On this day in history...

Todd has been home for an entire year! Where did the time go? I remember anxiously waiting for him to get off the bus and now we are married and happily living in Rhode Island...wow a lot has happened since his homecoming! We decided we needed to celebrate. With everything that is going on in this world and the fact that there will be more deployments in our future, a full year of uninterrupted happiness definitely deserves a toast!

Happy day!

We may have lost the battle...but we won the war.

The Great Squirrel war of 2008 rages on at the Coyer house and the squirrel has gotten cocky. Yelling, name calling and chasing after the little critter is getting poor Todd nowhere and he has now changed tactics. His new strategy...to simply stop filling the bird feeder. The squirrels countermove...toss the birdfeeder off its perch and in the middle of our yard. Unfortunately sweet Todd did not share this move with his wife, who loves her birdfeeder and didn't want to waste the 5lbs. of bird seed she purchased. So I filled it (oops) and the battle raged on. This morning we woke up to our feeder not only knocked on the ground but actually dragged onto our patio. Of course sitting right next to it was our lil critter gorging himself with seeds. The squirrel had gone too far. The next few minutes are now a blur, but the bird feeder and 5lbs of bird seed were promptly locked in the basement. My Todd has emerged triumphant. Peace in our house is restored.

Final Score: Sweet Todd: 1 squirrel: 8

Red 'X' marks the original location of our bird feeder, note where the squirrel is on our patio

Bad squirrel!

Todd vs. the squirrel

Todd has found a nemesis in the form of a fuzzy little squirrel. In our campaign to bring on Spring we put out a bird feeder to attract all the pretty birds in our neighborhood. Within a day, our house quickly became the most popular with the birds. We also became quite popular with a certain squirrel. It will hang upside down and eat out of the feeder for hours, everyday. I personally think its a cute little critter however my dear husband feels that a squirrel is just a rat with a cuter tail. He has thus declared war. It is really quite amusing. It is now not uncommon to hear Todd open windows and shout at the squirrel from various parts of our house or see him darting out our back door to scare it away. With all his efforts, bless his heart, that darn squirrel is not the slightest bit intimidated.

Current score: Squirrel: 5 Sweet Todd: 0 :(

Public Enemy #1

Bird feeder in happier times

Plantin' some seeds and watchin'em grow....

Its SPRING!...or at least we are declaring it spring. The temperature has been in the 60s all week so we took this opportunity to go out to our yard and play in the dirt. Neither one of us have too much gardening experience but we decided to give it a try. Fingers crossed that in a few weeks we will have some flowers!

Ok, let me explain the pants. We didn't intend to look like a cutesy matchy couple when we started this project. These are actually brand new cami pants that Todd purchased just before the MC went to the digital design. Never one to throw anything new away, he stashed them in our attic until such an occasion arose to use them. Gardening apparently was just that occasion. I personally didn't want to get any of my pants dirty so I was happy to put them on. They were pretty huge on me though! :)

Garden before

Garden after

What we expect to see in 6 -8 weeks :)

Off to the Cape!

This weekend we decided to drive up to Cape Cod. The weather is FINALLY beginning to warm up and we thought it would be a great day to do some sightseeing. We loved Cape Cod! We drove up to the very tip and walked around a town called Provincetown. Provincetown is a bit of a different place. It has, shall we say, an eclectic group of residents. There was always something interesting going on! It was such a cool place, tons of restaurants and fun shops to go in. We were talking about how much fun it would be to round up our friends and families and rent a house up there for a week. Any takers?

Walking along the beach in Provincetown

Darn seasonal hours! We really wanted to buy a kite :(

Graduation

Todd graduated his first class of Ensigns! I'm so proud of him and I'm sure the newly minted Ensigns are very happy to be done with OCS. This Thursday was the 'Hi Moms' where all the officer candidates families got to meet and greet with their class teams. The class teams consist of an Officer, a chief and a drill instructor. Once the class is announced they all say a few words about their class. Todd gave a great speech and in OCS tradition took that opportunity to harass the class one last time before saluting them after graduation. :) He made them do a ton of push ups, something that their parents all enjoyed immensely. The next day was graduation which is quite a bit different then the graduation ceremonies on MCRD. Todd's class consisted of only 28 candidates (only 16 originally started 12 weeks ago) so the graduation is on a much smaller scale. Todd had a full page in the program, with a picture and paragraph of his accomplishments. His only role during the graduation was to dismiss them at the end. It was very cool. After that was done the class team stands together and each Ensign individually walks up, is saluted and gives their team each a silver dollar.

On a side note, I have to say that there are some fun perks of being a drill instructors wife. I don't think I ever felt so popular! At the 'Hi Moms' Todd's candidiates were constantly greeting me everywhere I went. At graduation, every candidate that I walked past greeted me and made sure I was going in the right direction. Once at the graduation I had a front row seat in the VIP area that had a 'reserved for Mrs. Coyer' sign on it. Um...ya, I could totally get used to this!

JP and Todd at 'hi moms'

Todd being announced as the class drill instructor. They then read what he's accomplished in his military career.
Sorry so blurry. Having the candidates do push ups
The Coyers ;)
Me, Gysgt Center and Jennifer. Sandra is the only female DI in OCS, she's pretty awesome.


Walking to dismiss his class

Taking class pictures

My DI at work

Navy OCS: "Navy Owned, Marine Trained"- Sign posted outside OCS Building