Ensign Gardner!

It's official...David is now an Officer in the Navy! We had a great time in Rhode Island and I'm attaching lots of pictures from our trip! We headed out Wednesday morning and arrived in Newport around 5:00pm. David had to work until around 9:00 so we got some dinner at Ruby Tuesday and waited for him to get "released." Thursday morning was the Change of Command Ceremony. This is where the Candio class passes down the responsibilities to the class below them. Here are a few pictures from that...

After the ceremony, we drove around Newport to see the beaches and mansions until it was time to start getting ready for the Hi Moms Banquet. Here are some pictures from our drive...

At 5:30 we went to the Hi Moms Banquet, met lots of classmates, listened to many speeches, and ate some yummy food! It was a really good time...especially when their Drill Instructor made them "get on their face" to do push-ups while family and friends counted. Chrissy and I finally got a picture with each other at the banquet :)

After Hi Moms, we made it a fairly early night as we were getting up at 4:45AM to join David and his classmates in the "chow hall." There, they gave us a demonstration of how they have eaten for the past 12 weeks. (If I can figure it out...I'm going to post a video to show you what it was like.)

After chow, we went back to the hotel to get ready for graduation. The ceremony was wonderful! Here are a few pictures from graduation day!

The flight home was very long and got very delayed but the good news...David was on the flight with us! Yep, David is home but we're not exactly sure for how long. He reports back to Rhode Island for SWO School on April 13th but he will likely have to take a class or two before then in San Diego. For now, I'm enjoying every second he's home!!

Hope everyone is doing well!