Although I’d like to say we have done this family-running-around-the-beach a lot in the weeks since Matt’s been home, and that life is blissful and amazing all the time now that we are back together, it just wouldn’t be true.  In truth we have had a mix of ups and downs with readjusting to life as a family, the constraints of work/sleep/schedule/time/decision-making, and trying to find our (umm, maybe it’s mostly MY) openness to life as it is now.  I guess I had it all figured out in my head that having Matt back would mean going back to the way it was before deployment, during that time when our purpose was to make our time together as amazing as possible as we moved toward being apart (and for some reason I always seem to remember the past as being much awesomer than it actually was).  Yet now it seems things are different in this new phase of life, and we are back to the trials and joys of learning to be together as a couple and a family, of being vulnerable, of speaking up for what we want, of letting go of control, of listening and compromising, of waking up to expectation and resentment, of remembering how to be human and connect with another person.  Having him back, for me, is another wave to ride in my life, a wave that takes time to re-figure out but that I am certain we will remember how to ride.