Mike Graduates From Basic Training

Mike joined the army reserves while he was dating Tia, but didn't go to basic training until they had been married for two months.  Basic training was 10 weeks long and was in South Carolina.  He is still doing training, but it is Advanced Infantry Training in North Carolina and is less miserable.  They might even treat him like a human now!

Mike Graduated on September 27, and Tia and his parents were able to attend that.  The day before that was Family Day.  Derek, Kayli and I went to that along with Tia and Mike's parents.  We got up ridiculously early on the 25th to catch our flight.  My nice Mom came and stayed with Jake and Dan while we were gone.

We got the cheapest tickets we could find, and ended up having seats that were not together a lot of the time.  We laughed about being zone 9 -- the last zone to load into the plane.  One guy we talked to was in zone 8 and when we told him we were in zone 9 he laughed and said we had to respect him now because he was a zone ahead of us :-)

Tuesday night we made a plan of when to get up and eat and head to the base.  Wednesday morning we were still in our room when Mike's Mom texted me to say they were in the long, slow line to get into Fort Jackson.  I felt a bit panicked, but later I just felt grateful for Pat and Dan who went at 7 and got seats while we left our hotel at 8:15 and got there a few minutes before the program started to find them waving enthusiastically with big smiles on their faces for us.  They're great!

The program was short and mostly consisted of soldiers throwing smoke bombs, marching dramatically through the smoke, and then us going down to find our soldier.  Here are the pictures.

They were impressive smoke making "bombs"

Mike said that they were standing in the woods behind the field at 7 a.m.
The program did not start until 9!

I believe there were 1117 graduates.

Kayli correctly identified Mike's face in the crowd first, but Tia got to him first, followed quickly by his mother (though we beat her to the field -- we just didn't find him as fast!).  Mike was really glad to see us all.  We had to stay on the base all day and so we planned to meet at a park first.  Unfortunately, because Mike's parents got there so early they were trapped by all of the cars behind them trying to get out and so we beat them to the park by quite a bit.

Mike and Tia on the field where the soldiers had all been lined up.

This is a good one of Mike.  Mike's Mom took both of these pictures.

Mike's parents drove from Michigan and they did a great job of taking care of us all!  They packed chairs, a picnic basket full of treats, and a cooler of drinks.  At lunch time they went and got food for us all and brought a frisbee and a badminton set.  They got us tickets for a buffet dinner with Mike's company and they paid for our miniature golf game that was fun despite the heat and humidity.

Mike's Mom took this at the park.  I thought it captured the fact that, though Tia was happy to see Mike, she was very aware that she was going to have to go home without him because he had more training ahead.

Mike's Mom Pat, Mike and Tia.  This was a gathering at Mike's church building in South Carolina.
They made us lots of treats.  I took this picture to send to my sister Jenny because this all took place on her birthday!

Me, Derek, Kayli, Tia and Mike outside the church building.

Mike's Parents Dan and Pat with Mike after we played miniature golf.

The Stankeys (Dan, Tia, Mike, and Pat)

Derek at the same table.  We were going to get ice cream, but the place closed too soon.

We took Mike to his barracks after this.  I felt sad that they couldn't see each other more during his short break.
Thanks to Mike's parents they did get to see each other a lot more than they would have otherwise.  They drove Mike to North Carolina Thursday and dropped him off on Friday.