Good-bye sad spring, hello happy summer!

My dad left for Afghanistan last week. The first two pictures below were taken a day or two before he left at dinner (enjoying ribs in the usual Johnson fashion) and the other two pictures were taken the morning that we said goodbye as he was leaving for the airport. It's hard to know what to write about the whole situation. I honestly think I went through the entire mourning process from the time I first found out he was re-enlisting and would be deployed until now. I definitely had shock and denial at first. I didn't believe he was really re-enlisting--after all, it made absolutely no logical sense. Why would anyone his age who had already served in the military choose to close his very successful medical practice and leave his family to go to some dangerous place on the other side of the world? Then when it became apparent that not only was he leaving, he was doing it soon, there was a lot of going back and forth between anger and depression for me. He was gone the better part of my childhood--why was he choosing now to be gone again for years more or possibly even the entire remainder of my adulthood? Then I would feel guilty about being angry and just feel sad about the whole thing. Anyway, he's gone now, so I have nothing left to do but accept it and move on with my life. I've learned a long time ago that a lot of things in life you can't change and lingering over any bad feelings just makes you feel bad, so you may as well choose to be happy.

On that note, many happy things are going on in our lives right now! Last week Benjamin took his last final for the semester, so he's now 2/3 finished with law school. Not only is it great that he's successfully finished another year, it's also wonderful because he now gets a break for summer! He is working two part-time jobs, one as an intern to a local attorney and the other as research assistant for one of his former professors (he's co-authoring a paper with her!). But even with him working basically full-time it still leaves him with so much more free time, which Miles and I of course are the huge beneficiaries of. I almost forgot what it was like to have your spouse free to do fun things with in the evening and on the weekend. We plan to make the most of the summer with lots of hiking, swimming (we got season passes to Raging Waters!), traveling, spending time with friends, etc. Next weekend we are planning a trip to Moab, the following weekend after that is Cami and Sean's wedding in Sacramento that we'll be attending, on Memorial Day I'm running a half-marathon with a friend, and we'll be seeing Benjamin's mom for a quick visit (unfortunately she is coming to Utah for a nephew's graduation that is occurring the same weekend as Cami's wedding so we won't see much of her). And all that is just happening during the month of May! I love summer!

And because I promised his Grammie I would get this posted, a picture of adorable Miles in the Easter suit his Grammie O. sent him.

Actually, here is one more picture. He really hated getting dressed in the suit and was furious when I couldn't help laughing at his anger. This picture still makes me laugh.