Rob's Marine Corps Retirement

As of December 28th 2016, Rob is officially retired from the Marine Corps!  He has served our country for over 21 years and I am so incredibly proud of his service and sacrifice to our nation.  As his commanding officer LtCol Simon shared at the ceremony, Rob has always been the best of the best at what he has done during his career in the Marines, and I know he will continue to do so in his civilian career that's about to begin.

While he's served for 21 years 8 of them were before I even met Rob, but in the years I have been around for the Marine Corps life has certainly been an adventure.  His service brought us to DC right after we got married for a year where we both had very busy schedules.  I will never forget the day he called me at work and said he got the orders to Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.  The next 3 years were spent in paradise but also brought Rob's first wartime deployment and very busy training schedules for him most of the time we were there, whenever he was home on island he was working up for the next deployment.  The last 6 months on Oahu were definitely the best when Iraq and Afghanistan deployments were behind him (for the time being).

After that we were brought back to the East coast which was great, as much as we loved Hawaii it made trips home a lot more manageable.  Rob worked at DIA for 3 years at Bolling AFB which also brought him back to Afghanistan.  We had hoped to go back to Hawaii at that point but then he got selected for EWS and we went down to Quantico for a little less than a year.

Then by Rob leveraging some connections he had in the Marines we received very unexpected orders to MacDill in Tampa.  It was such a long shot, it felt like a miracle that we were actually going to Tampa when the orders came through.  Living here in the greater Tampa area had been our goal for this point as he retired, hoping to buy a house and settle here for good.  As we have seen in recent years life doesn't always go as planned and things you never expect happen.  We were very lucky to have received the orders here, it's been a wonderful 3 years living in our dream home.  It also showed us that no amount of Palm trees or turquoise water can beat living near family.  We made the decision earlier this year that with his retirement and last move provided by the Marines it would be back home to southern NH/northern MA.  The further we looked into this option Rob was able to see his career options broaden a lot more than what Tampa has to offer.

Well the day he/we have been waiting for finally arrived, they had a very nice retirement ceremony for him outside of his command offices.

Reporting in......

 National Anthem, even Reagan knew to put her hand on her heart, it was so cute!

 I received an appreciate certificate which I will proudly display above all of Rob's military awards on his "moto wall" as he calls it :)

 Ava, Reagan, my Mom and I were presented with beautiful roses.  Jake received a Marine Corps coin.

Jake played with his coin the rest of the ceremony....

 After LtCol Simon spoke Rob was given the floor.  He had such beautiful words for everyone in the family, he did a good job at making us all cry.

 Rob and LtCol Simon

The base photographer got some great family shots for us.

We followed the ceremony with an amazing lunch at Maggiano's.  All in all it was a great day celebrating Rob's service.  He's had some big milestones between his 40th birthday and retirement, I think there will need to be round 2 of celebrations once we are settled up north.