SpringfieldNewsSun.com

Senior Airman Donna Hamilton will celebrate Christmas in Iraq, more than 6,000 miles from home.

The Beavercreek woman won't be there to see 3-year-old Trinity unwrap the toys the child wants Santa Claus to deliver, but hopes to hear all about them on the telephone and in e-mails on Christmas Day.

"When I call home and talk to my little girl it is the best part of my week, I want to laugh and cry all at once," the 23-year-old mother said in an e-mail. "You don't care that there are 10 other people standing around waiting to use the phone."

Getting enough time on a computer at the U.S. air base in Balad, north of Baghdad, is equally challenging but she will patiently wait for one to connect with her daughter and husband, Air Force Staff Sgt. Christopher Hamilton, 30. The Hamiltons are both members of the 88th Security Forces Squadron at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

He returned on Sept. 11 from a seven-month deployment in the United Arab Emirates.

She left for Iraq in late August.

"We missed each other by two weeks," he said.

During that period, Trinity was in the care of her father's aunt, who has watched the child since birth when schedule conflicts arose. But the strain caused by having two parents in the military is why after eight years in the Air Force, Christopher Hamilton is leaving it behind.

He has accepted a job as a civilian employee in the same squadron he and his wife have been in and will start in January.

Donna Hamilton is expected to complete her tour of duty in Iraq sometime between January and March, if it's not extended.

Trinity wonders where she is.

"We tell her mommy is off catching the bad guys," Christopher Hamilton said.

And she wants to know when she's coming home.

"That's her biggest question," he said.

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