dental battalion 100 birthday ball...

military life so far isn't so bad... we have parties and other activities that come around often.  sometimes chris goes to work in in regular civilian clothes, sometimes in his pt clothes (physical training), and sometimes in his marpat.... as seen here... 

he's very scary.  haha  but in august we got all dressed up and fancy for the dental battalion 100 birthday celebration ball.  i frantically bought a dress when we first got here knowing we had this coming up.  i got lucky and found this one for $45 bucks! not bad eh?? chris put on his summer dress whites... along with his mini medals they wear for fancy occasions... aren't they cute. haha we dropped little man off at the cdc (child development center) where they were providing free child care. it was our first time leaving him with a stranger or anyone other then my mom.  it was scary and exciting but we all walked away with no tears.  daniel was un phased.  

we arrived to the ball in time for cocktail hour and i got a diet coke :)  then we headed into one of the ball rooms for a presentation... it included a brief history of dental battalion and the coolest part they shared the story of the bombing that took place in beirut 30 years ago which killed 270 us marines.  when the bomb went off, immediately 2 dentists ran over from the building next door and immediately  began triage on everyone they saw.  it was pretty amazing what these two dentists did in taking charge of the situation.  they had both dentists here at our ball and honored them with some awards and other things. they were touched and honored... they hadn't seen each other in a long time and never really talk about what happened. the bombing was a huge blow to the city of jacksonville as this is a huge marine base and most of the marines killed were from here.  way sad.  

after the presentation we headed over into the other room where we had dinner and toasts and cake.  we sat at a table with 2 of the other residents, the dransfield family, and the reed family.  we know ebony from dental school in las vegas and her husband is always a hoot.  and the dransfield family has been really fun to get to know and we get to see them at church all the time too.  we also saw my new friend kristen and her husband and had some good laughs... including the picture with the older dentist below... he's apparently always the life of the party.. haha

the navy has all these traditions and ceremonial things they do the whole night... they have a prayer said by the chaplan and toasts are said to everything... navy, army, airforce, marines, etc... and "their wives and sweethearts... may they never meet"  haha... and then the cake cutting ceremony... they even had people on cake duty... that had to ceremoniously walk the cake to the front.  then the oldest dentist and the youngest dentist cut the cake together... the old dentist tells the younger one how to cut it... haha our friend sam was the young dentist so we had a good laugh watching the whole thing. and yes... they cut the cake with a sword.  

the whole night was interesting and fun and we had a good time... picked up little man who was sleeping when we got there and slept the whole way home...