One Scraptastic Grandma!: Steve's Retirement Ceremony

It has been busy for me the last couple months. My Dear hubby retired from the Air Force and we had his retirement ceremony on the 7th of January. We had the ceremony at the base and they said we had the largest family turn out ever, so after the ceremony they gave all 35 of us a wonderful tour of the areas that Steve has worked in over the last 33 years. It was awesome. I even learned things that I never knew about his job and skills. They had a cute slide show of some of the deployments he has been on and the Commander even shared a short story of one of the deployments they went on together.

I might share the slide show soon. Here are a few pics of the event.

Steve's boss Pat Tracy

On the left was all the Air Force members who wanted to come and on the right is all of our family. This is Steve's brother David and his wife Tammy and Son Gabe. Behind them is our friends Bob and Donna.

Here the Commander is telling his story of when Steve picked him up at the flight line in the UAE.

Steve wore his Blues because I said I wanted to see him in them one more time. Isn't that sweet?

All the guys and gals standing at Attention,

while the commander gave Steve his Retirement pin and certificate, below.

Jeff and I worked together to order a flag that was flown over the US Capitol,

then Jeff made the beautiful case and engraved a plaque for the front.

Here Neil is presenting a gift to Steve from his shop, it is a silver coin with a F-15 Eagle on one side and a Bald Eagle on the other. It was a perfect choice for Steve. Neil shared how much he has learned from Steve over the last couple years. He even got choked up. It was very touching.

This is Jeff again presenting Steve with an autographed lithograph of an F-15 Eagle.

All the pilots signed the lithograph, and Jeff made the frame and matted it.

They presented me with an award and flowers for supporting him and taking care of things at home.

Here are some of the awards, including the Lithograph.

Steve and I with his Mom. I am so glad she was able to come down and be here for the ceremony.

She is so proud of her children and Steve is her eldest.

After the ceremony, Floyd and Pat took us out to the hanger where they let all of us go up and see the inside of the jet and almost every one took advantage of it. They gave a great tour.

Mom David and Gabe coming down from looking at the inside of the jet.

James took, Piper, Mary and Kylie up to look and Kobe, Hailey and Keyanna were waiting to go next.

Our friends Lee and Loyal walking with Pat and Steve, on our way back to the shop where they showed the pilots helmets and the night vision glasses, they were cool to look through.

Here we were all learning about the helmet and flight suit.

Pat loves to talk about the equipment and what Steve had to do with all of it. Very interesting stuff.

After the ceremony and tours, we invited everyone back to our house for food. While we were on the tours, our Daughter Dawn and our Niece Tarina went back to our house and pulled out the food and cooked the couple items that needed to be heated just before we ate.

I don't know what I would do with out them, they help me so much. Thanks girls, I LOVE YOU!!!

My Friend Loyal helped me make the banner, then I got the idea to hang boots on it. It is all made from CTMH paper and the Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge except the boots and they are from the Stand and Salute Cartridge. If you look closely at the picture below you can see the boots that I hung on the dinning room light behind Steve.

James gave Steve a flag that he had had flown in Iraq while he was there in 2006, for Steve's retirement.

Here is a picture of the table shortly after we arrived home.

Here are a few Friends and family who came to the house.

Steve, Charlie, Bill, Rex, Harold, Steve and James.

This is what was left of the cakes until the girls got a little idea to each take a rose and shove it into their mouths. Yes by girls I mean Dawn, Tarina, and my Sister Shirley.

They were so funny, Shirley had never done this before but thought it would be fun, so here she is with Tarina and their cheeks stuffed with frosting. My great Niece Amber is watching here Nanna be quite silly.

Dawn won the contest with the least amount of frosting all over and she was the fastest at shoving it in. I was standing on a chair to get these pictures and almost fell off from laugh so hard.

Miss Mary decided to get in on the action too.

I was looking at Pinterest the other day and found a sign that fits me. It said,

"I laughed so hard I had tears running down my legs."

I bought Steve a new TV for his retirement gift. The man has everything so what else was there?

James spent 3 days at least setting it all up and getting the remote programmed.

It is 3-D and has internet TV. We have downloaded lots of apps including We Draw which we use our Samsung cell phones as controllers. The screen is only .33 inches thick.