Mike and Calysta's Website

Marian, Cora and I just returned from Athol, Idaho, where we spent some time with Susan on her first leave after Marine bootcamp. She healed up finally, although she still has pain, and graduated August 8, 2008. Mom, Dad, Melita, Lucas, Julia and Aiden were all able to attend Family Day and Graduation.

Marian, Cora and I went up to Mom & Dad's house on Friday to get away from Mike who came down with a sinus infection and was coughing horribly. So we took over Gary and Roseanna's job of looking after Wesley and Brynna. We went to the Athol Parade on Saturday morning --- Wes rode his bike in it and Brynna walked along with various neighbors. Cora was a bit intimidated by all the sirens of the emergency vehicles and would stick her lower lip wayyy out. Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of that.

The rest of the day we spent cleaning and getting ready for a potluck in honor of Susan that we were hosting on Sunday. Then on Saturday afternoon we got a call from Mom letting us know that Dad was so sick that they wouldn't let him on the plane to go home. They ended up getting stranded in Denver for two nights and came home on Monday.

Susan's flight was still on time so Cora and I went to pick her up in Spokane at about 11pm on Saturday night. Susan's cheery greeting to Cora freaked Cora out and it took me about 30 minutes to calm her down. I felt pretty bad for Susan -- that's not a very nice greeting.

The potluck went on as planned and we had quite a houseful for a while. Then on Sunday afternoon we piled the questions on Susan and she put on her camouflage and marched around the backyard for us. She even showed us some of her rifle moves with Dad's little .22 rifle. It was a bit tough since the .22 was lacking several important parts.

On Monday we finally had to leave and the leaving was hard. We're going to miss her a lot while she's away at combat training and various other training things. (I'm not very good at the military lingo yet.) Also, Cora and Susan finally made up. Susan even got Cora to laugh and so far I've been the only one able to do it! So we got some cute pictures of them together. Check out all of our pictures (August 2008); we tried to document every hour of our precious time with Susan.