Marine Corps Birthday Ball

This weekend we went to Seattle for the celebration of the 233 Marine Corps birthday. They have a ball every year and Mike and I have been going together for about a million years. He always wears his dress blues and looks terrific. (I have to stress every year about what I will wear. Something black and fancy and modest!) It is always fun to see the ball gowns and of course the guys always look so sweet in uniform. Because it is always in November - I have had the opportunity to go 9 months pregnant - TWICE - once with and Andrew and then 3 years later with Katie (they both were born Nov 21.) Lucky me!It is a big deal how many medals and ribbons you have. The guys are checking each other out more than the girls. There is always a fancy dinner and ceremony and then a dance. They give the first piece of birthday cake to the oldest Marine to show honor and respect and then the second piece goes to the youngest Marine present to show hope for the future. This year, the youngest Marine was about 1 year older than Andrew - just 18 years old - he enlisted in July.

This year we did something fun with our pictures. We have like a million of them standing there smiling! So we broke the tradition acted goofy.

My favorite part of the uniform is the white cover (not a hat - Marines wear covers.) But the rules are that you can't wear the cover indoors so I never have any pictures of us with Mike in full uniform. So we pulled a "Tammy and Toby style" photo in the parking lot (outside) and Mike held out the camera at arms length and snapped a photo of us before we went home. It turned out pretty good. (Mike has long arms...)
The kids went along just for the hotel stay. They love swimming and eating at McDonalds. (Yuck!) This year we went to a family fun center by our hotel and played Laser Tag and Mini Golf during the day on Saturday. Our team rocked at Laser quest! My score was 41 thousand! (I guess I can point and shoot more than a camera!)