Was It The Uniform?

Saturday night, Andy and I used some Outback gift certificates that our generous friends gave us for Christmas. Before we left the house, Jo-Man, who was doing Army Guard for the weekend, called to ask what we were having for dinner.  He had been given some time to leave Camp Williams to have dinner.  We invited him to join us at Outback. 

When Andy and I arrived, Jo was standing outside the restaurant in his uniform and had already gone in and put his name down and was told that it would be an hour wait.  He  told us that he wouldn't be able to wait that long and handed me the pager.  At that moment the pager vibrated and the lights came on. We walked in to the very crowded restaurant.  We were seated at a table after only an 8 minute wait.  We joked that it was Jordan's army uniform that got us in so quickly.  The waitress then brought out 2 loaves of bread instead of one and we were given a full rack of ribs and the waitress made sure we knew that we would only be charged for a half order.  We decided that we'll take Jordan with us to dinner on his army weekend from now on if that uniform really DOES work magic!  I hope that if he's deployed it will still work magic and keep him safe!

ATTEN-HU!!

When Jordan was a senior in high school, much to my dismay, he joined the Army National Guard. 

I was so worried about my tender-hearted son being yelled at by the drill sergeant...

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...having his standards questioned by others and being in harms way if he was deployed. (I still worry about that)

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He went to Fort Leonardwood, Missouri, shortly after graduation for basic training, where he learned to be a soldier. We were invited to go to his graduation.  We were excited to go see him since he had been gone for 10 weeks.

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When I first saw him, he was wearing his dress uniform.  He looked strong, serious, confident.   He told us of drills he went through and how physically hard they were.  His nickname was "Mormon" because his platoon knew of his standards and morals and they seemed to respect him for it.

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I thought he had changed so much that we wouldn't know him when he came back from AIT - that would last another 10 weeks.

It was at this point,  I realized he was the same, distractible, fun-loving, boy.

 Who's NOT paying attention to the drill sergeant?