My husband served in the Marine Corp a few years back before I knew him.   He was a scout sniper during Desert Storm and still to this day you place any type of gun in his hand and it is like a switch comes on and he instantly looks like a Marine.    I understand he is always a Marine, but it is not as obvious to me until I see him with a weapon in his hand or he is calling out cadence to the kids.      I do not see that side of him often, except when he made his own ghillie suit which was pretty cool.    Typically, I see him with musical instruments or even the XBox controller playing Call Of Duty.   I wouldn't mind seeing him with a vacuum, but I am not complaining he is pretty darn awesome.

Well our oldest happen to see a really cool backpack that James used years ago in the Marines.   Well the Alice pack, as it is called, is pretty cool looking and I am sure someone who is in High School would like to use it.   I think it's cool looking too and might snag it for my photography gear as it has a cool back support system.      As my Marine husband starts to clean out the Alice pack for our use, here is the photo of the lovely item left inside the bag.     Of course anyone who was not married to a Marine might gasp when they saw this empty (YES EMPTY) shell sitting on their kitchen table.     For us, it is a pretty typical response of oh how cool.   Then we are lucky enough to hear a cool story of how he came across this and cannot wait to share this with the little guys when they are older.

I am going to take a bet that we are probably the only house on the block with empty shells like this.    Being married to a Marine, there is always a story!