A Farewell Party in Georgia.....

Last night, we went over to the In-laws' house for a farewell party for hubby's nephew. It was just us (me, hubby, & four kids), Da Nephew, Da Nephew's girlfriend & baby (3 mos old), The Inlaws, and Hubby's sister (Mom of Da Nephew (obviously, haha)).

Da Nephew will be departing for somewhere far from here for Basic Training within the next couple weeks. We all ate dinner - chicken & dumplins' - yum! and cake. The cake was just a white cake with a big flower on it, and hubby's mom stuck several small american flags on the top of the cake and sang, to the tune of "Happy Birthday," "Happy Army to you, Happy Army to you!" and so on. Haha! Our camera went belly-up last week, so I won't have any pictures to share until my F-I-L (himself a Navy Veteran, by the way) gets around to emailing them to me. Hopefully he does soon. :)

M-I-L insisted on getting a picture of me with Da Nephew "cuz you do all that military stuff," she said. I'll make sure to post that one, whenever I get it! :) Before we left, I gave Da Nephew a Soldiers' Angels coin and a dogtag I got from the Patriot Guard Riders. One of the families whose son had been in Iraq, had ordered several of them for the PGR and I had a few extra~ the dogtags have an American flag & a Bible verse on one side, and a prayer on the other side.

In about 3 months, give or take, however long basic training lasts, I'll get to add "PROUD ARMY AUNT!" to my various message board signatures and blog banner and whatnot. No longer will I be able to say that I don't have any military in my family, haha! This should be interesting...never having done this before, I don't know a THING about what happens during basic and stuff. I only know how to take care of DEPLOYED troops - don't know anything about what to do with the ones being systematically tortured, er, I mean, trained! Hmmmm....something to look into! Hmmmm... :)

For a night at the Inlaws' house, it wasn't bad. There was one moment of amusement -- well, when you think about it, it's not really funny, it's kinda sad, but everyone laughed. The M-I-L said, "But after basic training, they won't ever send him anywhere where he'll get hurt, will they?!" Because, you know, the Army is just such a safe job and all warm and fuzzy and stuff.... yeah. ((*rolling eyes*)) Sadly, that's why we need an Army -- they go places where they COULD get hurt... so that the bad guys who would come hurt us, can't. Such is the nature of the beast. He did pick a non-combat MOS [job], but that doesn't mean he won't ever be in danger. He also mentioned something about maybe one day becoming a Cavalry Scout. I know a few of those, and told him that would be cool, because after all -- who doesn't love their cool uniforms? You know, the cool Stetson & spurs & stuff? haha! (Reason number ten trillion & one why I'm not in the military, aside from being a complete WIMP of the highest (lowest?) order ... I'd pick my service based on the coolness of uniforms... yeah... I don't think so! That wouldn't work out too well! ha!)

So, that's about all I've got for now. Will post those pics WHENEVER I get 'em. :)

Kat

PS - oh yeah, before I forget: GO ARMY! HOOAH! ;-)