They're getting ready on the home front, as the first members of the 116th Combat Brigade for the Idaho National Guard return to the United States after spending the past year and a half in Iraq. 291 local soldiers are back on home soil, with 22-hundred more to follow in the next ten days.

Idaho military families are waiting anxiously for them to finish demobilization at Fort Lewis in Washington state so they can go home, but there's work to be done before that happens.

It's not just the soldiers that get training on how to readjust to everyday life. Family members of a 116th soldier learn that their expectations of the homecoming can be far from reality.

"Yep, he'll be into Washington next weekend," said Genice Johnson over the phone to her daughter. The first group of 116th members arriving in the states this weekend is a reality check for Johnson, who's waited a year and-a-half for her husband, Roy, to finish his tour, and expects he'll arrive at Fort Lewis Saturday.

"We know it's over," she said, "My heart still breaks for everybody that's still over there, but we're all gonna start becoming whole again as families."

But before a tearful homecoming, soldiers must undergo rigorous adjustment training at the base, and their families have already received similar "reintegration" training, where National Guard Family Assistance Coordinators take the families through the realities of the reunions. They prepare them for financial and relationship issues, stress and anger problems, and even continued healthcare once deployment is over.

"I'm so glad I had taken that this summer, just to know what to expect once he got home," said Johnson. Families also learn to take things slow and expect plans to go awry, as soldiers try to reconnect with family and friends, catch up on birthdays, and plan for the upcoming holidays. Johnson found that out firsthand when her husband returned home for 15 days of leave earlier this month, and their plans were constantly changing.

"They told us to totally expect this, and so then I'm going, 'ok my dreams are way too high, so bring it back down here to ground level and everything's going to work out ok'," she said.

Family Coordinator for Gowen Field, Tom Obstarczyk, just finished up family reintegration training in northern Idaho, and talked to Local Two News from the car on the way back to Boise. He says reintegration is a big part of a smooth transition for many families dealing with their first deployment.

"They're really the ones that have the role reversal because many of them have not had to have the responsibility, it's like being a single parent family, and now all of a sudden we have to go back sort of to the way things were," Obstarczyk said.

"We've gotten through this war, we can get through anything," she said. The process takes about two weeks and guard officials say all 116th members should be able to finish demobilization by Thanksgiving.

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