End of vacation

This is Andy with his "battle buddy", Private Brown. They are each assigned to one person for their entire time of basic training. Andy said that some people had a hard time because they had a bad partner, but he said he was lucky and got someone who was a good worker and fun to be around. Their partner was also the person they pulled night shift with.

Here his platoon is, lining up one last time after graduation. The middle one, in the back row is Andy.

We surprised Andy on Saturday by all wearing t-shirts that Laura had made up. When he was younger, Laura started called him a nickname that he banned us from using when he got older. Laura never really listened to him and somehow she got away with it. After he left for basic training, he signed some of his letters with this name. So - Laura had t-shirts for each of us that said something with that name. Mine said - "got "nickname"? Bob's said "Member of the N.B.F.C. (National nickname Fan Club), Heather's said - "I heart nickname". You get the idea? I can't reveal the name or he will never forgive me! Anyway - he got a good laugh on Saturday when he saw us all wearing these shirts? Throughout the day, several peopla asked what the shirts meant. On Saturday, we drove Andy to Virginia to his next station. We stopped at the Ripley's Believe it or not Museum. The figure you see is a life size version of the tallest man on record. He was 9 feet tall. In the picture is Aaron, who is 6'6" and me measuring in at only 5'4". It was nice to do something lighthearted and goofy before we dropped Andy off.

We brought Andy to Fort Eustis where we weren't able to see his next living quarters. They took him and sent us on our way. To his disappointment, he wasn't able to keep his laptop. He did call us already though and told us that he will have free time to call, he has 3 nice guys in the room with him and one of his friends from basic is in the same building. Once again he is upbeat and feeling good, so I'm okay too!