Then again, maybe not...

Star Trek review for Parents:

First, WRT Star Trek - I received a few questions from friends here, on email, and on Facebook asking me would or did I take my kids?

Answers: No and No.

The movie is rated PG-13 for intense action and brief sexual content. The sexual content is a very short scene of a man and a woman in bed, still wearing underwear but kissing and breathing heavily, but they get interrupted. You could easily cover your child's eyes for this brief scene.

The action is really intense though. In particular, there's a scene where Kirk is getting chased across the surface of some sort of snowy ice planet by an enormous and terrifying monster that keeps trying to eat him. I'm sure I'm NOT spoiling the movie for you by telling you Kirk does NOT get eaten (what would be the point of the movie if he died half way through, right?), but I won't spoil for you the surprise of how he gets away. While that scene was playing out, I said to myself, "Self, this would scare the holy crap out of ES and YB. Cross this one off the list for them to see."

For a more detailed list of the content you might not consider safe for your children, please see the IMDB parent's guide. (Don't worry, they cover up spoiler info with red "spoiler" signs you have to click on if you REALLY want to read it all.)

Air Show

I was trying to make a plan of attack for going to the air show at Andrews AFB on Saturday. In order to prevent the boys from being absolutely miserable, I was planning what I was going to pack in the cooler for snacks and drinks to keep them cool and hydrated. I thought we would bring our Camelbaks with some coloring books and games to play during periods in between air demonstrations.

Then I read the security portion of the website.

No coolers allowed.

No backpacks allowed.

No camelbaks allowed.

No food allowed.

No drinks allowed.

Basically, all the things I would have needed to make the trip enjoyable for the boys aren't allowed.

To sum it up, my choices would be:

a) Sitting on the hot tarmac watching the airshow in the heat and sun from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (of course the Thunderbirds are the LAST on the agenda for 4 p.m.) with bored, hot, cranky, whining, miserable, dehydrated kids.

b) Taking out a home equity loan to shell out the cash for however much they're charging for bottles of water and refreshments, pumping our body full of preservatives and monosodium glutamate in disgusting food huts and later suffering from indigestion because we couldn't bring our own healthy snacks that we know are safe to eat.

I don't think so.

I did get a good laugh from one of the responses I got from a friend on Facebook: "Only terrorists would bring refreshments to an airshow."

We might go on the Loudoun County Farm Tour instead.

So long, farewell, aloha and goodbye

I suspect this will be my last blog post from Hawaii. (At least THIS time around - knock on wood).

It's a little bittersweet. We do look forward to going back to the east coast, but we will miss the friends and cherish the memories we've created here in Hawaii.

Let me backtrack a moment to share a couple of pictures from this week.

Tuesday, we went to our neighbor, Big M's promotion ceremony at the COMPACFLT Boat House. It was a really nicely done ceremony, and we were honored to sit right up front as if we were family.

Blunoz Family in the COMPACFLT Boat House

As I mentioned before, we went to our Cub Scout Pack field day / olympics on Saturday morning, and ES received his patch for completing the Historic Honolulu Hike.

(There is another historic hike you can do over on the Big Island to get another rocker that fills in the gap next to the Honolulu rocker.)

Then we went to the Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park with our awesome neighbors and friends, Big M, B, J & M. One of the water park employees took this picture.

Me and ES on the Waianai Coaster

It's not the best quality picture, especially with all the water washed out in the foreground. Still, I thought it was a pretty cool action shot with us up at an angle on the wall. (You can go to my previous post about the water park to see pics and videos of us going down the slides).

Tonight we had our farewell dinner with our same awesome neighbors. The kids chose the foreign residence of tasty flatbreads. Not what the adults would have chosen for our last dinner on the island, but the kids were kind of emotional and we didn't want to cause any more trauma.

M and ES were two peas in a pod as usual.

YB and J enjoy their pancakes.*
(*This photo is rather UNusual in that they're both sitting quitely and eating.)

We stopped by their house (across the street from our use-ta-house) to use their printer and print out our boarding passes. Both our boys LOVE dogs and wish they could have a dog, but my wife is allergic to dogs. The boys have both loved playing with Copper across the street.

ES giving Copper a hug goodbye.

Farewell Photo

I tried to get them to give each other a hug for the photo like they did for our last best-friends-farewell, but they wouldn't have anything of it.

We've been really blessed to have such wonderful neighbors in each of our duty stations. Each duty station, when the time has come for us to leave, we've had wonderful neighbors to lend us a hand with preparations for moving out. This was no exception. I wish we could be here to help them with their move out here in a few months, because they really bent over backwards to help us with our move. THANK YOU GUYS! I don't know how we would have made it through our movers, check-out inspection, and trip to the airport without you.

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to blog while we're on the road, but I'll try to post periodic updates en route to DC.

Summer Vacation Movie Marathon Weekend

You know your kids are done with summer vacation when...

...you find them in their bedroom playing "school" and ES is reading a book to YB.

That was a first for us.

Even so, they're going to seriously go into J & M withdrawal when school starts. They've been spending all day every day playing with J & M from the house across the street. Whenever we want to go run and errand somewhere (like to get haircuts this afternoon), regardless if we're only going to be gone for like an HOUR, and in spite of the fact that they've already been playing with J & M for like FIVE HOURS, you'd think we were driving the WAH-mbulance. They sit there and WHINE about how they want to go HOME to play with J & M.

Good Lord! There is MORE to life besides playing with your friends and making a disaster area of both our houses and our front yards and leaving toys strewn across the street between our houses (or at least sidewalk chalk drawings).

I also don't look forward to the goodbyes we will have to endure in a little over a month. It was hard when Z & C moved out of that same house across the street back in October. In fact, it took a while for the boys to even approach or start to play with J & M, because they were sad over loosing Z & C and it was weird having someone else living in Z & C's house.

Movie Marathon Weekend

Yesterday, J & M's mom B invited us to go with them to see Kung Fu Panda at the Sharkey Theater matinee. The Sharkey Theater is a really good bargain. Active duty are free. I think adults are like $3 and kids over six are like $1.50. It's amazing for all four of us to go to a movie theater and pay like $6 to get in and another $5 or so in refreshments.

