Grandpa's visit and Tim's promotion

Tim Sr arrived here on Tuesday, the day that torrential rain started and did not let up for four long days.  The girls were in pajamas almost the entire time, I was in sweats, and we weren't going anywhere.  Fortunately, we hadn't made any big outdoor plans.  Delaney and Annie handled being stuck in the house a lot better with Grandpa around to play with them.  They weren't in my hair so much, and I did not descend into a pit of despair the way I normally do after many consecutive days of terrible weather.

Making Grandpa's hair pretty

We kept him pretty busy.  When he wasn't playing with our rambunctious little girls, he was out in the garage helping Tim finish our desk.  Tim has never built anything (at least not since wood shop in 7th grade), and he built this desk from scratch.  It started as a pencil diagram and now here it is sitting in our office.  He spent his last two weeks of leave working on it day and night.  It is beautiful, and so special to me.

The primary reason for his visit was Tim's promotion to major, which happened Friday morning.  Here's a picture Tim Sr took of the girls right before we left the house.  I love this picture.  They're growing up so fast.

Here we are pinning on his new rank.

After the promotion, The CO told us that they will be keeping Tim very busy.  He will be taking out the MEU (Marine Expeditionary Unit) detachment sometime late spring.  He will be on a ship for about seven months.  Between now and then he'll be doing a lot of preparation for that, so our days of seeing Tim walk in the door promptly at 4:30 every day are about to be over.  Tim gave a speech of his own in which he said that we're ready to "pay the piper" after four years of the good life in Boston and Quantico.  I don't know if I'm exactly ready, but ready or not, here it comes.  Tim's definitely ready -- he was hoping he'd get the MEU, so I'm happy for him.  The good news was Tim got the rest of Friday off!

The next morning it was time to say goodbye to Grandpa.  Like all visits, it went by too fast.  

A year ago today: A fun Saturday morning