Merlins 1st day of Soccer Practice

Battle Hand Off Ceremony!

Blue Thunder!!

Back To School Hair Cuts

My Platoon Sgt from AIT!!! (Fort Jackson, SC)

Sgt. 1st Class Marquise Goodwin is team player. When his unit needed someone to compete in this year’s Platoon Sergeant of the Year competition, he readily stepped up –– and won. Goodwin also saw it as way to hone his skills and ability as an AIT platoon sergeant. “In my search to become better at the job, I accepted the challenge of this competition,” Goodwin said.
During his 10-year military career, Goodwin has served at Fort Bliss, Texas; Camp Casey, Korea; Fort Drum, N.Y.; and as a recruiter at the Columbus (Ohio) Recruiting Battalion. He also deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, from 2003-2004. Goodwin said his faith, family and military leadership have served as the supports of his military career. “God and my family have influenced me the most throughout my career. I’ve been blessed to have been mentored by great leadership and surrounded by people who genuinely love being Soldiers,” he said. “They coached and gave me insight on what it takes to become a good man, father and Soldier.” He advises junior enlisted Soldiers to stay true to themselves. “Keep the faith, stay motivated,
do your duty to the best of your ability, and always look for ways to improve yourself,” he said.
Goodwin plans to complete his bachelor’s degree and work toward becoming a command sergeant major.

We salute you!

Treasure Hunt (Geo Caching)

It all started with a blood curdling scream coming from the basement. Daniel ran downstairs to make sure Bella was okay. He came back up to report that Bella had seen a pretty big spider. (she must be related to me! :) ) We have been seeing a ton of spiders downstairs lately so we decided to bug bomb our house which meant getting out of it for 4 hours. What to do with 3 kids for 4 hours???? Daniel suggested Geo Caching, and we were off!

Camouflage pig container! This one was a lot of fun to find. :)

This one took the prize for best container. :) It was full of coins to trade.

We found several more, but these were the only two that were worthy of taking pictures.. lol. We had so much fun that we decided we would make our own Geo Cache and hide it somewhere near the Haunted Old Mill.

Here is our "back to school" Geo Cache. (yes I know I spelled cache wrong... but it does say for kids by kids, so I can claim innocence right? lol)

What a fun experience for us and the kids! :) I am sure we will go treasure hunting again soon, and leave a few more treasures out there for others to find!!

By the way... If you are not familiar with Geo Caching, it is sort of a world wide treasure hunt using a GPS. You can find out more about it at geocache.com

Happy Birthday Knighton (8/1) and Jessica (8/10)!!!