Reason to rejoice

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Our Andrew has been home for a week. He does not live here, but he’s at his own home in East Tennessee.

It was a busy week for us. Rhett turned five this past Thursday, and on Saturday we had a party for him. I’ll share pictures of that event later.

As to the homecoming, we are all ecstatic but no one more than Andrew himself.

The trip home was a long haul, but not as long as the stressful months that led up to it.

Before departing from Chania/Souda Air Base on the Greek island of Crete, where Andrew had been stationed since early February, he let us know how to track his flight on one of the several websites that allow you to do that.

It’s seven hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time there, and the plane was set to depart shortly after midnight. So it was late afternoon for us.

He was over France

TG and I on our separate devices, and Audrey and Erica on theirs, called up his information and were able to find the plane and track it as it made its way west across Europe.

All was well until the aircraft got out over the Atlantic Ocean, at which point the website stopped tracking the plane.

This was at about bedtime here on the East Coast, so I went to sleep knowing that I’d likely be awakened by an early morning text from Andrew saying he was about to embark on the final leg of the journey.

(They had to stop in Bangor, Maine to refuel and reconfigure the passenger list and so forth, before flying to Knoxville.)

I woke up at six o’clock and went to my laptop to see if the website had resumed tracking Andrew’s flight.

Guy wanted to see the cockpit

It had; they were at that point a little to the northeast of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

Then I noticed that Andrew had texted me an hour previous to that, or five o’clock in the morning. I’d missed it. 

He said, leaving Bangor. Home in two hours.

Andrew arrived at McGhee Tyson Airport early in the morning of Monday, July 20, 2026, after about fifteen hours of travel.

Brittany was there with the children, having dressed them so sweetly in patriotic outfits.

The homecoming was mostly a surprise for them. They were kept in the dark until the eleventh hour, because military travel plans often change at the last minute.

Talk about a dream come true

But they were more than ready to see their daddy step off the tanker onto the tarmac.

That reminds me of a funny story. 

In the military, nicknames abound. Sometimes they are referred to as personal call signs.

At any rate, Andrew’s call sign is TARMAC. It is of recent vintage — as in, it was attached to him during this deployment.

He showed me a picture of the patch he wears on his uniform, to that effect: TARMAC.

I said, why are you called TARMAC?

TARMAC and son ... on the tarmac

He sheepishly replied: It stands for Took A Rented Moped And Crashed.

? ? ? ? ? ?

(I don’t believe that “took” in this context means took without permission. It was a rented machine but the “took” fit in to make TARMAC.)

One or more of his buddies came up with that and I think it’s hysterical. Going forward, I shall employ that nickname as much as possible.

Even though I have yet to be told the particulars of the event that led to the invention of that moniker.

Meanwhile Andrew has been enjoying to the hilt what I call the blessing of ordinary days.

Home is where the heart is

He is taking a few weeks to rest and hang out with Ember and Guy before Ember goes back to school. She will be entering the first grade in mid to late August.

I’m sure that there will be some excellent late-summer adventures leading up to the start of the new school year.

So there has been a great deal of rejoicing. I thank the ones of you who I know are rejoicing with us. It means a lot.

We will continue in that vein until the day break, and the shadows flee away!

And that is all for now.

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Happy Tuesday