my husband is important!

One of the reasons Jim's family came into town last week is that Jim took command of his unit on Wednesday. To you non-Army people out there, it's a fancy way of saying he's in charge now. And like all things military, there has to be a ceremony when important things like that happen, right? And what better way to follow a ceremony than a reception - hosted by the wife of the new commander, of course. (That's me.)

So Wednesday morning I did what I haven't done in a long time - I got up early, took a shower, and tried my best to look nice that day. Jim's mom was a life-saver and helped the day run as smoothly as possible. Here's the run-down:

8:30am - Jim's already at work so Rick, Caroline and I pile tons of veggies, dip, drinks and coolers into my small Honda. We head to the commissary to pick up the cake.


But this is no ordinary cake. When I ordered it I asked Jim what he wanted and he showed me a picture and said, "This." Since his unit is called the Wolfpack, "this" was a picture of a claw scratch with blood coming from it. And some motto about hunting and killing. Nice.

So, right on time, we picked up the cake and some bags of ice, too.

9:00 - We load back into the car with the extra goods (it's getting tight) and head over to the unit area. We're greeted by a bunch of soldiers ready to unload the car. How nice! Nobody let me pick up anything remotely heavy. Geez, people. I may be pregnant, but I'm not an invalid.

9:45 - Everything is set out at this point. The table clothes are down, the veggies are arranged, the drinks are cold, and the cake is ugly. We just have to wait for the pizza to arrive.

10:00 - I'm rubbing elbows while I'm organizing last minute pizza details and being ushered to my seat. The ceremony has begun and my husband looks confident (and hot!) as he's at the front doing his Army thing. The National Anthem plays, speeches are made (his was short and sweet), flags/"guidons" are passed around, flowers are given, and my husband officially takes his command. There's singing of anthems that I don't know and before I knew it the ceremony was over. As in only lasting 16 minutes.

Which is a problem because my friends won't arrive with the pizza until 10:30.

The ceremony begins.

The unit guidon is passed to Jim.

Jim, in front of his new unit.

10:17 - After many handshakes and mingling we decide to cut the cake while we wait for the food. But slowly people are leaving.

10:35 - 20 pizzas arrive for the 70 people that are supposed to be fed. But by that time, there were probably only 30 people left. Which I'm not sure why everyone darted back to work so fast. If I knew there would be free food, I'd stick around.

But despite that unforeseen glich, we had a great time and found random passers-by to hand extra pizza to.

We were home by 12:00 and I was in bed by 12:30. And I slept until 3:30. It's hard work putting together a party! Somehow the kitchen was put back together when I woke up - all thanks to Caroline.

So that was Jim's day, from the perspective of his wife. I'm very proud of him and enjoy any chance I get to watch him at work. He's going to be a great commander, even if he just called to say he was going to have to work late tonight.

And so it begins.

(PS - look below as I've finally added pictures to last week's post.)