is experiencing similar feelings! The time difference also plays into this feeling. If we do get to chat it's got to be coordinated time wise. For those of you who don't know Iraq (and Kuwait) are an 8 hour difference from CST. Anyway, this too will sink in again and become normal, as sad as that sounds. It's what you have to do to get through deployments. You make routines out of what you can to gain that control back and have something to look forward to everyday. We will establish some sort of communication pattern that we can at least semi-count on. Till then I will feel like a piece of me is missing!!