Let the countdown begin

Dakota has been asking for her daddy a lot lately and is soooo ready for him to be home (we all are!!!). My dad and Brenda visited and then my mom visited here recently and I told Dakota that Daddy would be the next one to come to our house. Of course, since little girls don't really have a concept of time, I knew this was going to mean that as soon as my mom left, she would be expecting her daddy to be home. Soooo, my neighbor gave me a good idea to make a countdown chain for her. So that each night she can take away a link and that way she can see how close his homecoming is. Well, my mom left Wednesday so yesterday I helped her make the chain. She cut out the links all by herself and then started to glue them together. She got a little distracted and started making princess crowns out of the loops so I had to finally take over LOL. (she is such a girl) I know the next question many of you will ask is...ok, so how many more days? And then answer is that we still don't know for sure. We are still planning on 7 months from when he left...could be earlier...we pray it is! You can tell by the length of the chain...that it's not next week LOL. My plan is to take away or add loops as I need to in order to make it come out right :). I'm actually thinking that one morning I will wake up to an empty chain since Dakota will equate that to daddy being home...without regards to actual days! We will see how this turns out. Anyway, here is the chain she made.

We also had another exciting event that signaled that we were getting close. We mailed out a final package to him. He is at the point now where he has to cut off his mail as he starts to make the transition home :) :). Sooooo, we decided to pack an extra special gift for him...

Bodee thought it was a great idea...and Dakota seems okay with it too!

We can't wait until Mark gets home. Time has flown by but at the same time, it seems like forever since we've had him here. Bodee has changed so much and Dakota has grown up in so many ways. I know he can't wait to get back and watch them firsthand...rather than in pictures, videos or on the webcam. Thank goodness for modern technology. We love you baby and can't wait to see you walk off that bus!!!!