Farewell to the Medical Company

My tummy-17 weeks!
Our little heart-breaker

Change of Command ceremony

My company (well, about 1/4 of it)

Passing the guidon

This has been a bittersweet week. For twenty two months I have commanded a company, a responsibility that has resulted in midnight phone calls, after hours duties, long hours at work and a great burden of caring for over three hundred Soldiers in my command. However, it has also been a great honor and on most days, a lot of fun. Preparing for the change of command this week has been a lot more hectic than I had anticipated, so it went by extremely quickly and kept me from having much time to sit back and dwell on the changes that were about to take place.

We finally got to Friday and the Change of Command Ceremony was a success. After the longest receiving line I have ever stood in, I picked up the last of my things and quietly relinquished my parking spot to the new commander. My command was yesterday's news and everyone else in the company was out celebrating with the new commander. Despite being accompanied by Tim and Timmy Ryan, it was a very lonely moment. I had an hour until I had to be back for an awards ceremony I was expected to attend, and it occurred to me that for the first time in 22 months, I really had no where to go and nothing to do. This was a very foreign feeling to me. I was deeply relieved to have completed every task that was required to change command and felt that a huge burden was lifted off my shoulders now that I was no longer responsible for over 300 people. At the same time, I felt a little lost as well. I have gotten accustomed to the pace of life of a commander and was suddenly hit head-on with an open space in my calendar. What an odd feeling.

Tim, Timmy and I walked away from the ceremony to the daycare next door to drop Timmy back off. As I shared that quiet moment with my family, it occurred to me that that particular moment was ever so typical of the military experience. We enter a new job, go 100 miles an hour for the duration of the assignment, crank up the heat at the end as we close out that assignment, and then we walk away slowly...alone but together with our family. At the end of every military assignment, when we feel the sense of loneliness that accompanies the goodbyes that we say to our friends, we still get the privilege of walking away with our families. At the end of each assignment, the loved ones at our side will have grown, developed and changed over the course of that assignment. Hopefully we were responsible enough as service members to take the time to notice and take part in that change an development, because at the end of the day, the one stable thing we take on with us from each assignment is our family.

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On another note, this weekend has been much more relxed, but also very exciting. Earlier in the week there was a "tasking" (military order) that went out calling for spouses of Soldiers from all over post to participate in a town hall meeting. Tim's battalion was responsible for providing a spouse of a company commander for this tasking. I volunteered, since I figured I no longer had any excuses about being too busy commaning a company of my own. so, on Saturday I showed up to this meeting and was surprised to find that the "special guest" was the Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense. He met with the spouses of Fort Riley to get a better idea of what types of things can be done to improve the life of military families. There were a lot of concerns and ideas raised in the meeting, and in the end we all got a chance to do a quick photo session and received a Secretary of Defense coin and a rose. It was quite a treat to be able to attend this special event. For military special occasions, it is customary to carry around the coin from the highest ranking person who has "coined" you. I doubt this one is going to get trumped any time soon. What an honor!

Mother's Day has been a sleepy event in our household, which I must admit has been completely appropriate. I think the one thing I wanted most for Mother's Day was a little rest. We went to church and then out to eat with our special friends Corey and Kelly. After lunch we took a much-needed family nap.

I can also officially say that I received the classiest Mother's Day gift of all--a six pack and a box of chocolates. Since I have been pregnant, obviously I have not been drinking. There has been a running joke for the last few months of command that I just need a drink some nights. For Mother's Day, Tim got me a six-pack of O'Doul's (non-alcoholic beer) to celebrate the day.

On Friday Tim got me necklace and a set of matching earrings to commemorate the Change of Command. This was more of a Mother's Day/ Change of Command combo gift, so I guess I can't exactly be putat the butt of too many jokes, but it makes a good story nonetheless.