Sapper Graduation/ Halloween

After 28 days of grueling physical and metal challenges, Michael completed Sapper school. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's like Ranger school for engineers. It's very hard to tab (pass), in his class only 22 out of 42 did. It's an elite tab to get, basically making you a BA of the engineer world. They deprive you of food and sleep while giving you extremely difficult tasks like a 12 mile ruck march at 0200 with 50 lbs of gear on. real fun stuff. Anyways Michael did so well that he was #1 in the class...aka the honor grad. He's the only one who found out how many points he received (903) and he was awarded a sapper spirit award and recognized by the top brass at the graduation. It was really cool; Nulkie's flyin' high right now! We're all SUPER proud of him!

Today he started his Engineer Captain's Career course. We thought he'd end up being deferred to the Jan. class, but he just made it into the November one. So he'll have 5 mths of engineer/military leadership training, and then go on to complete his master's in some type of engineering degree (that's still TBD).


Michael leading the sappers in the sapper creed

Tabbing! He also got a coin, sweatshirt and bragging rights for being the honor grad. well i'll brag for him at least :)



After the ceremony Michael presented a gift to the guest speaker, LTC Drew



In awe of the sapper tab


The proud parents


happy to have daddy back. He called "dada" most of the graduation.


For Halloween we decided to dress up Gabers as a hunter. He was hands down the cutest baby out there. No competition




check out my gun








hesitant at first

then he went for it

'We had a blast trick-or-treating with Gabe. It was an actual "first" we got to all do as a family! Gabe loved petting all the dogs people had dressed up for the occasion. He also scored us some sweet candy. Our friend said they had 93 trick or treators. welcome to family friendlyville!! Enjoy the pics. 7 weeks till our Colorado Christmas extravaganza!!