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Was wondering if anyone was aware of a dinner the night before graduation? If so I know I read it but do not see it anyware. It was at a grill and pub around 5 if I remember correctly any ideas

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! 

I just joined the Navy Dads family. I am not a military veteran myself, but I am an ARMY brat of 25 years. I just want to say how proud I am of my son Mickey. He began his Naval career just this past Dec. 3, 2015.  He is scheduled to graduate boot camp the end of this month. We can't wait to see him.  It's been a very long nine weeks.

I've been struggling with sending packages to my son who is on a DDG. 

It's relatively easy when you address the package yourself but using one of the online stores, it's more cross your fingers and hope.

My son's address looks something like this:

Sailor's Name
Their Division / Department
USS Bulkeley (DDG 84)
Unit 100319 Box 1* (they each have their own box number)
FPO AE 09565-1301

When I went to Amazon.com I entered the address like this:

 (Full Name) Rate Rank Last Name, First

 (Address line 1) Department

 (Address line 2) USS Bulkeley (DDG 84)

 (City)   FPO

 (State) AE

 (Zip Code) 09565-1301

 (Country)  United States

Amazon was good they seemed to have it together.they had custom form filled out so it was accepted by USPS and went through OK.  Other items I bought on Amazon but through one of their "Online Sellers", got the address correct but not the customs form so it was [REJECTED].  You should contact the seller to make sure they include the customs form when dealing with them.

Wisconsin Meats, was also very good and had online help to get you through the forms.  (They also include extras for the sailors) ***** stars for this site

Puritans Pride, totally useless.  I knew it was going to be a problem so I called to help them through the address.  1st time they used my address[REJECTED], 2nd time the correct address, with my name [REJECTED], 3rd time, 1 month later and four calls, it's somewhere on Long Island out for delivery!

ZERO stars for them

Nice thing about buying online, you can often get free shipping and when it works it seems to get to the FPO faster for some reason.

Let me know what your experiences are.  I'm still learning!