Happy Birthday Marine Corps!

Ok, so this is a little overdue, but better late than never! The official birthday of the Marine Corps is November 10th. This year they celebrated the 233rd year of the Marine Corps existence. The USMC birthday is a pretty big deal and is celebrated by the "Marine Corps Birthday Ball", definitely my favorite event of the year! This year we had the opportunity to attend two of them.


We had one for the squadron that John works in, and then a larger one for all of the officers that are a part of the Air Wing his squadron falls under. Forgive me if I have lost you already; military jargon can be quite confusing. Send me an email if you need further explanations!
So, at the squadron ball, John was a member of the ceremony. He was the highest ranking officer in the ceremony, so he called all of the commands. If you attended our wedding, then I am sure you remember hearing some of them. I have no idea what they actually say, occasionally I can get a word or two out of it! I was hoping I would get some pictures from a girl who had one of those crazy expensive cameras. She took some great pictures, but I don't have any of them to post. The flash on my camera isn't so great, so I'm sorry you cannot see John very well in some of these. He looked really good though!

In this picture, he is the one on the right



Since we are celebrating a birthday, there is a ceremonial cake cutting. I love all of the traditions that come with going to things like this. The first piece is given to the guest speaker. Then one is given to the oldest Marine present, he then passes it to the youngest member present.


After the traditional ceremony, guest speaker and dinner, the dancing begins!

Here is John with his Commanding officer (bottom middle) and a few other crazy officers!

As I said before, the second ball we went to was an all officer's ball, and it was huge as evident by this insanely enormous cake!


Here are a few of the officer's wifves of the group John works in. We know how to have a good time!
There are certainly good points and bad points of living the Marine life, and one of the best parts is being a part of a military community and being able to go to events like this. You are reminded of what our military does for us. I am so proud of my husband. I could care less about what is said about the war, I think we should be respectful of all the men and women who sacrifice so much so that we are able to live in such a wonderful country. These service members make so many sacrifices, like being away from their familes, having modern conveniences, and sometimes making the ultimate sacrifice...their lives, just so we have the ability to vote, have the freedom of speech and so many more luxuries many other countries do not have. Living in Japan has definately made me so thankful for the freedoms we have and the abundance of blessing and opportunities we have as Americans. So I would encourage you to please thank a service member for what they do, just shake their hand, smile and say "Thank you". That is all. Maybe say a prayer for those whom you've never even met who are in a war zone. And by all means, give thanks to God for blessing you with the true pleasure it is to be an American.