Jared's deployment is finally over! We picked him up on Monday afternoon along with his cousin Mike, who had accompanied him on the Tiger cruise that the ship offered from Hawaii to Camp Pendleton. Once we got so close to the end, it was so exciting that Einar found it really hard to fall asleep last weekend. After all of our preparations and talking about it finally happening, he had trouble waiting, especially on Monday morning. He helped me paint a great banner to welcome Jared home with (we painted it so well that our street out front now has paint on it that had soaked through our sheet).
Jared is now enjoying 4 days off before he heads back to work on Monday. He's cooking up a storm with a new food processor that he got for his birthday, making lemon meringue pie and a strawberry layer cake. We've also eaten Chinese food and are planning on going to see Indiana Jones tomorrow evening.
These pictures are from the homecoming on base on Monday as well as the Tiger cruise. Mike took all of them, so thank you guest photographer! You can see the helicopters on the USS Tarawa as well as the Harrier Jets that were onboard. They even let Mike sit in the cockpit and pretend to fly. Instead of docking in San Diego and letting the Marines off there, they disembarked on their landing crafts onto the beach in Del Mar and then took a bus back to San Mateo where Jared works normally.
