Ty and I decided early on in his deployment that if he was going to be home in the earlier part of January, then we were going to wait for the whole Santa Claus scene until then. So, once we found out a more clear date (HA HA!) of when Ty was suppose to be arriving, we would plan accordingly as far as when our family's advent calendar would start. About the middle of December, Ty gave me the OK to start the advent on the 23rd. We were planning on counting backwards from 24 days until our "Christmas" which would be on the 16th of January. I was pretty hesitant to do this because I knew that if something were to go wrong or be delayed, I wouldn't be able manipulate the "numbers" without losing Carter. Ty assured me that according to what he had been told, the 16th allowed plenty of room for error.
As most of you know at this point, it wasn't and the whole situation was quite an ordeal! Praise God that my 4 year old has an imagination 10 feet tall and that both of them are much to young to figure out the whole "real/make believe" part of Santa. And, lesson learned for us: Never, EVER plan on anything when the AF is involved in any way, whatsoever.
When Ty called on the morning of the 15th and said that he was for sure not getting on a plane for the next 24 hours, I was devastated. I was going to have to do "Christmas" without him. I thought about it all morning on how I was going to tell Carter that just because today was our last day of advent, Daddy still isn't going to come home. Of course, this would mean that everything that I had said up to this point on "Santa can't come until he knows Daddy is home safe with us..." would go right out the window. I had no idea what to do.
That afternoon, I picked Carter up from school and on the car ride home I said, "Hey Bud, I don't think Daddy is going to make it tomorrow. He called this morning and the airplane that is suppose to bring him back is still broken." Of course he was sad, but still shook his head as if he understood. That's when I said, "So I'm not sure what we are going to do about Santa. We could try writing him a quick letter, or umm... emailing his workshop, or...
So, crisis avoided.
It was the next morning (16 Jan), what was suppose to be our Christmas Day, when Ty called and was on his way. We had a wonderful reunion on the afternoon of the 17th and that night, Carter put out the Santa key. Sure enough, he came. What a relief! I am very thankful Ty was able to be here to share the joy that the kids had as they came around the corner to see their stockings filled and all of the Santa gifts. Even if it was the middle of January, it felt just like it was the 25th of December, all because we were finally together again as a family.
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