Private Conkey!

Basic Training was in Paris Island, South Carolina.  Trish contacted me and asked if I would like to come out and join them for family day and graduation.  Honored and Proud to be apart of some thing so important to Andrew, absolutely!  (Thank You Trish!)

Landed in South Carolina to sunshine.  Oh the joy after such a long winter and wet spring at home.

I was quickly picked up by Trish, Mandy and Paul and we headed toward the island and our hotel for the night. (Not as quick of a pick up as we had planned as they had driven to the wrong airport, or my pilot landed at the wrong one.  Could be debated either way.  haha)

What do people do at a hotel while waiting for family day?

We make a sign so Andrew can find us amongst the rest of the families.

We decorate a small apple pie with "OHH-RAH" thinking Andrew will like his own apple pie to eat.

We each must have a decorative pie letter on our face so we all know what our first names start with.  (oh they tasted awful!)

And we painted our toe nails.  (Ok, Mandy painted our toe nails and gave Trish and I a foot massage for Mothers day too!)  LOVE YOU Mandy.

Thursday: Family Day

Our first sight of the Marines!

The Men came jogging out in the morning light.

"Do you see him?  I think so.

Where?  There!

Where? There! Are you sure?"

"THERE!  THERE HE IS!"

"WAIT?! Isn't he suppose to be standing at attention?  What's that smirk?"

"Yeah!  He sees us!"

After watching the new Marines stretch and warm up we then watched them run a final lap around the base chanting while all the family cheered them on.  What a sight and sound!

Later Andrew joined us and gave us a tour.

His home for the past three months.  "Tight"

The obstacles course.

I can only imagine and want to only imagine at my age.

We had to take this picture like this!  Many MANY photos have been taken of family / friends with Andrew and his tongue out.

Boy Howdy Private Conkey!  Your so serious now!

Paul, Trish, Private Andrew Conkey, Mandy and Tina

This is the spot Andrew was standing when they finished The Crucible and received his Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.

What is the Crucible for those who do not know?

For 54 straight hours, recruits’ endurance, teamwork and skills will be pushed to the limit. Through perseverance and courage, they will finish as platoons and earn the title Marine. 
During The Crucible, recruits face: 
• Obstacles that must be negotiated as a team
• Day and nighttime marches
• Night infiltration movement
• Combat resupply and casualty evacuation scenarios
• Combat field firing as a team
• Minimal food and sleep, simulating combat
• Leadership tests
• Core values training

Friday: Graduation Day

Tears of Joy as we watched all these new Marines march in together and my heart swelled with pride knowing Andrew was among them!

 Echo Co, 2nd RTBN class!

 

I cried, I did.

He stands taller and has a glow of pride and happiness that is beyond description.

 

 

Last stop before we drove out of the gates of Paris Island was his first stop and foot steps as a Recruit on this island.

When he stepped off the bus for the first time he ran and found an empty set of footprints to stand at his first attention!

Fitting to have this be his last stop.

  

 Look at him now!

OHH-RAH Andrew!

Private Conkey

Our new MARINE!

Private Andrew Conkey

More photos to come.

Easter Hunting for All

Tried some camouflage egg coloring kit this year.

 

The kids and I had a good time coloring them and trying out different color combos.

However the dual dipping, stickers and clean up took a lot longer than the usual dieing.

As you can see both kids were still very excited and having a blast from beginning to the end!  (are you done now Mom, can we go to bed now?  Thank You! said with attitude)

Easter Weekend!

We tried to fit quite a lot into a weekend and tried to make everyone happy or sort of happy?

Geocaching with Gpa Norman and Gma Marie for the Roseburg coin.

This would be a special coin that the city made and we had to find 15 virtual caches and 5 real caches answering questions along the way to earn the coin.

Here we found a real cache and took the clue off of the inside of the box.

(look, sunny and sort of warm)

Where?  Here?  No, there?  Are you sure? Yes ... maybe.

Gma Marie's Geosense managed to find this one!

Myrtle Creek Egg Hunt!

And they are off!

We didn't think Jo was picking up any eggs, only candy but she managed to do very well for herself this year.

Three money eggs for Jo, I mean Elizabeth, and two for Cole.

Quite a few store eggs, where they received lots of candy, some more cash and Elizabeth even got a free taco from a restaurant.