The drawback is the place was packed. If you're tall like me, your knees rub up against the row of seats in front of you. Little kids were squealing and crying in various corners of the place. We actually saw several of our neighbors there, too.

Anyway, in spite of the drawbacks, Kung Fu Panda was really funny, and we all laughed a lot. Thanks to B for inviting us along!

Rounding out our movie marathon weekend, we watched the second part of our Tom Hanks double-header tonight - The Man with One Red Shoe. This one was WAY over YB's head and he didn't even attempt to watch it. He built a fort out of couch pillows and blankets instead.

ES enjoyed it, but it was a bit over his head and he had a lot of questions. I had to pause the movie several times to explain whether the spies currently on the screen were the good guy spies following Tom Hanks to protect him and make him look important to the bad guys spies or if they were the bad guy spies trying to figure out why the good guy spies were following him.

Two of the less comfortable questions ES asked... First, there was scene with Carrie Fisher in a leopard print bikini trying to seduce Tom Hanks in his bedroom and making monkey noises. ES asked what they were doing, and we told him they were playing a game. Then later Hanks' brother (Jim Belushi) is upset because his wife (Carrie Fisher) is "making love" with someone else and kept saying it over and over again and was really angry about it. This led ES to ask what "making love" meant.

So if you've got young children and you're reading my blog for movie recommendations - I guess in hindsight I'd hold off on the Man with One Red Shoe. (It's still a great movie though!)

First Grade Artwork

I thought these two pieces of artwork ES brought home from school were pretty cool.

First, are you familiar with the "if you give a mouse a cookie" series? They're really cute children's stories. So following along the same pattern, I give you "if you give a pig a flagpole."

I'm not exactly sure what the picture is supposed to be besides two pigs of some sort of military variety. The story under the picture it what I thought was really funny. In case you can't read it in the image, it says: "If you give a pig a flagpole he'll want to join the military so they can use it and do colors."

Next up is the Broken Computer book. ES did this with a little ink stamp of a computer, so you're supposed to read the stamp as if it were the word "computer."

Here's the cover page:
Here's the inside:
I wonder if any Bust By or Geek Sqod executives read my blog?

Hawaii it is then

Well, after several rounds of negotiations with the detailer, my attempts to go back to the east coast have failed. We're staying here in Hawaii for shore duty. Although it's not what we wanted, it's actually a good thing for several reasons:

- It's not Japan. (That was the other option on the table, and I just didn't think LW would enjoy living there.)
- We don't have to move.
- The boys can stay in the same schools with the same friends.
- It'll be a good job for my own professional development.
- The job will involve some travel to other submarine home ports, so I'll get to visit family in San Diego and the PACNORWEST periodically on the Navy's dime.
- We don't have to move.
- I can continue to wear all these Hawaiian shirts I've bought. Have you ever been somewhere on the mainland and noticed when someone from Hawaii walks into the room? They always wear some sort of aloha shirt and stick out like a sore thumb, because nobody else on the mainland wears them.
- We can continue to make money on Hawaii COLA (Cost of Living Allowance).
- We don't have to move.
- Friends and family can continue to come stay at the Blunoz family B&B free of charge.
- We can continue to forget what really bad weather is like (our prayers go out to those suffering from tornadoes and flooding right now).
- We don't have to move.
- I can volunteer to do more with the cub scout pack.
- We'll actually get to USE the new swimming pool and community center they're building our our housing area.
- We don't have to move.
- Malasadas.
- Fruity tropical drinks with little paper umbrellas and a pineapple wedge in them.
- We don't have to move.
- I get to say "aloha" more.
- LW can't spend any money at Target or Kohls or any of those other stores she loves back on the mainland. :-)
- We don't have to move.
- We have a couple more years to explore the other islands - next up we'd like to go to Kauai.
- You all get to read more blog posts about our adventures around Hawaii.
- We don't have to move.

Uh oh... Now LW is writing a new honey-do list for me to do around the house since this is no longer just our temporary home.

Dive Tower

From anywhere around the harbor, you will notice this prominent feature sprouting up out of the submarine base. In fact, it's actually an official NGS benchmark. This is where the Navy used to do training on emergency escape procedures for submariners.


For one of the requirements on the Tiger Cub badge, we needed to visit a historic place or museum and talk about how life was different in the past, so we had our den meeting at the Dive Tower this week.


They stopped using it for its intended purpose many years ago, and the octagon-shaped structure at the top of the tower was converted into a conference room. There's a great view from up there, although the slotted windows don't make for very good photography.

Our Den Leader kicks off the meeting at the top of the dive tower.

DL explains to the boys about what the dive tower was used for.

Each of the windows had a brass plaque that described what you were looking at and what happened there on Dec. 7th, 1941. After looking around out the windows at the historic buildings and reading the plaques, we watched a portion of the movie Tora! Tora! Tora! It was a BIG hit with the boys.

My feeble attempt at a picture of ES with the sunset in the background.

Military Brats

OCA recently posted about changing school systems and different age requirements for kindergarten following a PCS move. It brought to mind a very good book. I could have sworn I had already written about this in a previous post, but I searched back through my blog and couldn't find it. So I said to myself, "Self, you should write a post about Military Brats."

Mary Edwards Wertsch wrote a really good book titled Military Brats: Legacies of Childhood Inside the Fortress. One of the big take-aways I remember from her book was about the impact military life has on kids' education. In any given school district, they've developed a curriculum with a series of building blocks. First you teach them concept A, then you build on that with concept B, then you build on that with concept C. This is especially true in topics such as math and English. The problem is, when you PCS transfer to another duty station and a new school district, then that school district may have a curriculum where they teach concept B, then you built on that with concept C, then you build on that with topic A.

As a result, military brats have a tendency to score lower than their peers in topics like math and English, at least during the time period immediately after the PCS transfer. On the other hand, military brats have a tendency to score higher than their peers in topics like geography and history. I think that was due to the fact that they've traveled to a lot of places, they use maps to trace where their military parent(s) go on deployment, and they are immersed in the importance of history in the military culture.

