Day 146: Chugga chugga

 Braving some serious sun for a ride on the train!

Chugga chugga - that's a perfect metaphor for the final countdown until Dan comes home. The toughest parts of any deployment are the weeks right before you leave and the weeks right before you come home. The rest of the time you go into "shutdown mode" where you kind of turn off your emotions as a self-defense mechanism. It sounds terrible, I know, but living in a state of constant fear/terror/panic/sadness is crippling. It's "easier" to keep your feelings at bay (and to give up reading the newspaper and watching CNN!)

In honor of our final push, we took a train ride this weekend on the Poway Railroad in Old Poway. It's a simple little two loop ride but the kids loved it and I love the feeling of knowing we're THISCLOSE to putting all of this behind us!!!