Rick and I have enjoyed a WONDERFUL week together this past week while my parents were gracious enough to keep them in St Louis. Rick will be deploying next month... I can hardly believe that time is so close, now. So, we took a week all to ourselves. And it has been WONDERFUL!! We've slept in. We stayed out late. We felt like we were newlyweds all over again. Everyone teased us we were on our honeymoon. We enjoyed Valentine's Day all by ourselves... which we've NEVER done.
Friday night my wonderful husband took me to the Spouse Appreciation Valentine's Dinner for the St Robert Fire Dept. I really enjoyed meeting the guys that he works with, I learned how to play a new card game, and I even sang Karaoke!!! Earlier that day, Rick drug me along with him to the garage on post to help him install strobe lights into the van (so he can run code when there's a fire). I think that was paybacks because on Thursday night I drug him along with me to the Commissary's Moonlight Madness sale. Let's just say we're even! ha ha
Yesterday morning Rick left for a fire around 3am and didn't return home until 1130 am. Someone in Waynesville decided to keep their puppy warm by plugging in a space heater outside under their front porch... with a pile of straw. Needless to say, they lost the entire house. Rick drove me back by the house yesterday and the walls weren't even left. He drove me around to 2 other fires that he's been to this year and I was AMAZED at the man that I've married. He said, "See that hole in the roof? That's where I was. I chopped that hole into the roof and dropped water on the house from there." You have no idea how proud I was... and then the bottom of my stomach dropped out as I looked around that hole in the roof and saw that there wasnt much left to hold that roof up... and what WAS left was mostly burned up. It is an amazing mix of pride and terror that comes with being in love with a hero. I guess I should get used to this feeling because I know my husband was born to be a hero. Many more heroic acts will come from this man's life... and many of them will be happening soon as he deploys.
Tomorrow we will go to St Louis to get the kids... and the honeymoon will be over, as they say. That's ok. I have had enough wonderful memories made this week to push me forward as we face this deployment.
