Graduation

As much fun as it was, I am happy to report Jeremy's graduation from boot camp!! This news is a couple weeks old I guess, but I thought I should post a little recap from my trip out there. It was the most _____ trip ever(I'm not sure the right word here, hasn't come to me yet...maybe 'unsettled'); so many things were changing right and left up to the last minute and even throughout the trip. I will ultimately spare you all details on logistics- and how I spent 4 hours begging to priceline to change my flight and give me a refund (which they did)- and get on with posting about the trip. ;)
It was a great trip and I'm so glad I went. Hallee did great on the flights overall. It never ceases to amaze me how random acts of kindness have steadily come since joining the army. At least it seems that way. Well, the day spent traveling to South Carolina was full of these acts from the beginning of the day all the way until I hit the pillow at 2am that night. Those traveling around me were super nice, the airline and airport people all helpful. I had a man ask if he could pay for my lunch at Wendy's. He said he was bumped to 1st class and would have free food and wanted to make up for it by buying someone else's lunch. Even if it was just so he could take the receipt to get reimbursed from work, it was a thoughtful and kind thing to do. The woman sitting next to me on the last leg of my trip asked me to eat her sandwich she had bought but didn't want. So lunch and dinner were taken care of that day, I didn't spend any money on food the whole day.
It was really neat to be involved in things going on at the base. There were about 1300 soldiers graduating!! Where do all these soldiers come from!?! I staid at a hotel about 10 minutes from the base. I had got in around 2am and then got up early to go to "Family Day." They sit all the families in this grandstand, listen to a few people, then have the soldiers all run out (amid smoke bombs and blank shots), and then send the families to go meet them down on the field. It sounded pretty cool, but I didn't see it as I was sitting in the car with Hallee. She was a little bit of a pain because she didn't want to sit in her carrier. But it was cold out too. I wasn't totally prepared for how cold it was (despite the sun brightly shining) and so we sat in the car for half of that orientation. Hallee sacked out and I carried her down to meet Jeremy. It was somewhat chaos, as you can imagine, with families of 1300 soldiers walking around. With help, I managed to find Jeremy's group and meet up. Jeremy was so excited to hold Hallee.
One of the drill sergeants came up to us and said, "Mrs. Van Tress?" and I answered. "I wanted you to know that Jeremy owes me something. And I'll let him tell you about it, but he owes me." It's kind of a long story, but I found out later that basically Jeremy owed the drill sergeant a bunch of push-ups/sit-ups because he should have been smoked for having a dirty gun, but the drill sergeant said he wanted to have Jeremy's wife administer the smoking. I also found out later, that this was the same drill sergeant that received my valentine in the package that I wrote about earlier. Jeremy didn't tell me that until too late... I wish I would have had a chance to razz the drill sgt a little more (wink, wink, hehehee). Jeremy could spend the whole day on the base with us. We went on a bus tour of Fort Jackson, which was neat. We ate lots of food (of course), hung out in the overcrowded PX (which is like the only store on the base, so everyone was there), had a fiasco and all the girls had to change clothes ;), visited the open house at the church to meet members of his ward, and then had to send him back to the barracks for the night.
Jeremy's mom drove down for the graduation. She unfortunately didn't get to Fort Jackson in time to see Jeremy that day, on Family Day, she was about 5 minutes late. :P But graduation was the next day.
Graduation was awesome to see. Jeremy was in the Honor Guard which means he was in this top group that was honored and announced during the program. It also meant that his family got "the good seats" in the bleachers. It was great actually, thank you Jeremy for being fast. He was honored for being the top physical fitness soldier in his company. There were 24 soldiers in the honor guard. The honor guard also got to have a special post-graduation meeting with the General where he gave them each a coin of commemorative value- I don't know, you know, I didn't even look closely at it.
The talks at graduation were very touching and inspiring. I cried. In the post-meeting with the General the general said, "Well, that [Graduation] made me want to join the army." But I couldn't agree more. I had the same feeling of pride and desire to join this cause after hearing and seeing graduation. I thought it was really neat.

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The rest of that day, we tried to see a little bit of Columbus (Jeremy could go off base), but mostly just wanted to relax and be together. We visited a national park, and the USC campus. We also went to Outback where all the soldiers were eating dinner that night. ;) Again, everyone is really cordial and respectful to military though. I couldn't get over the people down there actually, how they all use the "Sir and Ma'am". I got called Ma'am so many times. And everyone was over my age for sure, quite polite.
And that was the end of my trip really. Jeremy staid with me in the hotel because he was going to drive with his mom over to his next station, which was in Georgia (for Officer school), a 5 and half hour drive, the next day. I actually left before they did, as I had to leave at 3am to get to an early returning flight. My sister was sweet and picked me up from the airport and we went directly to a music conference going on in Portland, which was really fun. Then I made it back to the kids who were in Grandma's care. Grandma did a great job with the kids having them for 4 days! I had arranged for the kids to be at friend's houses for 2 of the days while mom had work to get done, but they both ended up getting a little sick, so grandma just kept them home. Grandmas are so awesome!!! Especially ours! :) The kids didn't even miss me, they barely waved then they saw me.