The Trip - Turning Blue

I think I've sufficiently recovered from the trip enough to sit back and write about it a bit. It was long but thankfully my husband did almost ALL the driving.

We arrived the night before turning blue. Got settled in about 5 - 6 pm. Bob crashed pretty early as he'd worked a 12 hour shift then drove for a good 10 hours, only napped a bit in the car when I drove for a short time. Holly painted her toenails and I watched TV - pretty much just chillin'.

Next morning everything went smoothl (other than my lack of remembering directions to Sand Hill clearly). We were up and ready in plenty of time. Luckily, I had re-read the info sheet and realized there was a Family Briefing an hour before the ceremony. So at 9:30 am we arrived at the gates to Sand Hill. Holly called her Dad who wasn't up yet, he thought he was to arrive at 1PM. So fortunately for him, she alerted him that things started at 11. We saved him a seat at the briefing and he got there a bit after it started. Otherwise he would have missed the ceremony and everything.

The briefing was basically the same one I'd heard 5 weeks earlier. There were T-shirts and things for sale out in the hallway and we bought some before the briefing.
After it was over we went down to the covered area behind the barracks for the ceremony. There was no way enough seating so we sttod along the side. Wearing heels turned out to not be such a great idea!

Before the ceremony, they had a sort of skit which was neat. Then the soldiers came marching in! It was so kewl and made you feel so proud. All in all, 3 companies were celebrating their turning blue. There were some awards handed out for exellent PT, shooting etc. I was wondering how they would do the turning blue. If each soldier was done one at a time it would surely take forever. Well, silly me, they just announced if there was a family member who wanted to assist in placing the cord on their soldier to go stand by their soldier. I took off my coat, handed it to my husband and my ex says to me "Oh are you going to do it?" I said "well I thought I would if that's ok". Then I just kinda went to find Tyler. I stood there like a big geek because he didn't speak or move and I was waiting for someone to hand me a cord to put on him. After several minutes, Wayne and Holly came through the ranks (to my surprise). I told Tyler "If you want your dad to do it, I will step aside." He said it really didn't matter to him. I saw people putting cords on their soldiers so I finally asked "Where do you get the cord?" and was told "it's in his pocket". DUHHH me. So I found Tyler's cord, slid it up his arm then had Wayne button it dowm.
I will say that I was a bit irked, because he didn't even care enough to make sure he would have been there on time, and it was supposed to be ONE family member. Holly was there with a camera, yet they had told Bob he couldn't go in with a camera. So it was a little messy.


After it was over, I raced up the hill to try to get them on video as they marched back to their barracks. Holly was upset that I wasn't "waiting for her and Dad". It wasn't like I was going anywhere. Just wanted to get up to the top before they marched past. I think everyone's nerves were a bit on edge. Besides, I knew afterwards we would end up waiting around.

They were eventually released on pass and that was great! Tyler and Kirby had to leave at the same time - I guess it's some kind of Army battle buddy thing, I don't know. Kirby's family had made plans and reserved a table for all of us at a place called Ruby Tuesday's so we all went there for supper. Holly rode with Wayne and Tyler, so Bob and I were "odd man out" and drove ourselves. We got confused on the exit directions, called Holly in the other car and were basically told they stopped and asked for directions and we should do the same. So we bit our tongues and found our way ourselves. Kirby's family was very nice and the 2 soldiers sat next to each other and seemed to enjoy themselves.

Afterwards, Tyler didn't really have anything special he wanted to do and we only had maybe 2 hours left, so we went to Wayne's hotel to hang out. At least Bob, Holly and I got to drive him back to base. Got some hugs and more pictures and back he went for his last night at Treadwell Barracks. They were all expecting to get "smoked" that night...