Saying goodbye to someone we love

After we left the Planetarium we went straight to Hammond to go to a farewell ceremony for Cordell. For those of you that do not know, Cordell is Jesse's younger brother. He joined the National Guard a little over a year ago and is now being deployed to Iraq. Here are a few pictures from the ceremony:

Cordell (middle) Misty (Cordells girlfriend left) Aurene (Cordells mom right)

Cordells flight uniform.

The huge helicopter Cordell will be flying in.

The ceremony was nice, afterwards we got to go to the airport and get an upclose look at the helicopters they would be flying out in the next morning.

The next day Jesse, I and the kids went and met Misty at the airport. She had to drop Cordell off there around 7 and after that we were only able to sit there and wait for the helicopters to take off around 10. So we went and ate at McDonalds with Misty and her mom and came back. Here are some pictures of us waiting and of the helicopters taking off.

Ben, Jackson and Misty in the trunk of her moms car. Surprisingly you could have fit more people in there. It was huge!

Jackson throwing rocks at everyone.

The helicopters as they were taking off.

One of the things we all said was that if we had known we were going to have to wait so long we would had set up a tail gate and had some burgers and music going. We also said that if we really would have thought about it, being the creative people we are, we would have made signs and had balloons and a flag on top of the car. In the end all we had was me and Misty standing on top of her moms car waving at all of the helicopters because we truly didn't know exactly which one he was in. It all happened so quickly you almost couldn't believe it was over. We are happy for Cordell. We love him and cannot wait to hear from him and see him come home next May. In the meantime we will be communicating with him through email and sending him care packages.