This all "rang a bell" in my head, because I think I experienced it first hand. When my dad retired from the Navy, I moved from San Diego to Oregon in between my sophomore and junior years of high school. The Oregon school system had their requirements all mixed up and out of order compared to the San Diego school system. I'm not saying one was better than the other. They were just organized differently. Classes that I had already completed in San Diego as freshman and sophomore requirements were junior and senior requirements in Oregon. As a result, I found myself as a junior sitting in classes with a bunch of freshmen, "making up" the classes that would have been junior and senior requirements in San Diego. My first year in Oregon, I did well in those isolated classes like U.S. Government, but I got D's in 11th grade math and English. I came back though. I took the AP Calculus exam the following year and got a 5 out of 5. English was never my strong suit, but I still got a B.

Getting back to Wertsch's book, I will say that it's been a while since I read it, and the content and anecdotes are probably a little dated. There are a couple of dark and depressing chapters in the middle dealing with alcohol abuse and child abuse in military families. I don't have any data to support this, but I would like to think that the rate of alcohol abuse and child abuse have gone down over the years as our society has become more aware and less tolerant of such behavior. The other chapters dealing with education and social development I think are still applicable today as we military families continue to move from one coast to another every couple of years.

Tangent #1: How many times has ES moved now?
Born in Monterey, CA.
Move #1 to Groton, CT.
Move #2 to San Diego, CA.
Move #3 to Northern VA. Went to pre-school and kindergarten there.
Move #4 to Pearl Harbor, HI. Going to first grade here, now.

He's 6 years old and has moved 4 times.

He's 6 years old and he's living in his 5th "home."

Here's another anecdote in support of Wertsch's point about changing school systems: In spite of (a) the school he went to in VA was top-notch and (b) all the talk about how schools in Hawaii are no match for schools on the mainland, he's behind the power curve on certain things here because they teach them in a different order. They didn't work on penmanship or emphasize writing skills in kindergarten in VA, but they do at his school here in Hawaii. So his classmates who did kindergarten here last year all got that and he didn't. As a result, his writing skills aren't as good as his classmates, but his teacher says he is getting better. I've certainly noticed it getting better just in reviewing his homework.

Tangent #2: Or is this really Tangent #1 Part b?
Sometimes I really envy non-military friends of ours who are able to set down roots and stay in one place. It was a little frustrating to me in VA when we bought our second house, I found myself making many of the same upgrades to the house that I had already done once before in our previous house in San Diego. I found with a lot of things I did around our house in VA that I would have spent the extra money to get the longer-lasting or top-of-the-line solution if I knew I was going to live in that house forever. With another PCS move always lingering over the horizon, it just didn't make economic sense to me to shell-out the extra bucks for the 10-year rated water heater versus the 5-year rated water heater. [Aside: Our water heater has catastrophically failed and flooded the house in both of the past two houses we have owned. I think the next time we buy a house, we should just replace the water heater right away before it floods the house on us.] Likewise, if I were buying new countertops for me, then I would have bought an engineered stone like silestone, because as Wikipedia states, "engineered stone requires less maintenance and is more stain and bacterial resistant" than granite. But we knew we needed to sell our house, and "granite" is one of those magic words in real estate (see Freakonomics book) that grabs the attention of potential buyers.

I look forward to someday buying a house that we're going to KEEP and LIVE IN for a LONG time so I don't have to make the same upgrades again and I can splurge on the long-lasting solutions when things break.

Wrap-Up / Summary:
In any case, tangents aside and getting back to the main point of this post: I have frequently over the years referred friends to Wertsch's book as an interesting insight into how growing up in the military affects your kids. You should check it out. The entire book is available to read at the website linked to the picture above, but I know some people don't like reading books on their computer screen.

Decisions, Decisions...

I just don't know what the right answer is. [Cue music - The Clash, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?"] We're "in the window" to start negotiating with the detailer for where we'll go next. Should we stay in Hawaii or should we move on elsewhere? So far, the only job the detailer has offered me is here in Hawaii on the COMSUBPAC staff. We're just not sure if we want to stay in Hawaii.

Why do I bring this up, you ask?

We reached another PCS / New Duty Station milestone today. We took both boys in to the dentist for a check-up. We went to a children's dentistry office over in the Pearl Ridge Mall on the recommendation of several of our neighbors. This place was AWESOME. Every member of the staff had the patience of a saint. Our boys HATE going to the dentist. It takes a lot of comforting, cajoling, bribery and threats just to get them into the car much less out of the car much less in the door to the dentist's office. The staff at this place had children's dentistry down to a science, step by step making the boys understand what was going to happen before it happened, showing them what they would do with the tools on their fingernails before they stuck the tools in their mouth and started on the teeth. When the boys wigged out or were uncooperative, the staff were extremely nice, understanding, patient, and comforting.

After the dentist's office, we gave ES his choice of where to go for lunch. I was having a major Chick-fil-A craving... but alas, it's a LOOOOONG plane ride to the nearest Chick-fil-A. :-(

ES chose Wendy's for lunch. Thanks to my Chick-fil-A craving, I tried getting a chicken sandwich at Wendy's to try and satisfy the craving, but it just didn't do it for me.

Okay, so all that being said, tonight LW gave me a detailed summary of her reasons for wanting to stay in Hawaii:
1) We hate moving.
2) We have an AWESOME dentist to take the boys to.

Yep, that's it. I suppose you could add to that the living in "paradise" thing, snorkeling, hiking, etc. The job the detailer offered me here I think could be fun and interesting at least.

Why, you ask, don't we want to stay in Hawaii / why would we like to move back to the mainland? Well, just off the top of my head, and in no particular order of importance, here are ten reasons for us to leave Hawaii:
1) Be closer to family and friends - maybe the same city to see them on a regular basis, or at least close enough they can come to visit.
2) Be able to take vacations to visit family and friends or to our favorite places like Lake Winnepesaukee without spending all day on an airplane with two small children and then spending a week going through the jet-lag time-zone adjustment, just to turn around and do it again coming back to Hawaii.
3) Not pay thousands of dollars to send our kids to private school because the local public schools are abysmal.
4) Cost of living. ($5 for a gallon of milk?)
5) Changing seasons.
6) Bigger houses for less money. I really miss our house in Virginia.
7) Get our nice dining room, living room, and home theater furniture out of storage.
8) Hawaii drivers drive us nuts.
9) Target.
10) Chick-fil-A.
10 1/2) Chicken biscuits at McD's (sorta goes along the same lines as 10 above).

