Mom surprises children as she returns from deployment
When Technical Sgt. Andrea Riley learned that she was going to come home this past week, she wanted to keep it a secret.
For one, she wasn’t sure if their flight home would get delayed. And secondly, she wanted to give her children a surprise they wouldn’t forget.
“I wanted to surprise them at school,” Riley said.
On Thursday, she got that opportunity, as she visited Newton County High School, Newton Elementary and Pilate Middle School to surprise them that she had made it home safely.
It worked, as each of her children came running to meet her when they finally saw her.
At Newton Elementary, her son, Kristopher, had just finished taking a test and thought he was going to be checked out by his aunt. But once his aunt move to reveal his mom, he sprinted toward her.
“I thought I was about to cry,” Kristopher said, after he embraced his mom for several minutes in the Newton Elementary courtyard.
After leaving Newton Elementary, she reunited with Cornelius, an eighth grader at Pilate Middle.
The children had not seen their mom for several months after the 186th Air Refueling Wing in Meridian deployed earlier this year. It was the first deployment Riley had been on since her children had been born.
“I’m glad to be back home,” Riley said.
