Brian's Birthday Weekend

This weekend, I went up to New York to celebrate Brian's 24th birthday with him! A really good weekend, but it went by much too quickly! We spent the day together Friday before Brian had to head to bed early for a very early 3 o'clock wake-up (on his birthday, poor kid!). On Saturday, we spent the day out at Camp Buckner watching teams compete in the Sandhurst Competition.

Nine-member teams from WP, the WP prep school, a couple of the other U.S. service academies (Navy and Air Force), other countries' service academies, including the Royal Military Academy just outside of London (where Brian trained last summer), Chile, Canada, and Afghanistan, as well as the best University ROTC teams that have qualified from each region, worked their way through different sites designed to test their military skills. The team that works through the course the quickest and incurs the fewest penalties wins the competition. Brian was one of the cadets in charge of the First Aid site, and we watched almost 50 teams work their way through the scenario throughout the day. I also wandered around while Brian was busy and watched teams on the obstacle course, rope bridge, and boat sites. I know Brian does a lot of military training while he's at school, but I never really asked or knew much about it; it was neat to see the array of different things they learn!

The competition took a lot longer than we had anticipated (one of the ROTC teams got lost on the other side of the mountain, and ended up calling the police to come get them!), and I was so sunburnt by the end of the day!  I can't complain because while I got out to the site around 11, Brian had been there since around 4 in the morning! (The British won, which was also disappointing.)

I know it wasn't exactly the way B wanted to spend his birthday, but we made up for it when it was over. After a much-anticipated dinner at Chili's (because we had been staving off hunger with only Pop-Tarts all day!), we met a group of Brian's friends at one of the bars just outside post. We had so much fun, and I'm super bummed that I forgot my camera and didn't get any pictures of his birthday celebration! But he had fun, and that's all that matters. :)

On Sunday, we went shopping at Woodbury Commons, the amazing outlets in Central Valley, packed up a picnic, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and ate ice cream. I was really sad to leave when Sunday evening came around. On the other hand, I can't believe that this is one of the last times I will visit Brian at school! Our next visit was going to be B's trip home the weekend before graduation, but I have a feeling I might get up there one more time before all is said and done. :)

Hope you all had fun weekends and not-so-painful Mondays!