Officer Candidate School

After three months of hard training this past summer, I graduated from United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, VA. I will be commissioning on March 19, 2011 at the Naval War College Museum in Newport, RI. A few months following my commissioning I will be attending The Basic School (TBS for short) for 6 months of infantry training. After my training in Quantico is completed, I will be heading to flight school in Pensacola, FL for about two years of training.

Engaged!!!

This past November I proposed to my girlfriend Misty Cool. She and I attended the University of Redlands together over the course of the past few years. We are very excited about the engagement and we will be waiting until after Misty has started medical school and I have started flight school to set a date for the wedding. The proposal was a lot of fun and I am pretty sure I surprised her :) I set everything up in the winery on top of the keyboard of the baby grand piano. We spent the evening at sushi with her parents and then went to church. She had choir practice and I attended Men's Ministry. Afterwards we went back to her house and watched an episode of Grey's Anatomy with her parents. Her parents went to bed after the episode and I asked Misty if she wanted to practice some music. She was all excited and then realized that the piano at the house would wake up her parents. For a moment or so she was sad and then she had the idea to go down to the barn. We went down to the barn and when she opened up the keyboard cover I dropped to my knee and popped the question! :) It was great. We will definitely be keeping you posted on that.

Graduating College

Over the course of the past two and a half years I have been attending the University of Redlands in Southern California. It has been a great time for me. As of this past Saturday, December 18th I have completed my Bachelors of Science in Business Administration. Because it is December, I had the opportunity to walk at graduation this past May. While at UofR I had the opportunity to work in a number of different areas of campus. I was a Community Director running a residence hall of 200 students. I was selected to be an Admissions Host and gave tours to prospective students. This past year I was a Fitness Center Facility Supervisor at the Gym. I have also been working at Best Buy in the Computer Department for the past few months and will continue to work there for the next few months until I commission with the United States Marine Corps.