Graduation Day!!!

[Fort Leonard Wood, MO] Yesterday was another great day. We stayed at the hotel for the most part in the morning. I took a drive on post (at FLW) for a bit in the morning and watched platoons being "scolded" (to put it lightly) by drill sgts. Also watched a cattle truck pull up to a barracks building and saw a group of soldiers get out carrying what looked like about 40 pounds of stuff each. Looked like they had been on an FTX.

We picked Lindsay up at noon. She was feeling sore and tired. Someone in 4th platoon had gotten caught using a cell phone that night and they took the whole company out into the cold in their PT's (pajamas) and made them stand out there for 40 minutes. Lindsay was not a happy camper.

We went to Ruby Tuesday's for lunch where we got to hear more stories from Basic Training. After lunch, we came back to the hotel where Lindsay came up to our room. We went through some of the 20 pounds of mail she got from you all. The amount of mail she got was amazing. We really appreciate every single person who took the time to write her.

After eating pretty much everything in our room, Lindsay changed into her civilian clothes and fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon.

When she woke up, we went out to eat at Ryan's Steak House. We had another great dinner and more time with Lindsay. We had just a short amount of time after that to come back to the hotel. Lindsay wanted a massage, so Karen spent a few minutes doing that. After that, we took Lindsay back for her LAST NIGHT IN THE BARRACKS. She took all her belongings that will be going to D.C. with her (including her fife). She also took our digital camera into the barracks last night. She wanted to take a bunch of pictures of her friends. We'll see how that went.

It's about 7am right now. We're leaving in 15 minutes to go to post. She graduates in just about an hour. Directly afterwards, she gets on a bus and goes to the St. Louis airport to fly to Ft. Myer.

This last few days has been great, but has gone way too fast.