A Cool Night for a Cool View

Gracie in front of Rockefeller Center.

Yesterday was Grace's last day in the city before heading back to El Paso, and the awesomeness that is Fort Bliss.  So we went out for dinner (Chinese) and then headed over to Rockefeller Center to go to the Top of the Rock.  The view of the skyline was crisp, and we enjoyed looking out on the city's buildings all lit up.


NYC Skyline looking south from the Top of the Rock.

Gosh I had a fun time with Grace, and I was sad to see her go this morning (at 4:30am!).  Later this year, just around Christmas, she's going to deploy to Afghanistan and serve there as a member of a Female Engagement Team.  I'm very proud of her, and what she's going to do to serve our country, but at the same time scared because she is after all "going to war".  I know she's a strong woman, and has a good team, other good service members working alongside her.  I'm sure she will be fine, and will come back 10 months from now and visit us again in NYC - and we'll be celebrating her sucessfull tour of duty....

Thanks Gracieface for coming to visit! and thanks for all you are going to be doing on your epic journey to come!

Happy Halloween!!!

Felipe and Grace at work.

Grace arrived this afternoon!  Only a day late too!  We had originally planned a fun pumpkin carving party - unfortunately the hurricane got in the way of making that possible.  We ended up cancelling the party per se - but kept up the pumpkin carving anyway...just the three of us.  We ordered pizza and popped the original Vincent Price version of "The House on Haunted Hill" while we planned our pumpkin designs. 


I decided to go with a rat...inspired by our dear friend Mr. Ratolino.




Grace went with a Batman theme.


Felipe went with a crazy face pumpkin. 


The finished pumpkins! Really pleased how they turned out.  We've roasted the seeds, which are now cooling on the kitchen counter and then decided to watch another movie...

The Shining!




Overall a terrific Halloween, albeit a quieter one than we had planned.  I'm so happy to have Grace in town for a visit.  She was asking what to do tomorrow with her day, and to be honest...I can't think of too many things that will be open or available to do tomorrow in Manhattan.  Well, we have lunch together to look forward to!  More posts to come soon!

Grace's Graduation - Fort Sill, Oklahoma

Grace is super hugged by Mom after the Family Day presentation.

I left Wednesday to go to Fort Sill Oklahoma to see my younger sister Grace Graduate from basic training. Mom and Mariam and I met at the airport in Dallas and flew in to Oklahoma City together. Thursday morning there was a brief program for the families, with skits of what the soldiers in training had been doing each week.


Here they are demonstrating how they prepared to go into the gas chamber.

After all of the skits the soldiers were released for the day to spend with their families. This mostly involved eating and picture taking. Grace's "Battle Buddy" Savard joined us for the two family days since his family was unable to make it to Oklahoma from Rhode Island. We had a lot of fun with the two of them.


Grace and Savard (first name is Frank) in the car on our way off the base.

As I said before, the day involved going out for a nice lunch, driving around the beautiful city of Lawton, OK and getting more food and coffee (this is missed on base) and red bull (I've never seen people drink so much red bull, but apparently the soldiers in training are very sleep deprived!). We had to have the two of them back at the base by 8:00pm.

The next day there was the Graduation ceremony at the McMahon Auditorium in Lawton. We arrived and all of the soldiers were already seated in the auditorium. They had strict instructions not to acknowledge the presence of anyone, looking only straight ahead. Something Grace later said was very strange and zoo-like because so many people were taking pictures.


Grace with her fellow C Battery graduates.


Captain David Leibovich, Battery Commander


Grace's Drill Sergeants - Gonzalez (left) and Alaniz (right)

After the ceremony we took the mandatory gajillion photos. Here you can see Grace next to her Drill Sergeant Gonzalez.



A nice photo of Private Frank Savard











Later Grace took us back to her base and showed us around a bit. We got to see her bay (where they sleep) and some of the grounds where they do physical training. Including below, the Treadwell Tower.




Finally saying goodbye to mom and the rest of us....it had to end sometime.


She then fell in to formation with her battery.


One more shot of her Drill Sergeant - I swear this guy is right out of a movie!


And that concludes Private First Class Grace Sergenian's graduation from basic training. She's now off to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas for 16 weeks of Advanced training. Congratulations Grace!