Meet the Coast Guard's 4,294 Winged Aviator

After almost 2 years of Flight School, Garin finally completed all of his training and received his Wings of Gold on October 8th!!! He is now the 4, 294 Coast Guard winged aviator :) I'm so proud of my husband, he has worked extremely hard and has excelled in all of his training. God has been so good over the past 2 years and has blessed us beyond measure! Here's some pictures from the events.

On Thursday before the Winging, Garin got to take us (me, his parents, and his sister) on a tour of the base. We got to go to a Helicopter Simulator, T-34 Simulator, a tour of the control tower, and a really cool overview of Night Vision Goggles!

This moon lander looking thing is actually a Helicopter Simulator...it moves and jiggles and everything like a real helo! We all got a chance to try our hand and flying...gotta a lot of respect for my husband and his skills! However, I must say that I used to feel bad for how much Garin had to work...don't feel too sorry for him anymore, looks like he has a lot of fun!

G and I in the Helo Sim

We got to do this really cool sim on Night Vision Goggles (the things we are holding up to our eyes). It was super cool to see how they work...Garin actually uses them when he flies at night. The terrain in front of us is place where they train the students on how different types of land look different using the NVGs. Oh and those goggles are $10,000 a pop!

On Thursday night they have what is called a "soft patch" ceremony. In this ceremony each student's Instructor tells a story about the student and then gives them their winged "soft patch" to wear on their flight suit. You can see Garin's soft patch with wings above.

This is Garin's instructor putting on his patch

Garin checking out his wings (the first time he's worn them)

The Fam (Thanks for coming in to celebrate with us!! It was all the more special having ya'll there to share in the celebration!)

Winging Day! The students have to get dressed up in their formal wear...which is dress whites for the Coast Guard (and Navy for that matter).

Before the actual Winging, they have a "Blessing of the Wings" ceremony put on by the Chaplain at the base. It was kind of neat to have the wings prayed over before they were pinned...(sorry couldn't figure out how to turn this picture on here...guess I needed to do it before I uploaded, oops!) This is the best close up I had of the all so important "Wings of Gold" (they aren't really made of gold anymore...I think they cost like $8 at the exchange...2 years of hard work for $8 wings, if I'd known that I could have saved him those 2 years....haha!)

This is Moi pinning on Garin's wings, yeah, they let me do that, pretty cool huh?! I managed to do it without dropping them and without poking anyone! Wahoooo!

My winged husband. Oh so proud of him!