Hugs All Around

Last night, our nephew Blake come over to spend the evening and celebrate my husband's birthday. For those of you who don't know it, Blake just got back from Iraq last week and is in town for a short visit before reporting back to his base in Colorado. So I stuffed him full of homemade comfort food and made him sleepy - just what an aunt should do, right?!

The kids especially can't get enough of Blake, especially little Elena (his god-daughter). She fixed his hair with shiny clippies, he fed her stuffed piggy a bottle, and watched Idol with Cale.

I'm pretty sure he'd had enough hugs by the end of the evening, but we didn't care, we just kept them coming. Until you have a chance to hug him (or anyone in uniform) in person when he's here, you don't really realize that you might have never gotten to hug him again at all.