Spouses Dining In

I am an Air Force wife.  I never imagined I would be. Just like I never imagined I would be living in Japan on a military installation. So…living this military life, I have learned quite a bit of new concepts and traditions about the Air Force and military in general. I cannot say that I have been very involved in many volunteering, organizing and entertaining part of what officer spouses do, but I have been trying to support my squadron by going to occasional planning meetings and trying to make time for social get togethers.

See, when you live overseas, spouses are tight. Officer spouses have their own hang outs and things that they are in charge of, then, for us, we have Medical Group spouses who do and organize things together, plus I have our Dental Squadron that I am a part of.  I love our dental spouses’ get together lunches/dinners/parties out the most because we know each other the best and it’s great to talk to each other.  Also, a lot depends on the squadron’s commander’s wife, of course, and whether or not she is pleasant to be around-haha. Ours happens to be our friend from church too, and practically our neighbor, so we do enjoy spending time with her.

Anyway, this post is about a very crazy party that took place on Feb. 17th. It was advertised for months before so that all spouses could find babysitters if they needed them. The event was 1st Annual 35th Fighter Wing Spouse’s Dining In—with Once Upon a Time theme.

Each squadron/group chose a book which would become their special theme for the table and costumes. The rest of the rules were similar to the way military men do their Dining Ins—no clapping, but banging with spoons on the table, grog and all that stuff.

Our Med. Group chose “Percy Jackson” books as our theme. So we were to dress up as the Olympians and campers (if you’ve read the book you know what I am talking about). This was our table—decorated to depict three kingdoms of water, underworld and sky.

I was Hestia, goddess of domesticity, hearth, architecture and family. Here is Medusa and I

My German friend, who is Hera, and I.

Here is most of our group. That half naked guy is Zeus.

Some of my other favorite tables were “Phantom of the Opera” table.

“Alice in Wonderland” table, which one the best detail decorated table award.

This was “How to Train Your Dragon” table—I really liked their costumes too:).

Here is another picture of Medusa, Hestia, Centaur (with an actual horse bottom behind her-haha, that’s Natalie Staples, our commander’s wife!), Winnie-the-Pooh, and lady from the “Phantom of the Opera”.

The whole Dining In was decorated in “Harry Potter” theme with the head table guests dressed up as characters from the book.

Let me tell you that the idea was a very fun one—to get us all together, be creative and have fun.  We had certain rules we had to “obey” or we’d have to go drink the GROG (nasty drink prepared by mixing all sorts of different liquids that stands in the middle of the room).  The three witches were in charge of deciding who has to go drink the grog. Some people were so naughty that they WANTED to go drink the grog-haha. Their punishment was that they had to drink the non-alcoholic one.

This is not the place for me to vent or express my shock at what that evening turned out to be—it just wasn’t what I was expecting.  Let’s just say that I was very surprised at how some of the spouses acted and the language they used:).  I still was really impressed at how much creativity people have! I’d never seen so much work put into decorating tables or preparing costumes!

I wanted to blog about this so I don’t forget my first and probably last time going to something like that.  Some say this is part of being in the military, but I kind of want to skip this part.