Right After Paxston graduated...

Well I know, it's been quite a while since he graduated from boot camp, but I thought somebody might need a laugh or two.

After the graduation, we collected my purse from under the bleachers and we technically herded out of the arena. We all went to the NEX - Navy Exchange. As we are walking by we get to see all the Navy Mom, Navy Dad, Navy Sister, etc. hanging in the window. Well you know us, we are all excited about getting us a new shirt! As we are walking in we notice the other hundred or so other people excited about getting them shirts too. She yes there was nudging back and forth in between all the racks and people asking "do you see this shirt in a size medium and so forth going on". Paxston has been here before and you can tell he is not at all excited.
After standing in a huge line (I would have been complaining at Wal-mart because the other lanes were not open and there were more than 3 customers waiting - ha ha) we were all chatting back and forth, when I hear - are you Paxston's mom? I am Navy Granny - my kids just look at me. I "met" her on NavyforMoms.com, and afterwards my children call me a stalker. But of course we were all excited - we had our Sailors! After getting our goodies we head to grad something to eat. What do you know, a Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Subway and McDonalds are all there on the base in one little room.
Paxston says we should just hang around for him to get his orders and then he can go with us. So we did just that. He left us about 1:00 and told us to just walk across the street and he would meet us at the Visitor Center. I wish you could have seen the look on the guys face when he realized that we would be walking to the Visitors Center. Yes is was across the street - and down the street, and under a bridge, and then across another street or two.... it was no where near CLOSE by! So we proceed to walk. Remember I have on heels! My feet are KILLING me by this time. Well my phone starts ringing and it is Steven, he can't get Amber, in the midst of trying to walk and talk, I drop my phone and the cover goes flying off. Now I am behind my group trying to collect all my phone pieces so that I can call Steven back. I am sort of running now to the corner where they are all standing.
As we start to cross the road we do notice a limousine and the guy rolls down the window and ask if we need a ride. So we all hop in an let him take us the rest of the way. WHEW!!! I think by this time we are getting close to 2:00 pm. Paxston thinks he will be back by 4 at the latest.
So we are all in this little building, waiting and waiting and waiting. Ever so often I would go outside for Ethan to just run around in the snow and not be couped up inside. About 3:30 this woman came by to ask if we were waiting on our Sailor, us and quite a few others are waiting!
So she proceeds to "take" us to the USO - leading the way down the sidewalk - a couple blocks!!! My feet are still freezing and hurting! But on we go. She did make a nice cup of coffee and a couple of guys came and got the kids to go watch a movie. I think I will add that she seemed ever so pleasant to us, but she crawled all over one of the guys for giving a sleeve of the girl scout cookies to one of the tables, they should have given just a few to them.... hmm...
Well approaching 4 o'clock she seems to have something else happen, she said that the help was not coming in and that she had to be somewhere else, we would all have to be moved downstairs, but we would be out of the cold. Down we go!
Approaching 5 still no Sailors and we are all just waiting. And there are lots of us. At one point we were in a foyer and I made Ethan go sit in the room where the chairs were. I told him if he moved his punishment (from earlier in the day) would get worse and if he was good, I might lessen it. This was working pretty good when all of a sudden I hear the room break out laughing, yep, he is sharing stories about the family and how we got stopped on our way here.
Anyway we are still waiting for Sailors. We did see 5 deer come running through the streets! Too bad I didn't have a camera in hand! Would that have seemed a little redneck? After waiting and waiting Sailors started coming. But not Paxston. We did even get a Captain over who went crazy when he realized how long we had been waiting and seeing the lack of communication with parents and staff. He did apologize. Finally we get our son with a suit bag in hand - we have him for the whole weekend!!! We walk back to the Visitor Center and call the guys whose card we got when he gave us a ride, and had a Taxi to head on over to get us.
We were almost too tired to eat that night, but still managed to go through a drive through after dropping Chris off at the hotel. Still more stories to come.....