Empty Nesters

The son that still lives in our basement is gone to Guard drill this weekend. So this is our first weekend as empty nesters. It is quiet. We had breakfast of eggs and pancakes made by my darlin. I finished a letter to our son the recruit and then we went to the hospital to see my Mom, who had a bilateral knee replacement surgery yesterday. We did a little shopping, a little hand holding, a little cleaning, a little baking and had a nice supper. We did the dishes and now it is time for a movie, a glass of wine and snuggling. All in all a very nice day.

Gilligans Island theme (Marine Recruit stye)

This was the first page of our latest letter from Chris

Jan 10, 2011
Dear Mom and Dad,
Listen to the Gilligan’s Island Theme then Read this. I take a lot of pride in my latest work so don’t hesitate to share it!


I _____come from a town in Minnesota
Where the folks are pretty chill
But here at MC___RD all we scream is kill, kill, kill
Kill in the morning and kill at noon and kill in the night as well

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it
But this place might be hell

“come here right now
Be there by then
You do what I tell you____”

This recruit can’t wait for Pendleton and starting up phase two __!
We’ll go on humps and sleep outside
We’ll rough it like it’s cool
But that’s all right cause that’s what
This recruit came here to do !

R & R

This is the first day I have had in months that did not have a schedule.

I put a bunch of Christmas cards in the mail this morning. I had about 3/4 of my letters done before my life went out of control but today I finished the majority of them. I have Christmas presents for co-workers that are still sitting in my closet waiting to be wrapped. I am so far behind with those!!

I am supposed to be working on weight loss I made it to the club twice since January 1st. I figure the way things have been going twice is doing good.

We received our 5th and 6th letters from our recruit this week. It is so good to hear from him. He sounds so up beat in his letters. And he is trying hard to keep us informed as much as he can. In one of his first letters he talked about applying and being accepted to being a Catholic Prayer Leader. He goes to classes weekly with a Chaplain and has been learning how to lead prayer for the Catholics in his platoon.

Then in one of his last letters he shared about a gift passed on to him from a recruit in another company that was in the 3rd phase of Boot Camp.
He wrote "Last Tuesday a ___ Co. recruit passed onto me something a 3rd phase recruit had given him before him...... and so on and so forth. It is a crucifix, a St. Christopher medal, 2 shields of strength with Romans 8:37 and 8:38 on them and a dog tag with Joshua 1:9 on it. It was pretty cool. On marine week I will pass it to a phase 1 recruit."

I find it amazing how his faith walk is being strengthened in this time. His love of Mass and Eucharist has always been strong. But I find at a time that things could be more difficult God is working to keep his faith alive and strong for himself and for others. God is so awesome. God is so Good.

We laugh as we read his letters lately food seems to occupy a lot of his time. In this same letter he wrote I still haven't gotten dessert but I've been tempted. Thus, I decree! Mother when you come hither to San Diego I beseech thee to make any and all bars you will bring (especially chocolate chip cookie bars) I can't wait for the sweets.

I had to read it twice to see if he had somehow been zapped to a different era. Who uses words like decree, beseech and hither today? My son in Boot Camp

He makes us laugh even as we miss him <3