A Short Hiatus from Blogging . . .And Now we Prepare to Switch Coasts

I owe you, my readers, all six of you, an apology for having taken so long to blog. Call it a summer vacation, a short hiatus, or closer to the truth: just a busy time in life. As a consequence, I wonder if there is anyone left to read my blog, but on the assumption that one or two of you might stumble on it by accident and knowing at least two of you still have it set as your home page, I am going to start blogging again, at least one more time.

Big news in life:
In July, I flew an aircraft across the country to catch a ship in Florida and ride it back to San Diego. That trip can be summed up in a couple of sentences. Flying across the country at 500 feet is a lot more interesting than flying across the country at 40,000 feet, but most of Texas is as boring to fly over at 500 feet as it is to fly over at 40,000 feet, being stationed in San Diego is a lot better than being stationed in Mayport, Fl, and being on a boat for 3 weeks is the same as being on a boat for 3 months when you're not doing anything: hot and boring!

(Going Through the Panama Canal for a third time)

September 1st was Madison's second birthday. It was not as big as her first birthday but that's because she has already had a birthday, and now starts the slow count of many unmemorable birthdays until she reaches that all important age of 16. Consequently, it will be on her 15th birthday that I will be moving the family to a nice, conservative middle-Eastern country where women are not allowed to drive. We took full advantage of the new playground in our neighborhood and had our own picnic in the park.



September 20th was my 30th birthday (sorry no pictures yet). Shelly, being the perfect wife, threw a wonderful surprise party, and it was the type of party only an event planner could pull off. It was a waterfront tent party with an underlying Havana theme. Everything was perfect, from the dinner, to the mojitos, to the Cuban/salsa band. Shelly even went so far to have a cigar bar where two men from the Cuban Cigar Factory hand rolled cigars.

September 28th my squadron "farewelled" me. Considering I still do not have orders, this is somewhat humorous itself . If we are still here in January, I wonder if they will have to farewell me again. If you wonder where we are "suppose" to be going, we are suppose to have orders to D.C. where I will be working for the Office of Naval Intelligence. If we go, we should be moving in November, and though my CO and XO promise me that I will get these orders, Shelly and I are not holding our breaths. On a side note, assuming we end up there, if anyone knows any good neighborhoods to live we would be grateful for the advise.

On a lighter note:
Madison is into mimicking Shelly. One of her favorite things is to carry around one of Shelly's old purses and fill it with her sunglasses, a play cellphone, toy car keys, and fake credit cards. Periodically, Madison will break open her phone and pretend to be talking to Luke. If you ever witness this, it is actually a very endearing sight. There are other cute things Madison does like pretending to use her toy keys to open the front door or putting her sunglasses on top of her head, but yesterday she did something that I found more disturbing than amusing. We had gone into a local store with Madison carrying her purse. When we went to check out, Madison started fumbling through her purse and pulled one of the "fake" credit cards. As cute as this might seem, I am deathly afraid that we are leaving Southern California too late to prevent irreversible damage!