The Taylors in Europe

I don't have a lot of energy for writing right now, but I do have some photos to share, and I wanted to let everybody know that we made it through the big goodbye scene this afternoon.

We decided that we did, in fact, want to go to the airport, and I'm glad we did. The typical airport commotion proved to be a great distraction for all of us, and things didn't start getting emotional until right before we left. We had planned on staying until he boarded, but we had already waited 2 hours when they delayed boarding for another 2 hours. So we had our hugs with a minimum of fuss and emotion and headed for the car. All in all, the actual goodbye wasn't nearly as hard as a lot of moments I've had in the past few weeks.

Before Fred put on his boots this morning, we took photos of him standing back to back with each of the kids. We plan on taking the same photos a year from now so we can see how much they will have grown.






One of the strange yet nifty features I'm going to miss about my little Nikon (which, by the way, I'm keeping until the Sony arrives and then shipping on to Fred) is the ability to take self-portraits like this one from this morning:



My friend Amy went to the airport with us to lend moral support and also to take photos for me. We posed in the airport diner for one last family photo for a while. (If it shows up as our Christmas photo, try to act surprised.)



And here are the photos of our goodbyes. If anybody out there can tell me how to get rid of the red-eye effect without looking like I burnt our eyes out with a cigarette, I'd be forever grateful.

Here's Mike's hug:



Here's Annabelle's:



And here's mine:



Thanks again for all the support, thoughts, and prayers. I'm going to bed now.