Eater A.M.

Oma and I stayed this year with my folks while Cole and Elizabeth (typing Jo is so much quicker) stayed with Rachelle and Connie again.

Oma had a GREAT Easter day.

Peeps on a stick and hunting for more caches!  This one was a 1/5, which easy to find but hard to get.  Maybe one day Oma will do a blog post and give all you Muggles out there some more Geocaching knowledge.

(Muggles: to describe non-geocaching people)

Cole and Elizabeth (Jo is so easy...sheesh) woke to a basket full of candy and toys!

Are they really awake yet?

Then out to do their morning Easter Bunny egg hunt.

Connie said that this year Rachelle tried to sneak out to hide the eggs in the yard and then,

Elizabeth said; "There goes Rachelle to hide the eggs".

Connie replied with: "What do you mean, the Easter Bunny hid the eggs."

Elizabeth: "No, Rachelle just went out to hide them."

We now wonder how many years they have known that it's been Rachelle doing this and they have just played along to please us adults?

Happy Easter BS Groupies!

Oh, the Roseburg coin?

Very nice indeed.

April Showers and Not

Cole's Babe Ruth Opening Ceremonies were warm and dry like baseball should be!

See, folks had to use umbrella's to keep from burning in the sun it was beating down so hard!

Cole was suppose to have a game right after the ceremony so Gma Marie and Gpa Norman drove up to spend this special day with him.

Gma and Gpa just got back from Snow Birding in the South and thought this was a welcome home sun break!

The umbrellas didn't even keep us dry it rained so hard!

We did have a good time visiting and playing card games at the house.

Almost 9

Welcome to learning to mow the yard.

He did an awesome job for his first time.
(as soon as it stops raining it's Jo's turn)

I finally got around to replacing my gate fence post all by myself.  (Correction, Cole helped me dig out the old one which took quite some time as it looked like a two bag of concrete mix around that post)

Yes, a thumbs up people as it stayed square.

Had a little concrete left over so I dug out a couple stepping stone size holes and had the kids do a hand print.

They thought this was quite fun and asked to do it again soon together with their friends hands.

Scratched in their names and year and turned out well.

Jo, oh Jo...I mean Elizabeth as she has asked us to call her now.

We never know what we will find when we check on her after she falls asleep.

This night she was sporting furry gloves.

As for calling her Elizabeth, she asked to try it out so Oma, Cole and I are to call her by that name.  However we forget as does she most days, nights and weekends.

Onto the next update!

April Things

First, a little bit of Jo.  Jo can be asked to get dressed in the morning and by time she walks to her room she has forgotten what she went in there for.  Well this little calendar with a recipe for each month comes out every month like clock work.  She only makes the recipe of said month, no going forward or back!

This one was Kiwi Delish!  Jo manages the slicing/stirring and blending of the recipes herself as she becomes more independent. We enjoy helping and tasting the end products as she smiles with pride.  (Now to teach her to clean up afterwards)

 

Baseball

Hoping to get Jo more interested in baseball I taught her how to keep score.

She had a good time and took the job very serious.  I know she learned quite a bit.  At the end of the third inning she said "Mom, I hate baseball, can I be done keeping score?"  Hey, three innings, that's pretty good I thought.

Cole is catching most of the time these days and he is really in heaven.  The first couple games he looked uncomfortable in the catching gear, wabbling around when he walked.  Well now he can walk/run and move Cole Quick with the gear on.

This past game he caught a pop up & hustled to a bunt and throwing the runner out at first.

Jo Likes Baseball?

"Hey Mom, I like baseball now.  I have friends there."

(Goodness knows it's not to watch her brother do well or anything.)

YEAH!  She is actually enjoying going to the games now as she has made friends with other sisters from the team who also get drug to the games.  Thanks Jo!

Nice Bunt Cole!

Going after a pop fly from Coach Kurt.

Mom's Office!

I moved myself into an empty office at work that's being used as storage and created a work space for myself.  It's temporary as a real desk and office is "coming soon".

If you look closely I'm using patient tray tables as my desk, laugh if you will but I actually like it.  I can sit, stand and move my desk around to my needs.  If co-workers say nothing else about me they have to admit that I'm flexible with where and how I work.