She didn't want to get smoked or draw any extra attention to herself, which I understand. But this Mama was more than a little sad about not being able to send a birthday card filled with some twisted humor. I asked about sending cookies or something and the response I got was "Only if you send enough for everyone, and even then the drill instructors will smoke me and eat them all themselves." There are over 200 soldiers in her unit, and that's a LOT of cookies, so I dropped that as fast as I thought of it since she didn't think she'd get one anyway. ;)
Turns out, she got to do something kinda fun on her birthday! Her unit hit the rifle range and started their Basic Rifle Marksmanship training - and Mama got to see a few photos. I think it might have been a better gift to me, than to her, but at least I know it wasn't an unremarkable birthday. :)
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| Checking out the targets |
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| Not sure which makes me more proud; the uniform, or the handful of ammo! :) |
It's the amazing girl you raised, not the uniform or ammo :)
ReplyDeleteI hope she had a good birthday and I'm really glad you didn't send her any cookies. My mom made that mistake with my brother. She sent him a small birthday cake and padded it with twizzlers, included birthday hats - the whole nine yards. It was my brother's worst birthday ever. The DIs made him eat all of his cake and two pound of twizzlers during mail call and made his squad wear the birthday hats while they did extra PT. I'm pretty sure, almost twenty years later, my brother still hasn't forgiven Mom.
She is pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. :) I don't get to take all the credit for that though!
DeletePlease tell your brother that I'm sorry for laughing, but the mental image that story evokes is hilarious! I'm sure he didn't think it was funny at all at the time, but I bet he laughs about it now. I can't imagine how sick he must've felt after eating all that AND doing extra PT while wearing a party hat. Makes me a little nauseous thinking about it!
I'm going to share this story with Soldier Girl, so she will appreciate her Mama even more! :)
You'd like to think he'd be able to laugh about it, wouldn't you? If only there were pictures! Soldier Girl will definitely appreciate her mama so much more after hearing about that. Can you imagine if you *had* managed to come up with enough cookies for 200 and they made her do what my brother had to do? That's all I could think about while I was reading your post. I was saying, "don't do it, don't do it, don't do it!"
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