Getting excited about Marine life

Second letter - hopefully in the order it was written:
"Today I was on light duty so I did not do the PFT. About a dozen, maybe more of us stayed back at the house and cleaned the head. After the platoon returned we went to class. The class was on defensive driving. Oh boy! After class we marched straight to chow. Chow was hamburgers, corn on the cob, salad, an apple, glass of milk, stale french fries, and a peanut butter sandwhich. I only ate half the corn and didn't eat any of the apple because my mouth just can't take it yet. I'm still in quite a bit of pain especially in the morning. Oh well, I'll get through it. I've gotten this far, I won't complain about a sore mouth.

After chow we went back to the house and studied. We took practice tests and had them graded. I only missed 2 questions out of 78. The two that I missed I had to write fifteen times. I feel pretty confident on this prac stuff. The other part or portion of the prac test is oral. We go into a room full of dummies and perform three of nine scenarios of first aid. They are all pretty easy and we repeat the steps everyday so........not worried.

Well I thought I'd give you an update on the platoon. We started with 98 recruits and right now we have 90. Two might be getting dropped to PCP because they couldn't do enough pull-ups on the PFT today. We are still living in the same house as we did in first phase. Other than that everything is the same. Just a little extra gear with our dress uniforms for final inspection and for graduation. YAY!!! Well, that's about it from here for now. You'll be hearing from me again shortly. I miss you.

Love, Mike"

Letter #3 -

"It's Saturday night the 10th. (hey, he finally knows what day it is) I'm SO motivated! Senior Drill Instructor came out of his office when I was looking at this photo album and startled me. 'Got any questions Huck?' Of course I have questions. He has the same MOS I do and I'm looking at pictures of cannons, boxes of powder, and huge rounds the cannon fires. I got quite a bit of knowledge from him. I told him I was getting motivated just looking at the pictures and he said,'yeah, you're just seeing a few pictures. There are a lot better times a picture can't capture.' Man am I excited. I want to do the same thing. I'm going to buy a cheap camera and take a bunch of film with me and make photo albums to share with family , friends, my kids and maybe even my grandkids someday. I have to get ready for hygiene inspection. I will continue this tomorrow.

Sunday! This morning started by waking up at 0500 and getting dressed, made racks, head call, squared away the house and got ready to leave. All 90 of us recruits accomplished this before 0530 and we left the house. We marched over to class (I know, I thought the same thing - class on Sunday?) which was over interim guard. This week each day a platoon will have guard and walk around the base while the other platoons have working parties. After class we returned to the house and cleaned for about 20 minutes. Then we went to chow. Chow was same as it's been since processing. I ate fruit this morning! It hurt quite a bit but it was tasty. I tried something new.... peanut butter in between two pancakes. It's really good. I wanted to try something new because after two months of plain pancakes you need a little change. See ya in a couple of weeks.

Love, Mike"

Oh my goodness, Ken and I are chomping at the bit to see Michael. We keep hearing things from other Marine parents on-line that many of the recruits are calling home. I hope we are here if and when he calls. I'd be devastated if I missed it. Haven't heard his voice since we dropped him off on Labor Day :( It's good to hear him sounding so upbeat about his future in the Marines.

We will be flying out to NJ to see Katie and Ryan on Wednesday - Sunday. I'll post any new letters when I can. Then we'll be flying out to CA the following Wednesday, Nov. 28th for Michael's graduation. The time really has gone by rather quickly.

As always, thanks for your prayers, encouraging words and thoughts as we are approaching the final weeks of boot camp. We couldn't have gotten through this without all of you!

Love.................... Julie