It was very exciting to get my son's box from RTC via FedEx last Tuesday. It was eerie however, opening it up to find everything he had on him in this little cube. It was symbolic of, "here's your boy ... We've (the Navy) got him now. We'll return him later as a man and as a sailor". There's a finality to it that kind of hit me when we opened it.
The next day we received "the letter". I was excited to see that his PIR is March 4 - about a week sooner than I expected. So now I had to make our travel arrangements to be there for it.
The advice the Navy gives is to buy refundable plane Tix (we're coming from LA), in case his graduation gets delayed for some reason. Unfortunately, those tickets can be about 4 times more expensive. It would be cheaper to buy non-refundable tickets and then throw them out if I had to make changes. Talking to a travel agent, they said if I could fly Southwest, they don't charge cancellation fees and I can use the tickets toward any new tickets I would need to buy. I did just that.
I thought that was good advice and thought I'd share it.
We thought it would be a good idea to travel a day early and meet up with other families that are going to March 4's PIR at the dinner/get together that gets held the night before. Is there anyone on this site that is planning on doing the same thing? I'd hope to meet you and say hi.
Anyway, I think March 4th is the perfect date to graduate because, for my son, he is going to march forth into a fantastic future with the navy!
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