Here we go again. That really is what I thought as I pulled out the camera and lined everyone up to quickly take a picture of my favorite soldier and his kids before they got on the bus for school. This picture would commemorate the start of our fifth (gulp) deployment.

You see, it began in January, 2003. There is a picture of a sweet soldier kissing his one-month-old baby boy goodbye. November, 2004. That same sweet soldier is kissing his almost two-year-old son and one-month-old daughter goodbye. In September 2007, once again, we see my sweet soldier kiss his five-year-old son, three-year-old daughter and another one-year-old son goodbye. Something as simple as a picture had become a deployment tradition for Team Young.

If you were counting, you noticed that I only mentioned three dates above. Our first deployment began in May 2002, and back then our story was fairly unique. We dated. We were engaged. We eloped two weeks before deployment not knowing when he would be home or when (or if) war would be declared! Three days before he was set to leave, we discovered that I was pregnant!

I had never really spent a lot of time around the military, and the thought of him deploying scared me to death. To safeguard my heart, and since communication was spotty at best, I asked someone who was in the parking lot at the "link up point" to take a picture of us together, and that picture hung in a special place in our home the entire time he was gone. Thus, the "link up point" picture tradition was born.  To date, there is a large frame that now holds five pictures of my sweet soldier and me. Some of the pictures are cute, and some are just, well, not cute! But the truth is that they are what make up the fabric of our family!

"Here I Go Again" was the song that Whitesnake recorded in 1987 right? "Like a Drifter, was I born to walk alone? " Heck no! That’s why I got married, but “here I go again on my own.” As I watched him drive away from the link up point this time, I was not scared or sad. I was proud! I am proud of who my sweet soldier is, and I am proud of what he does. I will admit that I had a pity party for about two seconds as I pulled into the empty driveway and opened the door to the empty house, but that party was quickly broken up by the siren that was my five-year-old autistic son, whose morning schedule had been disrupted by an errand to drop dad off for another year.

Yep... Here I go again!