Our TV Debut

On Thursday night I decided to email the local news media an article about the deployment that ran in the Peoria Journal Star. I just wanted to make sure that our local communities knew about this awesome group of soldiers that were leaving for a year. Right now there are a lot of soldiers from Illinois deployed and Mike's unit is a very small portion. Anyway, one of the emails I sent was to our local NBC station. WEEK-Channel 25. I got an email and phone call from them first thing Friday morning asking if it was possible to do a story on our family. I called Mike to see what he thought and his first answer was "no" but before we hung up he said that we could do it if I wanted. I called the station back and talked to the News Editor. He knew that we were under a time crunch so he said that he would have an afternoon reporter contact me and setup a time for for Friday. Syreeta Baker contacted me about 2:30 on Friday and we decided that 5 would be a good time. She showed up right on time and interviewed both Mike and I. She also had her photographer get some shots with our girls. Our segment was the lead off story on the Friday night news. If you missed it here is a link to the article and video from the WEEK website, http://www.week.com/news/local/34128339.html. I was really happy with how it turned out. She did get a few things wrong. She said that Mike had been a pilot for fourteen years, he only graduated from flight school four years ago, and she said that it was the second time for Mike's unit to get deployed to Afghanistan. This is their second deployment but the first time was Iraq. I hope that Mike doesn't get too much trouble from his buddies. It really is all my fault. :-)

On Saturday we decided to take the girls to see Madagascar 2. They both did really well and the movie was pretty cute. It may be one we buy on DVD when it is released. After the movie Mike and I met up with some of his high school buddies. It was great seeing all of them. I know Mike appreciated spending some time with them before hea leaves. Mike parents kept the girls and told us not to rush home so after seeing our friends we ran a few errands.

This morning was Mike's official report date. The girls and I went to church and I got a text from him around 10 saying that he didn't feel well. On our way home from church my sister called and said my brother's fiance was sick and my Mom also called and said that she didn't feel well. We had all been together on Friday night so then I started to worry. This afternoon Grace got sick. She is feeling much better but poor Mike is still under the weather. I feel so bad that this is one of our last few days together and he is sick. I dont' want to get and I'm praying that Sydney and I don't get it. Tomorrow is the deployment ceremony and I'll be there even if I don't feel well.