Oct. 4, 2011 Day 18

Today was probably the best day at BCT yet. Everyone has been in high spirits, weather was great, and we were successful in not getting smoked.

The day began with a trip to an enormous obstacle course. It was covered with big boy toys. Rop bridges, rope climbs, low crawls under barbed wire, etc. The scary thing was: no safety anything. For instance, the three rope bridge was 20 feet up and if you fell, you hit the rocks below.

The entire company went through the course first, then each platoon selected three males and three females to represent them in the challenge. Our platoon set a new base record by completing the course in 9:58, but we received a 30 second penalty, which meant the carebears won the streamer and regained their name, "outlaws."

The First Sergeant was so impressed with the times and with the motivation that he granted the company ten minutes of phone time. Of course, I called my wife and son. To my amazement, my son sang me his ABC's! (He is only 23 months old!)

Note from Dee: Brian wrote us his own BCT version of ABC's for our son. (I completed the ABCs with the few letters he couldn't think of words for.) Just thought it was too cute and had to be shared:

A is for Army, B is for Basic, C is for Chow, D is for Drill Sergeant, E is for Echo, F is for Fort, G is for Graduation, H is for Helmet, I is for Intelligent, J is for Joint Effort, K is for Kick Butt, L is for Love, M is for Missouri, N is for November, O is for On the Go, P is for Proud, Q is for Quality, R is for Reveille, S is for Strong, T is for Training, U is for Uniform, V is for Victory, W is for Walking, X is for eXhausting, Y is for Yell and Z is for Zzzzz's (or lack of them!).

It was so great to hear their voices and know they are okay. Mail comes very infrequently here. Not because people don't send me mail, but because it takes awhile to reach me once it arrives at FLW.

One funny thing today: I turned on my phone make my phone call, and on my weather app, I noticed the closest source of weather (listed as location) is Devil's Elbow, MO.

Weather is crazy here with temperature: 40's in the morning, near 80 in the afternoon. But we've only seen a couple of days of rain. So all in all, we've been blessed.