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Shifting topics, today was our first session back with the PT Nazi since we got back from our Christmas stand down. Aside: For anyone who hasn't read my previous blog posts, we do Command PT three days per week, but on Wednesdays we go to Bloch Arena and have a personal fitness trainer lead us through some interval training, and he always kicks our butts.

This morning, he led us through a great workout as always, but he wasn't too hard on us. He warmed us up with five minutes of jogging in place - alternating knee-highs and butt-kickers, and led us through stretching out. Then he led us through a series that went something like:
Pushups, unassisted situps, squats, lunges, running the bleacher steps hitting every step.
Pushups, Russian twists (in a sitting position with our legs out in front of you, twist your torso to the left and touch the ground, twist your torso to the right and touch the ground, repeat), running laps around the basketball court.
Pushups, squats, side lunges, dips, running the bleacher steps two-at-a-time.
Pushups, crunches, scissor kicks, flutter kicks more laps around the basketball court.
All this lasted for an hour, and we really worked up a sweat. It was a good workout. I wonder what my legs are going to feel like in the morning though. Our COB is a stud though. I couldn't believe as I was driving home tonight, I saw him out in his PT gear running along Nimitz. I guess the PT Nazi didn't dish out enough PT this morning for the COB.

There's one thing I don't understand about my body and PT though. Using my heart rate monitor during our PT sessions, I notice that when we go out running, my heart rate gets really high, but I don't seem to be out of breath and I don't seem to sweat a lot. When we do the interval training though, my heart rate is a lot lower, but I'm always out of breath and sweating profusely. Why is that?

RANT: Driving in Hawaii is Driving Me Nuts

My good friend EP told me that it's a major milestone when you can complain about living in paradise.

One of my favorite quotes from Hey Shipwreck is, "When I get out of here I'm going to a training command, because it must be really nice to do absolutely NOTHING." I'm now going to modify that to, "When I get out of here I'm going to work for Hawaii Driver's Ed, because it must be really nice to do absolutely NOTHING."

WHY don't they understand the concept of NOT BLOCKING THE INTERSECTION here??? To make matters worse, the traffic lights are HORRIBLY timed, or just simply NOT timed AT ALL. People here MAKE the traffic worse than it has to be, because they keep blocking the intersections. If there ISN'T ROOM on the other side of the intersection for you, I DON'T CARE if your light is GREEN, then DON'T pull out into the intersection and block it!!! Am I being totally unreasonable in this expectation?

Of course, on those occasions when I get up to the intersection and realize there's no room on the other side, I stop to keep the intersection clear, and the people behind me get all pissed off and honk at me for not going.

Then there's the whole shaka thing that drives me nuts, too. It doesn't matter how egregious someone has been in cutting you off or making a right turn from the left lane right in front of you, they think that if they give you the "hang loose" hand sign, then that makes it all okay. "Aloha spirit" - thbbbbbbt! :-P

WARNING: Tangent Ahead

This all got me to thinking. I grew up as a Navy brat. Yes, yes, I know that the traditional or technically correct terms are "Army Brat" and "Navy Junior," but I also know I'm not the only one who thinks "Navy Junior" sounds really stupid and always preferred the term "Navy Brat."

There is such a large concentration of Navy bases and commands in San Diego that you really can homestead there. My mom loved San Diego and never wanted to leave, so my dad did a lot of cross-pier transfers from one ship to the next. We spent almost my entire time growing up in San Diego, except for four years up in Long Beach (a whole 2 hours north of San Diego).

It was always heart-braking to have childhood friends move away when they got orders to their next duty station. I remember asking my mom why they had to go off to far away places like Norfolk, and then why didn't they come back to San Diego after a while. My mom explained to me that there was a difference between "east coast" people and "west coast" people and that some families just preferred to live on the east coast. As I grew older, I learned the stereotype that west coast Navy people were much more laid back and easy going, and east coast Navy people were much more formal and even "stuffy" or "uptight." I always thought of myself as a west coast type of guy.

Well, when it came time for me to head off on my own Navy career, I knew I would be moving every couple of years, and I wanted to see what life was like in other parts of the country. The Navy sent me to Orlando for Nuclear Power School and then to Charleston for Prototype. I volunteered for a boat out of Groton for my JO tour, and the detailer was only oh-so-happy to oblige (I guess nobody else ASKED to go to Groton).

It turns out, I really loved living in New England. I love Mystic, CT. I love Boston. I love going up to Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. I loved the changing seasons, especially the fall foliage and the snow in the winter. [Aside: I sun burn easily, and I kind of have an aversion to the sun in general. LW makes fun of me because I spend like an half-an-hour lathering up with sun-block lotion before we go out to the pool or the beach.] Then we got to go to Virginia, and we absolutely loved living there. My wife actually prefers VA over CT because the winters aren't as harsh and she doesn't have to shovel as much snow (because there is some strange universal law that it has to snow when I'm out to sea, so she's the one who has to shovel it all).

Now, as I find myself living in "paradise," complaining about the "aloha spirit," and wishing we were back in Virginia, I ask myself, "Self, have you become one of those stuffy formal "east coast" people?"

One thing's for sure though. My body has adjusted to the climate here. I normally have the thermostat in my car set at like 77 degrees. While my family was here visiting from Oregon, each time I got in the car after one of them had taken the car somewhere, I found myself shivering from the cold and looked down at the thermostat to see they had set it at like 65 degrees.

Oh, and when we picked up Nate to take him to dinner two nights ago, he did a double-take and commented on how tan we all are.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Shifting topics... I don't know if anyone noticed that I didn't report my WW results last week. You could easily have predicted my bathroom scale results based on the lack of exercise reported on my PT log and all the good food we ate over the holidays with family members visiting. I gained back 2.6 pounds over the holidays, but it could have been much worse. At least I'm still at an overall loss since I started WW, and now that I'm going back to work, I will get back into our Command PT routine and be able to plan what I eat and not graze so much on holiday goodies laying around the kitchen.

