[jr_lenz]

We did alot with T and Lance durining the "time" away periods. he is 7 now, but still has a hard time when Lance leaves on a trip. we did the the paper ring thing, where you make a train of the paper rings and tear them off one day at a time. We had "special" books, that they both had copies off so Lance could read the bed time story and T follow along with. Right now we have a memory jar...a place for T to write down the things he wants to talk about, that way when they are on they phone and the conversation gets slow T can pull out his jar and remember the things he wanted to talk about. The other thing they do is Lance carries R2D2 with him ( starwars is very big in out house) and takes pix of R2d2 working on the plane, at the hotel, ect.. and send them to us on the cell. Trady loves it. We have one at home and he takes pix to send to lance.


When we were a part, during training, and years of our communting relationship, one of my favorite things to do was to go have coffee dates. This was much harder when he was training, but still doable. We would sit down and both have a cup of coffe together and talk. It was fun when we both could go to a coffee shop. but the back patio works to.


Oh one of our favorites when Lance was in Phoenix, is when we had a walk to dad contest. We logged all the miles we walked, ( I used the car to roughly guess the miles) and we made a map and marked how far we walked. In truth we never made it from Boise to Phoenix, but we had a great time getting out and trying. Plus everything you do to keep your mind off the negative and more on doing "something" helps!