the wonder that is skype

The week before last I received an email from Tom saying that they were getting off the ship to do some training and that we wouldn't be hearing from him for at least 3 weeks. It was such a surprise when I saw that odd number on my caller id and much to my delight I heard his voice on the other end of the line. We've been lucky enough to hear from him nearly every day for the past week. Last week he took a few minutes and set up a Skype account and so we all got to see him! The kids were really excited and so was I. Today we got to see him again. It's weird to see him and know he's so far away from home.

It makes me wish that we had access to something like this when he was deployed previously. I wish that he could talk to us on Skype while on ship. But, I'm thankful for the fact that we can see him for the time being. I know that they won't be off ship for very long and all too soon he'll be back on ship and it'll be back to not hearing his voice for an undetermined amount of time and probably not seeing his face again until he comes home. I enjoy being able to communicate with him through email on a near daily basis, but there's nothing quite like hearing his voice and hearing the emotion behind his words. It makes me feel like I'm not quite as alone as I feel.