Week 6 Summary
Result this week: 2.6 pound gain (over two weeks)
Cumulative Result: 2.6 pound loss
Average Per Week: 0.4 pound loss per week

LW has made some really good dinners for us lately that were both healthy and delicious. One of my new favorites that she's made a few times is Baked Shrimp in Lemony Garlic Sauce. First ES decided he liked it on a previous run (he gave it the high praise of declaring it, "NUM NUM!"). Then, this time, YS shocked us by not only TRYING it (this was a monumental achievement just getting him to TRY something different), but also LIKING it and EATING MORE! It turns out this one is actually a WW recipe, and it's only 4 points per serving.

Another new one LW made that was a big hit was spaghetti with ground chicken meatballs from a Rachel Ray recipe. One would THINK given YS's addiction to chicken nuggets that it would have been relatively easy to make the "jump" to chicken meatballs. OMG the fuss he made! He refused to try it and pulled the "I don't like it" routine, to which we gave the standard, "You aren't allowed to say you don't like it until you've at least tried it" response. YS wanted a dinner roll, so LW resorted to Uncle Dave's tactic of putting the chicken meatball inside the bread like a sandwich. Will wonders never cease? He tried it and he LIKED IT. After that, he actually sat there and ate the rest of his meatballs without the bread.

School Vacations Should Be Outlawed

Back to School Today.

OMG what a royal pain in the arse it was getting ES to go back to school today. He refused to get out of bed. He refused to get dressed. He refused to tell LW what he wanted to lunch. He ate his breakfast with the speed of a desert tortoise trying to devour a rubber ducky. He refused to do anything LW or I told him in order to get ready to leave for school. I dropped him off at school on my way to work, and it's a miracle we were just barely on time.

Then, tonight, we had another episode with trying to get him to do his homework. I mean, it's FIRST GRADE. His homework is three simple worksheets that I KNOW he's perfectly capable of doing. He could have finished it in 15 minutes EASILY, but instead he wastes an hour and a half with high drama - pretending he wasn't done with dinner (because when he asked to be excused, we told him yes and to go do his homework), dragging his feet, claiming he can't find a pencil (there's a box of them on his homework table), making long dramatic sighs and holding his head in his hands, whimpering and crying. He NEVER would have finished if I hadn't stood there behind him directing him to do each task. With the commotion he was making, LW jokingly asked from the other room, "Is Daddy pulling out your finger nails in there?"

YS was also a challenge to deal with today. At one point tonight, he was wearing this headband with three colored feathers sticking out the back like a Native American warrior, and it reminded me of one of my favorite stories my Grandpa Ernie used to read to me when I was a kid. It was a short story called The Ransom of Red Chief by O Henry, and it was about a couple of not-so-smart criminals who kidnapped a holy-terror of a boy who pretended to be an Indian savage named Red Chief. Much to my surprise, I found the entire story available at this website.

Aside: Although I'm complaining about what a pain the boys were today, I have to offer two disclaimers. First, LW is the one who bears the brunt of the boys, and I applaud her for her patience and ability to deal with the frustration our boys can produce at times. I don't have as much patience as she does, and I tend to snap a little easier or a little sooner than she would. Second, we have to count our blessings. Our boys can be frustrating at times, but overall they're very good boys and we're very truly blessed to have them both.

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Small World.

I just about fell off my chair when I got an email from one of my Nav-ET's from my previous boat yesterday. He's stationed in the DC area now and living VERY close to where we used to live in Ashburn, VA. He recently discovered geocaching, and as he was finding some of the geocaches around Ashburn he kept noticing this name "blunoz" and thought that sounded kind of like a Navy-related user name. He looked up this "blunoz" guy on the geocaching website and was blown away to find out it was his old Navigator. Turns out there are two other guys from my usetafish that are also living out in Ashburn and working in DC now. Small world. What are the odds of reconnecting with an old shipmate like that???

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Unexpected Visitors.

Yesterday (Sunday), I went with ES and his Cub Scout Pack on a tour of USS RUSSELL, an ARLEIGH BURKE Class DDG. I was really impressed. They really put on the full-court press for our tour. They had static displays set up all over the ship with crew members standing by to show us guns and torpedoes and fire-fighting gear and fire hoses. The tour concluded on the bow of the ship with chocolate chip cookies and fruit punch. It was great!

Daddy and ES on tour of USS RUSSEL

As we were standing on the flight deck with a crew member showing off his Visiting Boarding Search and Seizure (VBSS) gear (black vest, black helmet, black goggles, black knee pads, black rifle, black pistol...), I looked across the water at the sub base side of the harbor and did a double-take. I said to myself, "Self, that is most definitely NOT a 688 Class submarine parked over there!" I was pretty sure I read the name on the brow banner correctly, but confirmed it with another bubblehead in our tour group.

It turns out, a long time friend of mine is on that boat. Nate and I were classmates and became friends in Nuclear Power School in Orlando and then roommates in Prototype in Charleston. He's the guy I previously mentioned I had gone to the Army-Navy Football Game with in '95. Later, we were both Navigators at the same time in San Diego. Then, we both went through the Submarine Command Course together.

So after leaving the RUSSELL, ES and I headed over to the other side of the harbor to welcome our unexpected visitors and invite Nate to dinner. We took Nate down to Ryan's in the Ward Center for an excellent dinner (see my previous post for more info about Ryan's). This time I had the corn chowder and the fish tacos. They were both really good. I think the corn chowder was a little bit of a rip off though - 5 bucks for a very shallow bowl that didn't hold much. Although the fish tacos were not at all like Rubios (THE best place for fish tacos in SoCal), but they were still really really good.

After dinner, Nate came over for a while for us to play some Halo 3 on the XBox and reminisce about old times.

