Last night was our Timmy (the Combat Stress Dog) Birthday event and it's safe to say we had another successful bash at the Red Cross. We baked 8 cakes in our little oven, and we are pleased to say most of the experimental ones were not only edible but actually enjoyable! At 4pm some of the members of Timmy's 44 Med unit came over to help with the set up. We did a very similar arrangement as we did to our Father's Day BBQ...only difference was we had a Dixie Brass Band show up to play! Honestly, no one knew they were coming, but they arrive half an hour before the party ready to play. We had hoped they could set up on our deck like the band at our last BBQ but unfortunately we were fighting a dust storm and the tuba player basically said he had to play inside or he would tip over!

This meant that the room where we were serving the food was quite cramped (and loud with the band playing!) but we still managed to feed around 200 people over the course of two hours. The highlights of the night were went all the guests stood at attention and this adorable, clueless yellow lab was promoted to the rank of Major by the President of the United States. Later the band played Happy Birthday to Timmy and he looked equally as clueless.

We were again so happy with our turn out and more than anything, so happy to see so many people come out to the Red Cross to hang out and have fun at a party. Times like these make everything worth it, when you get to provide people with a bit of an escape.

In other news I did a MedEvac Tuesday night which was rather crazy as my friends in the old unit are redeploying and flying home this week, so Tuesday was the first night the new unit ran the MedEvac and it was rather....disjointed. Then yesterday we were offered to tour a MedEvac helicopter which would have been super cool except they had to cancel because they had a last minute mission (can't argue with that!) We are hoping to reschedule for this coming week. And on another happy note- we've decorated the office as best we can in red, white and blue for the Fourth of July. Not sure what we will get up to yet, but hopefully something memorable :-)