My husband, Doug, has been gone with his Army National Guard unit for a month now (at Ft. Dix, NJ). They are leaving for Iraq next week (2/18). We have 2 children, DS 4 and DD 6. DD is definitely a daddy's girl and seems more affected than her brother. Doug will also be gone for up to 18 months (and 1 already seems like forever).
Our yearly family vacation is usually Florida for a couple days (Universal) to a week and then a cruise. This year I asked the kids what they wanted to do - of course they wanted to go on a cruise. I suggested Disney World instead and they decided to try that. We are now counting down to our April trip to DW. I've got another vacation scheduled for July then in Sept. school starts (DS will be in kindergarten) - so, I'm trying to schedule things that we can count our days to look foward to, instead of just counting how long we've been missing daddy. So far the bribery seems to be helping - but 18 months is a very long time to a 4yo and 6yo.
My thoughts are with all the other families faced with similar difficult situations. Hopefully we'll be lucky and have our loved one return safely.