Tears and a goodbye

Well as of about 7 pm eastern time yesterday, Jon is officially gone on deployment. Right now he and his unit are at Ft. McCoy, Wisconsin (AKA the middle of no where - seriously google it). At 10 am yesterday morning, the city of Tallahassee held a departure ceremony for the nearly 200 men and women of the 779th engineering batallion. It was a very nice ceremony - the governor spoke as well as the lt. governor and the adjutant general of the Florida National Guard. We were able to spend time with Jon after the ceremony (about an hour) until they had to get on the buses to go to the airport. Let's just say that about 10 minutes after the ceremony ended the black looming clouds that had held off opened up. We even got to go to the airport to see them get on the planes. Jon was on the second plane that left around 3 pm so we said goodbye at the airport. I did very well and didn't cry as much as I thought I would. The hardest part of the day was when Jon went to tell Jack goodbye and Jack wouldn't let Jon put him down. I am posting some pictures from the ceremony, our time together and the airport (as well as one from the Tallahassee Democrat of Jon on the bus). If you go on youtube and type in 779th engineer batallion a video of the ceremony will come up. Jon is in it quite a bit.