...always a Marine...but no more Sgt. Adam Meyer! We were very pleasantly surprised today when we got the mail to find Adam's discharge papers from the USMC. I was a little confused, because I could swear he was supposed to be in the IRA until this August, but I'm doing the math in my head now, and I was wrong--it was August 2007. Took a little while for that letter to arrive in our mailbox...

I have such a respect for military men and women, but you have no idea the relief it gives me to know that Adam will never be called up again! It's a little weird to me that those 8 years have already gone by. I don't miss them, but the things we learned through it all...the hard times (Iraq, even the threat of Iraq in 2003)...the fun times (friendships made)...the pride I feel for my husband that he would give up his time to serve...I wouldn't give it up. Don't get me wrong; I would never do it again willingly, but I also would not give up the lessons learned. Some lessons learned were:

1. Never eat a full bottle of spray butter. Or cup of old chew (that still makes me shudder). 2. When in doubt, just break your wrist. (kidding!) 3. When truly in doubt, pray!!!! Both of us gained such an appreciation for prayer through it all--and not even when our prayers were answered the way we wanted. Just the fact that they were answered so obviously made us both stop and say whoah several times.

Here are just a couple pictures of Adam I found lieing around. Unfortunately, everything was pre-digital, so I had to take pics of pics to get these on here, and I didn't feel like digging too hard to find more. It's uncomfortable to bend over now.

This one still makes me laugh. Adam looks so serious, and so young. I guess it was taken over 8 years ago. In real life, you almost always see him smiling.

This is better. Here he's in a blackhawk. And no, it's not just the wind that's making him squint. :-)