The boys were both really excited and looking forward to going for a tour of Nate's boat today. After I picked ES up from school this afternoon, we headed over to get the tour. In spite of his excitement beforehand, YS complained almost the ENTIRE tour, "I'm thirsty," or, "I'm want to go home." He was a real joy (tack this comment onto the first section above). Anyway, it was good to see Nate, and good to see what life is like on a floating hotel.

Ahhh, December!

Can you believe it's the last day of November? Thanksgiving has come and gone and we've got our Christmas decorations out. I just put up the lights around the rain gutter and it looked very plain and boring. LW really brought it to life though and did an awesome job with the garland with a strand of lights around the posts in front of our house, plus some red bows, red ornaments, two lit-up penguins, and a submarine wreath on our front door.

Here are three of my favorite things about this time of year (not in any particular order):

- Handel's Messiah. I have mentioned before how military brats can generally place a memory within one or two years' timespan because they remember what house (or church) they were in. The first time I remember hearing Handel's Messiah and it registering in my brain what I was listening to was at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in San Pedro, CA. So that had to have been 3rd or 4th grade when we lived in the San Pedro Navy Housing.

A lot of people just think of this as the "Hallelujah" chorus, but it's sooo much more than that. To be quite honest, the Hallelujah chorus is kind of over-played. It's nice, but so many people use it as a "sound bite" you hear it all the time. I have several almost-favorite parts, but my absolute favorite is the "For Unto Us a Child is Born" in the middle of Part I.

For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given:
And the government shall be upon His shoulder:
And His name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

I first became familiar with Handel because of my parents singing in the church choir growing up. For several years now, my mom has sung for the San Diego Master Chorale (picture above). It's been a wonderful treat for me on a handful of occasions to attend some of her Messiah performances in San Diego.

- The Nutcracker. In addition to my parents, I was very blessed to have the influence of my Grandma Kay and Grandpa Ernie on my upbringing. They loved the fine arts and always took me to see performing arts and museums. It's through my grandparents that I learned an appreciation for classical music and Gilbert & Sullivan musicals.

I don't remember exactly when I started going to see the Nutcracker, but it was sort of a Christmas-season tradition for me up through college. LW doesn't care for the ballet much, but she appeased me and went with me to see the Boston Ballet perform The Nutcracker when we got engaged, and it was awesome.

I think in another couple of years I may try to take the boys to see it. I don't think they'd understand it or sit still through it just yet.

- The Army-Navy football game. I am like Bubblehead in that I didn't go to the Naval Academy, but I love the Army-Navy football game. I think I've actually been to the game four times now...
- 1986: My dad took me to my first Army-Navy football game when they played at the Rosebowl, and it was AWESOME.
- 1995: My roommates during prototype in Charleston were USNA grads, and I went with Nate to the game in Philadelphia.
- 1997: Just after we got engaged, LW and I went to the game at Giant Stadium with our friends Chris and Cath (Cath's younger brother was a mid then).
- 2005: I took ES to his first Army-Navy game two years ago in Philadelphia with my friend and former stateroom-mate, Rich.

ES's class mascot "Wings" at the 2005 Army-Navy Game. Each kid in the class got to take Wings home for a weekend and write in a journal about what they did over the weekend, so we took him to the Army-Navy Game.

Me and ES at the 2005 Game (we froze our butts off and had to leave early before poor ES turned into a popsicle).

I love all the tradition and ceremony of the game. The midshipmen and the cadets all march into the stadium. Then you get flyovers by jets and helicopters, and guys will parachute in with the flag for the national anthem. Then they have the exchanging of the prisoners. A handful of cadets go to Annapolis and some mids go to West Point as exchange students each semester. Before the game begins though, they get returned to their home team in an "exchanging of the prisoners ceremony" on the football field.

Exchanging of the Prisoners Ceremony

Each time either team scores, they shoot their cannon or artillery piece and all the plebes do pushups. If the President is there, he starts the game sitting on one side of the field rooting for one team, then at halftime, they have a ceremony where he crosses the field to sit with the other side and rooting for the other team. There are great fight songs the mids sing like, "Gooooooo Migh-ty Na-vy, Go! Go! Migh-ty Na-vy!" and "Go - Navy - Go! Beat Army!"

Unfortunately, you don't get all the ceremony and tradition when you watch it on TV. I still like to watch the game though. That being said, it's time to set the DVR to record it in case I don't wake up in time, and then it's time to hit the rack.

GO NAVY! BEAT ARMY!

Things that go "Bang!"

I think it's genetic. Something is hard-wired into the male brain that creates this obsession with things that go "Bang!" Or maybe that Y-chromosome lacks something that inhibits this obsession in girls. We start out as little boys in awe of obvious, overt things that go bang like guns. Over time, we mature and gain appreciation for things that go bang in different ways like an internal combustion engine or a nuclear power plant. I can look back and see this development in my own life. As a kid, my dad would take me to visit the ships he was stationed on, and all I cared about seeing were the GUNS and the MISSILES, and he always seemed excited to show me the engine room. I didn't get it back then. I think I was in high school before I saw my first LM-2500 gas turbine on an AEGIS cruiser and think that was pretty darn cool.

What made me think of this is watching our boys and their obsession with guns. I think ES's drawings of ships with guns all over them are very similar to the drawings I remember making when I was less than 5 years old.

Quick Tangent: How do I know it was before I turned 5 years old? Because I remember the house we lived in at that time. As a military brat moving from place to place, you can generally place any memory, song, or movie within about a 2-year timespan because you remember which house you lived in.

LW and I have tried, and still continue to try, to suppress some of this obsession with guns. Back while we were in VA, I wanted these really cool miniature remote control tanks for my birthday that shot infrared beams at each other and could tell when they had been "hit." LW said no, they were too violent. We didn't let the boys watch violent movies or play violent video games. Yet, walking through Home Depot one day, I found the boys sitting in the basket had picked up the allen wrenches I was going to buy, and were using them as "guns" pointing them out of the basket and "shooting" at people. So even if we don't get them toy guns, they make toy guns out of Legos or tools or pencils or whatever else they happen to have handy. So we figured it was hard-wired in little-boys brains and our attempts at keeping them isolated from all things "violent" weren't really working, and we slacked off a bit.

