Deppisch Days: COC Craziness

When you (or your spouse) is in the military, your language changes from English to acronyms. At one time I would have never known what "I won't be able to make the COC because our PRD is March," meant. Hearing that so-and-so is "going on Det to SWA" might as well have been in Spanish as far as I was concerned. However, it's amazing how in a short amount of time you find yourself relaying these same "sentences" to your family and then trying to explain what they mean. I'd like to personally thank the book "So You've Married The Military" for their index in the back...it probably saved me from a few potentially awkward moments. For those of you without that book, here is my short short version so you can actually understand this post.

CO - Commanding Officer. The head dude/dudette of the squadron. (#1)
XO - Executive Officer. The #2 dude/dudette of the squadron. (#2)
PXO - The next in line to take over the XO's job.(#3)
COW - The CO's Wife (or spouse)
XOW - The XO's Wife (or spouse)
COC - Change of Command

That all being said, we just finished up with COC madness around here. Each year this Change of Command involves a number of events...5 to be exact. You have the formal COC dinner where the standing CO welcome the XO into their new position of CO. (Did you catch that?) The official ceremony, with all of the pomp and circumstance, where the CO hands off his job to the XO to take over. And finally the COC "after party" where the new CO welcomes the PXO to become the XO. I warned you at the beginning of this blog there would be very few words to keep up. :)

After this all has taken place, the spouses then hold a party for the new XOW, welcoming her to the squadron. Then, finally, we hold a congratulatory party for the XOW (pronounced kind of like SOW) who has taken over as the new COW. As women, these acronyms are as bad as they could possibly be so, obviously, we try to make the party supplies as obnoxiously filled with cow print as possible. Here are just a few pictures to bring you through each event....

The COC held at the Majestic Inn in Anacortes. Bobby played a big part in planning this dinner so I not only really enjoyed the event, but I was super proud of his organization skills...this coming from a post-wedding planning bride. :)

Our awesome table-mates, the Infante's and the Walther's...

Some of my girl-friends...

More of my girl-friends....

Bobby and I at the bar across the street post dinner...

The COC Ceremony on base was great....although FREEZING. It didn't occur to me that the hangar the event was held in would be without heat.

The girls praying this will start quickly so we can all go and warm up...

This is me trying to smile while being an ice cube.

Next was the "after party" held at the Nantucket. The Nantucket is an awesome old house in Anacortes and luckily we were blessed with awesome weather. The CO and his family not only paid for food and drinks, but they hired an awesome band that played the night away. Overall and awesome night!!...just had to get the word "awesome" in there one more time.