I am not a real girlie girl when it comes to love and romance stuff.  I am not a real touchy-feely type person.  I don’t like to cuddle. I prefer my own space.

Now that being said, I am a sucker for the small gestures that show a person you care.  Helping with the dishes is a great way to show me some love.  Getting up first on a Saturday when the girls wake up is awesome.  Stuff like that makes me happy.

So last night the Husband and I were putting some river rocks around a small tree in our front yard.  I am tired of the grass and weeds trying to take over the tree, so we had a concrete shape put around the tree to create a nice border between the grass and tree.  In an attempt to keep more grass out of the area, we bought some rocks.

The Husband, who despises yard work, actually came out to help me after we got the girls were in bed.  He carried the bag of rocks over to the tree, opened the bag and arbitrarily grabbed a rock out and tossed it to me.

Now mind you, he just reached out and picked a random rock out of the bag.  When I picked up the rock, I was surprised to see it was shaped just like a heart.  Check it out.

I pointed out to him that it looked like a heart and I was going to keep it in the house instead of putting it in the yard.  To which he replied, “now don’t be getting all emotional on me.”

I don’t know if it’s the pending deployment or me getting soft in my old age.  But I love my heart shaped rock and can assure you that it was the only one like it in the bag.  The rest were all round-ish rock shaped.

Whatever the reason, the rock makes me smile and think of the Husband. It’s a nice reminder that we are solid and will get through this deployment together.

We are about one week away from our D-Day.   Deployment day, that is.  I’ve been through deployments as a child when my dad was in the Navy.  We’ve been through lots of TDYs, but this is our first real deployment.

I keep reassuring the Husband that we will be fine.    In my head I know we will, but I do admit that part of the reason I keep saying it is to reassure myself at the same time.

It’s only 120 days. So in deployment terms, it’s very short.  Numerous friends have been through it and numerous more will go through it some day.  The Husband is going to a relatively “safe” place.  According to friends who’ve been before, it’s a place where, “nobody is shooting at you.”

The Husband’s physical safety is not my main concern.  I am fairly confident that he will be in a safe location.  My main concerns are centered on the safety of our emotions.

This will be hard.  This will be a good test of our faith in each other, our faith in our families and of course our faith in our God.

We’ve known about this deployment for a couple months.  We’ve done all the preparations (I think).  We’ve gotten our wills updated.  I’ve got general power of attorney.  I know where all the important papers are stashed.  I know all the passwords for e-mail and bill accounts.  I know when all the bills are due and what is paid electronically and what I will have to write checks for.

But how do your prepare your heart for the separation?  Each time I think about the Husband leaving, the tears well up and I can feel an ache in my heart.  When we were down in San Diego for one last weekend together with family, I welled up watching the Husband wish my family a Merry Christmas (talk about an early greeting, it’s August for Pete’s sake!).  I hid my face as my sister and mom gave the Husband one last hug and saw the tears forming in their eyes.

It’s been hard enough to watch him say good-bye to them.

It’s going to be downright miserable watching him say good-bye to the Big One and the Little One.  I know they have no real concept of time, so they will not get it.  They will probably be obnoxious and not give hugs or kisses.  They will probably squeal and run away, wanting Daddy to chase them and tickle them like every other day.

I know this “game” will be hard on me and hard on him.  It’s hard to not be hurt when they run away and refuse to give hugs, but what can you do?  We will be watching the Elmo deployment video soon.  Hopefully Elmo can help us drive home the fact that Daddy will be gone for a long time.

We did order the girls special daddy dolls.  Of course, now I need to make sure that he records them each a special message on the recordable boxes that go inside the dolls.

It’s one of those things that we keep putting off.  We keep saying that we have time to do the things that need to be done, Unfortunately time is no longer on our side.  He reports to his unit to begin the paperwork for out processing in 6 days. We still don’t know when he will fly out, but we do know that he is to report to the desert in 10 days.

Pray for us as we prepare to say good-bye until the new year.