Even though it is hard to say goodbye for a whole week, I am glad that it is only for a week. Today, I think of all the wives and mothers and children that have to say goodbye to their soldiers for months, years and sometimes for a lifetime. It makes my goodbye a little less bittersweet.
After such a tough couple of years, this internship is such a welcome break. Is it odd that we find the goodbyes, long weeks and short weekends far less stressful on our family than a semester at school? Tanner remarked that he has seen his family far more in the last week than he would during a month of school, and I agree. We've had time to play cards with the girls, go to the park, take walks and splash in the pool. We've had time to do projects around the house together rather than one person doing part, leaving it to go to work or to study, and then the other person picking it up and finishing it (if we were that lucky). It feels so strange to have the time to watch a movie together after the kids are put to bed or to have a cup of coffee with each other. There actually came a point this weekend where we didn't really feel the need to grab a few minutes of alone time.
I hadn't realized what a hardship school has been until this last week. We're so use to an almost overwhelming work load. Tanner mentioned it this afternoon before leaving that if we'd known just how hard the number three engineering school in the nation was gonna be, we might have been too scared to try. Like the song Garth Brooks sings (I'm sorry for the country reference, peeps, but I am in Texas), "I'm glad I didn't know the way it all would end, the way it all would go...I would have missed the dance." I guess if you're a school and you're competing with MIT (number 1) and Sanford (number 2), you've gotta have a tough curriculum, but Tanner has been talking to other interns this last week, and he has realized just how much more challenging the curriculum is at A&M than at other schools.
One story he had from work was from a safety meeting. The instructor was explaining some material, and both Tanner and another school-mate from Texas A&M both knew the answers to almost every question while interns from other schools had absolutely know idea what was being discussed. The instructor actually went so far as to say that he "loved it when we get interns from A&M. No training needed."
Not that we are on the homestretch for school. Tanner still has to make it through materials and kinetics which are two major hurdles for many engineers. We've heard that a lot of students save kinetics for the last semester, after they've received their job offers so that they only have to make a "C". All I can do is shudder. I'm not sure that I'm looking forward to that course, and I don't even have to take it!
So, how are the girls doing? Well, I numbed the parting of Daddy with movie night and chocolate chip cookie baking time. That seemed to do the trick. My goal is to give them little distractions even though I know that their hearts are sad. They're looking forward to their "babysitter" coming tomorrow, and then there is choir on Wednesday, the pool on Thursday and Friday, and then hopefully, Daddy will come home! I say hopefully because we're not sure that his paycheck will come in time for him to get gas! I told him if that happened then I would drive the girls down Friday evening. I'm trying not to because we have to be back Sunday afternoon for a Girl Scout meeting which is mandatory for Kate to attend camp the following week. It would mean a shortened visit, but a short visit is better than no visit. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
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