I feel like it's a little out of control now. 3 1/2-year old YS particularly worries me. If the doorbell rings, he runs to the front door and assumes the Weaver stance to "shoot" whoever is behind the door. I don't think 5 waking minutes goes by without YS making one of his three favorite sound effects:
1) "shpew!" - his shooting noise. This is usually preceeded by favorite sound effect #2.
2) "chk-chk" - the sound he makes like he's pulling the slide back on a semi-automatic weapon and chambering a round (followed soon thereafter by assuming the Weaver stance and sound effect #1, or running into another room holding his hands in a two-handed pistol-grip).
3) "ching-ching-ching" - the sound he imitates from Age of Empires for swords clanging in a sword fight. This sound effect is evoked with chopsticks at a Chinese restaurant, or drinking straws at just about any other restaurant, or a Halloween pencil he got at the fall festival.

Tonight, LW made some awesome huevos rancheros for dinner. One of the boys looked at the shredded cheese on his plate and said, "Look! It's a gun!" Somehow three pieces of shredded cheese laying on his plate looked like a gun to him. LW and I asked them why they couldn't say it looked like a tree or a flower, and ES giggled because the thought we were being pretty silly. LW says she wants to have one day of nothing but Barbie dolls, no guns allowed, but quickly realized they would somehow convert the Barbie dolls into guns.

BTW - Have I mentioned that LW has started making comments how she wishes we had a girl so there would be someone in the family who would be excited about going shopping with her? I asked her if she really wanted to go back to poopy diapers. She said no. We agreed two kids was enough for us. The two we have are a handful as it is, and it's not worth the health risk to LW after her past two C-sections.

I feel like LW and I have become broken records - "Stop that! No shooting Mommy / Daddy!" "ES/YS, we don't shoot people, that's not nice!"

I sincerely hope that my theory about obsessing with things that go bang is correct, and that over time the boys' obsession will mature into interest in things like engines that harness the "bang" to do something productive instead of destructive.

There is a silver lining of sorts: At least when we're in busy department stores (NEX, Hilo Hatties...), it's not hard to find our boys. Stealthy they are not. If you hear "chk-chk", that's generally a warning that somebody is being snuck-up on and about to be "shpewed."

Role Reversals

Warning: Long, rambling post ahead.

Get a cup of coffee and make yourself comforatble...

Observations on how my relationships have changed with my eldest son (ES) and youngest son (YS) over the past few years cycling between sea duty and shore duty (with a few tangents here and there):

My ES was only 9 months old when I reported to my department head tour. Over the course of the next 3 years, I spent 50% of my time out at sea, and when I was in port I was working very long hours. I joke with LW that I would have enjoyed actually "living" in San Diego. Occasionally I poked my head up through the hatch and looked across the bay at the downtown San Diego skyline. I'd say to myself, "Self, you live in San Diego! What a great place to live!" LW and ES had a ball with annual passes to Sea World, the Zoo, Legoland, etc. I didn't really realize just how much I missed until our follow-on shore duty.

My favorite picture of LW and ES from during one of my first WESTPAC runs.

I did, however, notice that ES didn't recognize me when LW and ES flew out to meet me for a port call in Pearl Harbor in 2002. That hurt a little. It took him a few hours before he warmed up and stopped treating me like I was a stranger. After that, I started making videos of myself doing things with ES - reading stories, doing puzzles, drawing pictures, etc, so that when I was gone, LW could play the videos and he wouldn't forget me again. LW called it "Daddy TV" and said it was a wonderful respite that allowed her to take a shower without interruption. Later when I returned home from a long time out at sea, ES came running up to me on the pier and clearly remembered me well. Even so, I still didn't quite realize just how much of his growth and development I missed.

My family shortly after arrival in DC for Shore Duty

When I reported to my desk job in the DC suburbs, ES was 3 years old, and YS was only 9 months old. Over the course of the next 2 years, I spent a LOT of time with my family. I mean, when I finished my dept head tour, I had like 69 days of leave on the books. When I left my cushy desk job two years later, I had like 9 days of leave on the books. Take a moment to consider what that means. In those two years, I earned 2.5 days per month x 24 months = 60 days of leave earned, plus the 69 days I already had on the books comes out to an inventory of 129 days of leave. I left with 9 days of leave. That means I had to take 120 days of leave in two years!!! That was AWESOME!!! (Orlando, Boston, Lake Winnipesaukee, San Diego, Orlando, Aruba, Lake Winnipesaukee...) But anyway, I digress...

I spent my last three months on the boat out at sea, so LW flew out to DC, bought a house, had the household goods delivered, and got settled in over the summer. When I flew to DC to rejoin my family and walked into 9-month-old YS's room, he took one look at me... turned around and took off crawling away from me (he wasn't crawling when I last saw him in San Diego). So during those two years of shore duty, I saw my YS crawl for the first time, learn to walk, learn to talk, and learn to run. That really drove home to me how much I had missed of ES's development while I was on sea duty.

It also shaped the relationships in our family. ES was a total Mommy's boy and had to have Mommy do everything for him. YS was a total Daddy's boy and had to have Daddy do everything for him. I mean, if YS fell and got a boo-boo and LW was standing there right next to him and I was all the way on the opposite side of the house, YS would run crying PAST LW to seek me out for consolation. I guess I got used to this paradigm in our relationships (LW & ES, me & YS) and just assumed that's the way things would stay.


YS and Daddy in the pool at Lake Winnepesaukee

YS and Daddy hiking in Northern Virginia

...Then I was a geobachelor for 10 months...

When I left for sub school, I thought I was only going for a couple of months and then we'd be back together again. I had orders to a boomer out of Bangor. I was going to finish sub school just before the holidays, enjoy a nice drive across country with my family and spend Christmas with LW's family. I was going to go to a month-long school in Bangor. Then the boat I was going to was going to be in drydock for a while, so I wasn't going to be away from my family for long.

