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?