Spouse Warrior Day

Last Friday, 3rd MLG (the marine group that 3rd dental batallion is a part of) had a spouse warrior day. I was kind of undecided initially if I wanted to participate (because I had worked the 3 days in a row prior and wanted to just hang out with my babies), but Grant was allowed to take the day off if I participated, so I decided it was worth it to be able to spend all day with him and them. They were my little cheerleaders. I wasn't sure quite what to expect, just that I should show up in black pants and a Navy PT shirt.

When we got there they had doughnuts and muffins (Rowan ate 1 doughnut and 3 muffins over the course of the day) and then we were put into groups (we were Dental Divas) mixed with 9th ESB and we learned to stand in formation and march (which we weren't really very good at). We had a chief who would "yell" at us but was really very nice :)

 

Our first rotation was the marine obstacle course. They demonstrated and the marines doing it made it look easy. But then, I remembered that I have little upper arm strength (besides carrying my kids around) and there was a baby stretching my abs apart less than 5 months ago...so yeah, it was a little harder for me :)

It was mostly climbing over poles, logs, getting over a wall, climbing a rope, etc. I was actually pretty proud of myself for doing it. This bar was the first one that we had to jump up to and get over.

 

This one you had to jump up, grab the bar and then swing your legs up and around to then slide down to the bottom.

By this point, my arms were DYING (my legs too since I was pulling myself up over stuff with them). I sat at the top of this one for a second trying to recover before I wwent on :)

The next rotation was EOD and weapons. I'm definitely not a gun person but took my turn looking through them. Felt like a sniper with the zoom on this thing!

Rowan was scared to touch them at first and was then all about it. He particularly liked the grenade launcher.

 

After this, we had lunch, which was an MRE. I had seen MREs from Grant's week at C4 but hadn't actually made and eaten one before. I got chili mac which is supposed to be one of the best ones :) It actually wasn't that bad but I wouldn't choose to eat it. The lemon poppyseed bread and skittles were mine and Rowan's favorite ;)

The third station was the combat fitness test. The first was a run (I finished third in my group). Always feels good to run without a stroller :)

Then the ammo can lift. They looked relatively light, and then I picked it up and realized it weighs 30 lbs. You have to do as many lifts as you can in 2 minutes. This would have been much less of a problem if I wasn't totally exhausted from the obstacle course. However, I still pushed through and did ok :)

Finally, we did martial arts training. We were all really tired by this point but it was fun. The demonstration by the instructors was quite impressive and they taught us some self defense moves and then we got to beat up on each other :) We were pretty into it but were clearly laughing through the whole thing too. Even though there was a thick mat it was kind of scary not wanting to really hurt anyone.

This final one on the ground where we were pulling them towards us and kneeing them as hard as we could, Rowan thought was hilarious! He ran over laughing SO hard.

Our full team

And the Dental Divas

The rest of the day I was SO tired and sore, I could barely pick up Boden (and picking up Rowan was especially difficult). I was worried about what the next day would bring, but it stayed pretty steady instead of getting worse. I've got a few bruises from climbing over bars and I nursed my baby in between stations...overall a very successful day! Wasn't exactly a day in the life of our dentist husbands, but it was fun to see what marines do and get a good workout!