Pre Deployment Week 3

Faith Stembridge

RIP SPC Kham Xiong

Sorry that this is a little late. I wanted to wait until I got my ultrasound to post it. First off...we are having a baby Girl!!! Faith will be here in March or April. We are super excited. Best part is Justin got to be here for the ultrasound. It was amazing. :) We even got her a dress today after the ultrasound.
Anyway, Justin will be leaving us in the next few days. Its very hard to think about him being gone for so long. I am very lucky to have so many people to support me here. We have been able to spend a lot of time together over the last week. I have LOVED it. So have the kids. I really think they are both going to have a hard time with Justin being gone. They freak out even when he just goes outside for a minute. We will deal with it though.
This week was a very hard and emotional week. The shooting at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and so many more injured was emotional when we first found out about it. It got even MORE emotional when I found out that one of Justin's good friends from Basic Training was one of the 13 dead. I have never in my life had to break such horrible news to anybody. The fact that it was my husband that I had to tell made it that much worse. We watched the memorial on the internet. I cried so hard when I saw Kham Xiong's (Justin's friend) wifes reaction when she got to his picture. They literally had to pry her away from it. I wrote a letter to the reporter who wrote a wonderful story about SPC Xiong. He forwarded that letter to his family. I felt so blank for a few days there. All I could think of was "That Could Have Been Justin!!" Then yesterday a thought popped into my head. Justin went to NTC last month. He saw SPC Xiong there. You go to NTC before you deploy. If SPC Xiong was there, was the man who shot him there for training? That got me all emotional too. I couldn't stand the thought that my husband had quite possibly seen this man, or even eaten in the same room or slept in the same barracks as him!!! It has all been a lot to process.
Anyway, since I don't have much time left with my husband, I will go ahead and end my blog here. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers for our family.

Jen