My Isaiah Joseph,

Hi sweetie. It’s official, we leave the island on February 22nd. We are going to leave in the evening so we shall see how your siblings do. Remember how we were all split up on the way to Hawaii because that’s the way the military does it? I’m hoping we can get the airline to put me near all three of your siblings. Ellie’s anxiety is too much and I feel like the boys are still too young. My hope is that since we are flying later in the evening that they’ll all sleep a decent amount of the first flight.

We went to Aweoweo today. It’s odd that nobody ever wants to go to the beach with me, but when I don’t give them a choice they get excited. Today they played “Agent Tomato, Agent Taco, Agent Vanilla Yogurt, and Agent Mac and Cheese”. I was very surprised that you were Agent Tomato. I know you could just sit and eat a whole container of grape tomatoes, but since it’s a food you loved, I thought you would be Agent Pizza. I really love just sitting on the beach and watching you guys play. Who else would come up with a game like you guys did to play in the ocean.

After the beach, we went to the park for a little bit. Elijah got pretty upset. He doesn’t really fit into the baby swings anymore and it was hurting him. I told him that he’s probably too big now and he just needs to graduate to the regular swing. He got upset, quietly cried on the play structure, and declared that he was upset he’s growing. It was quite cute. I told him I think Pennsylvania has a lot more swings than Hawaii does so maybe we will find different ones for him when we move.

I don’t know how it came up, but at the park I started telling Ellie a story. I don’t think I ever told it to you, but maybe I did. Back when we still lived in Missouri, I went outside the one day and it looked like there were a bunch of different male genitalia drawn in chalk on our driveway. I was offended and thought some teenager didn’t like us and that was their way of letting us know. I told daddy about it, I tried to figure out who it was, I even walked around to see if anyone else was targeted. It remained a mystery.

A few days later, you brought home some drawings from Pre-K. I think you were about four years old at the time, maybe five. I took your papers out of your folder only to see the same drawing I had seen on our driveway. I asked you what it was and you said it was a “cylinder”. Here I thought we had a bunch of boy things on our driveway, but it was just you drawing a bunch of cylinders. No hoodlum kids, just my son drawing his three dimensional shapes.

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow. It’s the seven month mark and also the last day of the year. On January 1st, we begin a year that you never got to see. I’m going to make my cheese queso that I’ve made the past few years. Although I won’t have my New Year’s Pretzel again this year, I can look forward to it becoming part of our tradition next year.

I love you so much, baby boy. Goodnight and sweet dreams.