he's got wings!

I'm a little slow with this post, but life is a little crazy right now. On Friday Jan 23rd Ben graduated from pilot training and earned his pilot wings!! Ben's parents and 2 of his sisters were able to come celebrate with us. Rhone was the famous "assignment night baby" and almost everyone wanted to take a look at him. He did so well the whole day. He didn't make a peep- well until the last speech of the night where he grunted and noisily filled his diaper. Our table and the few right around us couldn't restrain ourselves from laughing like naughty little school kids. Well here are some pictures from the day.

Ben receiving his wings from the base commander Col. Watkins

It's unlucky to wear your first set of wings, so it has become a tradition to break them. The wings are not supposed to come back together until the pilot is at his final resting place, when they should be reunited to bring him good luck in the next life. Ben kept one half and gave the other half to his parents.

I got to pin on Ben's wings.

Family picture (minus Ace).

All dressed up for the formal dinner that night.



Since Rhone didn't make the all dressed up picture (he was sleeping and we didn't want to wake him up). Here is one of him all dressed up for the day. He is 2 weeks old here.

Rhone with Grandad Gleckler (notice they have the same hairline)

Here is 3 week old Rhone. He was helping me put away the dishes last night. As you can tell, he was as excited about the chore as I was.

On Monday we are headed home for a visit. Ben get's 10 days of paternity leave that we don't want to waste (and Ace is staying with my parent's for a while). After that we are headed to San Antonio, TX for 3 months for Ben to train on the C-5. Then we'll be back to MS for a week and then we're road tripping it to the west again for survival school (it's in Spokane, WA). I'm going to stay with my parents while Ben is "surviving" and we'll pick up Ace for the big move to Delaware. We went from having no idea where we would be to having our life planned out until the begining of August. Wish us luck on our adventures accross the country!