Soldier Day- Henry.

It's been over a year in the making, but this weekend we traveled up to Ohio to welcome back the Ohio National Guard's 16th Engineers Brigade. They've been on active duty for over a year and left for Baghdad last August.

Needless to say, when you haven't seen your PawPaw for 10 months, you have to really dress up for the occasion.

PawPaw got me this uniform, complete with my name and all the appropriate Engineer and Colonel patches. Of course, I've refused to wear it. But mama has been talking up what we lovingly refer to as "Soldier Day." So when the day finally came, I put it on without any resistance.

Sadie also had her patriotic dress on.

We all got flags to wave and therefore, were too distracted to get a picture taken.

It was really quite a spectacle. There was a fire truck with it's ladder over the highway and a big flag hanging down to greet the troops.

There were tons of people waiting for the police and motorcycle escort.

We could barely wait for the big parade to start!

Finally, they were here!

Mama didn't get many pictures because we were all so excited to see PawPaw.

And can you believe that a guy who's been traveling for a week across half the world had the forethought to bring all the kids stuffed bears with very tiny, accurate uniforms to pass out as soon as he got off the bus? The "PawPaw Bear" is now a very popular toy in our house.

I was excited to show PawPaw my uniform, but I did notice that my new Soldier Day tennis shoes weren't like PawPaw's boots.

After we got to visit for a while, we headed inside for the ceremony. PawPaw's name was all over the jumbo-trons that were plastered around what mama now understands is truly a mega church. (That's him: Colonel Tris Cooper- 2nd in command.)

There were lots of speeches by lots of politicians. Many, many thanks to Great Aunt Tia for taking Juner and I out to run around when we started to get antsy. I wish we had a copy of the General's speech that outlined everything the unit had done since last August. Most impressive was the program they started during their first tour in 2005 to train other engineering units to identify IEDs. It's safe to say that they've saved thousands of lives in Iraq because of their work.

We're so glad that all 138 members of the unit returned home safely.

After the ceremony ended, we had nothing to do but party!