Homecoming Hug
(7 months after leaving for sub school)

Well, the Lord had other plans in mind for me. A couple of weeks into sub school, one of my classmates quit, and I got an ORDMOD (orders modification) sending me to the MSP. So after sub school, I spent a weekend and had a pretend-Christmas with my family and then flew out to meet the boat on deployment. We were on deployment for another four months after that, so there was no point in LW and the boys uprooting from our house, friends, school, and church in DC and moving to Norfolk. Then, after our return to Norfolk, we were only there for 3 months before we left to do our homeport change to Pearl Harbor, so again there was no reason for my family to move to Norfolk. Besides, we ended up getting sent to Kings Bay to offload our deployment weapons in order to support doing 2 weeks of midshipman ops (that's another story for another post), so we weren't around Norfolk much at all before commencing our month-long transit to Pearl Harbor.

ATTENTION! I'm finally getting to the POINT of why I started this post!

So following 10 months of being apart, I'm now reunited with my family in Pearl Harbor, and I have been observing that there has been a role reversal between ES and YS. Now YS wants MOMMY to do EVERYTHING - console him when he gets hurt, read stories, brush his teeth, say bedtime prayers, put him to bed. He will be right next to me as we walk up to a cross-walk, but when it's time to hold someone's hand to cross the street, he will leave my side and run back to LW to hold HER hand instead of mine. He's even gone so far as to refuse to let me buckle him into his carseat on occasion.

Looking back and trying to think about it from the boys' perspective... When we went to shore duty, ES was used to me being gone and relying on LW for everything. For YS, at the beginning of shore duty, I think he just all of a sudden found this adult who doted on him and that he didn't have to fight with ES for attention (because ES was so reliant on LW). By the end of shore duty, I don't think YS remembered me ever going away. We went to shore duty when he was 9 months old and for the next two years I came home almost every night, and he grew very close to me. I suspect the 10 months of sub school, deployment, and geobacheloring kind of betrayed the trust that YS had in me. He learned he couldn't rely on me and shifted his dependence to LW.

ES on the other hand has become very huggy and cuddly with me. He wants ME to sit next to him at dinner. When YS goes running back to grab LW's hand to cross the street, ES comes running forward to hold my hand. I find that ES is now at an age where he is just soaking up knowledge like a sponge and is interested in all sorts of cool stuff. He brings home library books about Apache helicopters and cruisers and stealth bombers for us to read. He's become obsessed with snorkeling lately, and it's been really cool going snorkeling with him. He wanted me to take him to his very first Tiger Scout den meeting on Tuesday night. That was awesome. We had a great time together. How did I get to be the dad of a 6-year old anyway?!?!

Aside: As part of the first Tiger Scout meeting, each of the boys had to fill out a short survey about themselves, then get up and read it in front of the group to introduce themselves. I was very proud of ES for getting up there and doing the introduction. That is NOT his forte. He's normally very shy around people he doesn't know. So I was very happy that he actually got up there in front of the other boys and read his sheet:

Name: ES
Partner's name: Kevin (in Tiger Scouts each kid has to have a parent there with them)
I joined Tiger Scouts because: I want the snorkeling badge.
My favorite food is: Candy.
My favorite TV show is: Sponge Bob.
My favorite sport or activity is: Snorkeling. (I was both very surprised and very proud of him for NOT writing "video games.")

Anyway, it seems ES and YS have swapped roles / favored parental units from shore duty to now. Don't get me wrong. It's not like YS doesn't love me or do things with me anymore, but he definitely favors LW now. While I miss the previous relationship I had with YS, LW is happy that he no longer treats her like chopped liver. I'm excited to have this time with ES to do things like snorkeling and Tiger Scouts. I'm also curious how future transfers will impact my family relationships.

Best Friends

My heart aches for my boys right now. I have been through the experience of moving away from my best friend many times over the years. I remember how sad I was - especially the first few times. Over the years, I guess I sort of got used to it and learned to accept it as a part of life.

The first best friend I remember was Eric Olsen. He lived 5 houses down from me in Chula Vista, CA and we were like two peas in a pod from Kindergarten through 2nd grade. His dad was a Navy helicopter pilot. At the end of 2nd grade, we moved up to San Pedro, just outside of LA (about 2 hours north of San Diego). I saw Eric once after that, when his mom brought him up for a visit, but we were too young to really keep in touch via mail or phone.

Next, up in Long Beach, my best friend was Stephen Bruce. I think we met in like 5th or 6th grade. His dad was on the USS NEW JERSEY. Of course, at the end of 6th grade, we moved BACK to San Diego (and my previous San Diego pal Eric had since moved to the east coast). Stephen came to visit me once down in San Diego, and we were climbing a tree in my backyard when he fell. It really did some bad stuff to his vertebrae and he was in a back brace for like 6 months after that. I did keep in touch with Stephen for a while after he transfered to Norfolk. His dad retired out there, too. When I went to Norfolk for a midshipman cruise in '93, I looked him up and actually got to pay his family a visit.

In 8th through 10th grade, it was Jimmy Osbourne in San Diego. Jimmy had a very long-lasting impact on me. It was Jimmy who got me to listen to 91X (radio station in San Diego) and to appreciate Depeche Mode, the Cure, New Order, Oingo Boingo, among many many other bands. I went to my very first concert with Jimmy - Oingo Boingo at the San Diego Sports Arena in 1986. We went to many more concerts together after that. Then I moved to Oregon. I have still had a chance to see Jimmy on and off over the years. Our moms are friends, so I still get updates on how he's doing.

I don't keep in touch with anyone from high school in Oregon. I was kind of a social outcast there. Most of my classmates had grown up going to school together since Kindergarten, so they weren't sure about this dude who just moved there from California.

As an adult, I've done a little better keeping in touch with friends, although the PCS moves and resultant goodbyes still accumulate. We have a handful of friends who we are very close with, and thanks to the wonders of the internet, we're able to keep in touch with across country and around the world. We continue to hope that our next transfer will take us back to being in close proximity to some of our old friends from previous duty stations.

Anyway, getting back to the point - Our neighbors across the street had two little boys the same ages as our two boys. The boys were inseparable and very close friends. They're leaving this weekend for their new duty station in Norfolk. We had dinner with them one last time last night at P.F. Changs, and it was a difficult and sad goodbye. Here's a pic of the last hugs goodbye (in front of the P.F. Changs horse) before we parted ways.