one challenge of surviving deployments is keeping chris in the minds of our kids. claire is obviously a bit more understanding about the whole situation and seems to get the idea that he is away. i tell her that daddy is 'helping the people.' i used this phrase when chris was in iraq and it works. she gets it. other things we do is have lots of family pictures around. we talk about him often and try to talk to him as much as possible too. chris had the idea of placing a large world map above claire's bed. together, they put pins in all the different locations of our families and also where we are located as well as korea. claire is quite the kid. weeks later she can still tell me where each person is located by pointing to the map. we received a gift in the mail from our besties april and mark. she had pillows made with each of the kids' pictures with chris. they are very cute. the kids snuggled up to them all afternoon and through the night. i must say the pics are very life size. perfect for making chris even more real to them. when chris went in for his deployment briefing both when he left for iraq and this time, they offered to do something similar--putting his picture on basically anything. they'd even make a doll out of his picture. we just never got around to bringing in a picture, so april had a great idea. our last thing, which i haven't gotten around to doing is picking up on 'flat stanley.' i am going to make a 'flat daddy.' chris will come along on all our little adventures. more on that later.
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