In a week, Dan and I will be heading to Mississippi to see family and then take a quick trip down to Florida to spend some time with our friends Sam and Shanelle. We're really looking forward to a break after a few very busy months. Unfortunately, this is a sight we will not get to see while we are there:

My brother Ryan has just left Mississippi to go to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina for a few months before leaving on a seven-month deployment to Africa with the Marines. He'll be in Djibouti and if you want to read a short description of the area, check this site.

I went home in April to spend a couple of days with Ryan since we did the math and figured out that he would be leaving before Dan and I got home for another trip, and the picture above is from when Ryan beat me mercilessly at a game we used to play when we were little. I can't remember what the game is actually called, but it's the one where the goal is to try to capture your opponent's collection of small colored stones. Notice how many stones Ryan has in this picture and how happy he is about it.

Pretty soon I'll get an address for Ryan at LeJeune and put it up so anyone who wants can write to him. In the meantime, please pray for safe travels for Ryan and pray for all of us, because we'll miss him. The good news is that we have a task to occupy our minds: When I talked to Ryan last week, he told me that my job while he's gone is to form a search committee and get him lined up for a bunch of blind dates when he gets home with girls that Kelly and Hannah and Audrey and I have picked out. He told me that he's going to be worth all this effort because he's going to spend his free time in Djibouti lifting weights and generally becoming the kind of muscle-bound He-Man women want. Or something.

I told him that in order to prevent riots from breaking out at the airport upon his return, we'd organize a Bachelorette-style reality show to narrow down the contestants and I was sure there would be women writing to us from all over the world once they saw these pictures online. So ladies, if you want to get in line to date Ryan the Megastud when he gets back in a year, shoot me an email and I'll tell you about the various obstacle courses and physical challenges you'll have to endure to win that right. It's not that we need you to prove anything. It's just that while Ryan's gone, we're going to be really bored.