Airborne school

Airborne school came and went. The schedule ended up being much more bearable than I'd expected, and Jason did his best to be helpful and available when he came home at night--even if he'd been up since 2:30 in the morning and spent the day running his butt off in blistering heat.
Jump week was the probably the most fun, him getting to play Army and do all the cool, physical stuff that he'd been wanting to do for years and never got to do while we were in New York. The kids and I (I have to keep reminding myself that I can't use the phrase "the boys and I" anymore and backspacing repeatedly) drove [a million miles away] to the airfield [actually it's even past the airfield to this little middle-of-nowhere area South of post] to watch his first jump.
It was unseasonably hot [for March, not for Georgia] and I said a little prayer of thanks that he wasn't doing this in July. After I slathered sunscreen on everyone, the boys picnicked on lunchables, Poppy napped in her stroller and I counted planes as they circled overhead, each chalke of soldiers waiting their turn to jump, knowing that Jason was in one of them. I misunderstood chalke 10 as plane number ten and overheard a family sitting nearby discussing what number their soldier was going to be. Eventually I just started taking random pictures of the first jumper out of each fly-by (that's all I knew at that point, that he'd be the first out of the plane on his chalke) and after 11 or 12 jumps I put the camera away to chase my little trouble-makers as they headed higher and higher on the bleachers, despite my protests.
As luck would have it, the very last plane I photographed happened to be Jason's. I discovered this, because he yelled out to us as he was walking to the buses.

He even came over on his adrenaline-high and gave us all a quick hug. He jumped 4 more times that week, which we didn't see, and only had one shaky landing (one that he did not hesitate to admit scared the crap out of him).

His dad, Bill, flew in from Texas at the end of the week to be at his graduation. The boys loved having Grampy around for the weekend--they went to see The Lorax in 3d and to the Infantry Museum--and it meant a lot to Jason that Bill, a former paratrooper himself, got to pin him.

Jason is third from the right--the tall one.

The commander called up the grandparents and parents of the current graduates, who had been to Airborne School, themselves, to pin their soldiers.

Then we all got to go see him.

Daddy and his three.

Our poor attempt at a family portrait. In our defense, it was reeeeeeally bright.

Just us, two. Rare. Very rare.I'm very proud of Jason and all his accomplishments--especially in this past year. Look at all those pins! Seems like we're attending a new graduation every month, and this year will see another couple before it's over.