HUGE NEWS!

So...big news.  Huge.  Ready?

Orders.  As in WE have orders.

Orders to the Pentagon!  Us!  Kids from Hartland!  To the big city of DC!

I'm excited.  I'm nervous.  I'm overwhelmed.  I'm in shock.  I'm totally excited.

Here's the deal.  Mark is going to a Battle Captain on the J4 staff at the Pentagon working on the Afghanistan Retrograde Mission.  Clear as mud, right?  The J stands for the Joint Staff.  Surely you have heard that we have a Joint Chiefs of Staff.  If not, click here and here.  The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs is currently Army General Martin Dempsey.  As an aside, Mark & Julia went to a promotion ceremony on Ft. Myer, which is adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery.  As they were driving around Ft. Myer, they saw Gen & Mrs. Dempsey taking a morning stroll.  Pretty cool, huh?  Anyway...the 4 stands for Logistics.  Mark is not a logistician, he's infantry, but combat arms experience is what the J4 was looking for in this position.  As a Battle Captain, Mark's job will be to monitor what is going on in the world via main stream news, internet and other forms of communication, see what needs are out there and what we can do.  His observations are made in report form and sent up the chain of command where decisions are made on what to act on or not.  Basically, I think it is like his IMAT, incident management, team back in the MSP, but on a global scale, not just state wide.  If an Army job could be tailor made for Mark, I think this would be pretty close to the one.

The orders came the week before graduation.  Kinda late, in my humble opinion.  So, we are scrambling to get HHG's routed to Virginia instead of to Maine, secure housing, figure out all the nuances of city living and prep to enjoy a year of living in our great nation's capital! 

Pretty exciting stuff!