A single military mom has shared an emotional video of her practicing her reunion hug with her daughter while on deployment before finally reuniting after seven months apart. In each clip, Danielle Metzger, 31, is seen squatting down to the height of her five-year-old daughter Rylee, before hugging the air in place of what would have been the youngster. Throughout her deployment, Danielle kept the videos on her phone, storing them in a draft with the eventual hope of adding the reunion video as the final piece of the puzzle. Danielle, who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a security forces member staff sergeant with the United States Air Force Reserves. She was recently deployed to Kuwait for a total of six months, which also involved completing a further month of training and COVID-19 protocols. During her time overseas Danielle was missing Rylee, and so she came up with the creative idea of recording her would-be hugs. Though Danielle is a single mom, Rylee's dad – who serves in the U.S. Air Force – cared for his daughter in Arizona while her mom was on deployment. On February 5, as Danielle returned home, she recorded the final parts of her hug video – including selfies of the final hours as she headed back to Rylee, tears filling her eyes. When she was finally met by her daughter at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, that moment, too, was captured on video, which Danielle made the final clip in her montage.
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