Concessions - follow-up

There's something bizarre and wrong in the universe this weekend. I mean, Navy beat Notre Dame (first time in 44 years!). Then there's this bizarre weather we've been having. Granted, living here in Hawaii for three months by no means makes me any sort of an expert on life or weather patterns in Hawaii. Still, the weather has been the same every day for the past three months. Then this week it rained a bit more than we were used to. Then last night and today it's just been pouring buckets, to the point of waking LW and I up several times in the night because of the loud roar coming from the roof. Plus, it's the first time we've observed thunder and lightning here.

Based on Future Chaps' recommendation, and our lack of motivation to go out in the rain this morning, we decided to try the evening church service at FPC. The music was good (contemporary Christian), and I enjoyed the message that Jordan shared with us setting the stage for the story of Noah's Ark (he's doing a series on Genesis).

However, going back to the kids' influence on choosing a church... There attendance at the evening service was like 25 people (compared to hundreds in the morning), and there was nobody in the Sunday school area downstairs. One nice lady offered to take our boys down there, but they didn't want to go because (a) there weren't any other kids there, and (b) they had no idea who this lady was who was offering to take them away.

So both boys stayed with us in the sanctuary. They started out behaving okay, but got progressively worse. I thought a major fight was going to break out when YS kicked ES's flip flops down the aisle. In retaliation, ES proceeded to angrily and forcefully STOMP on top of both of YS's feet. We separated them, but then ES was kicking the backs of the chairs in front of us, and YS was wandering up and down the aisle with his precious blue blanket draped over his head like a ghost. Some of the people sitting next to the aisle a few rows in either direction were giggling watching him.

We eventually gave up and left the service early because the boys were just spiraling out of control. So I think we'll stick with the concession on the music aspect and go back to the morning service where at least ES will go willingly into the Sunday school, and we can work on getting YS to know the people there so he'll go, too.

Focal points in history

Back in Monterey, Professor Teti liked talking about focal points in history - where the actions of one man altered the course of history. His favorite example was Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain with the 20th Maine on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. Out of ammunition and with the Confederate troops making another attempt to take the hill, Chamberlain ordered his men to fix bayonets and charge down the hill. If he hadn't, the Confederates would have turned the Union flank and the Battle of Gettysburg and the entire Civil War would have turned out differently.

What made me think of it was reading this excellent post on the Battle of Guadalcanal. One Marine held the ridge. One ship got the Japanese fleet to retreat. What a great story in U.S. history.


My second boat, USS HELENA, was named after a cruiser that was sunk in the Battle of the Kula Gulf in the Solomon Islands. Almost exactly 60 years after the battle, we were steaming through the Solomon Islands toward an exercise with the Australians and a port call in Brisbane, Australia. We wanted to conduct an innocent passage transit through the Solomon Islands and lay a wreath in the Kula Gulf in remembrance of the cruiser HELENA. CTF-74 (commander of submarines in the Western Pacific) initially approved our request, but then the lawyers said no. I never understood that. I don't think anyone could argue our holding a memorial service at sea could in any way be "prejudicial to the peace, good order, or security" of the Solomon Islands. If the previous HELENA hadn't been there in 1943, the people of the Solomon Islands would all be speaking Japanese, so why would they have any objection to our remembering the sacrifice of those who went there before us? We still surfaced and held a memorial service on the bridge and laid the wreath - even though we were like 50 miles out to sea from the actual site of the battle.

We had a great little book in our wardroom that told the tale of the Battle of the Kula Gulf. It's interesting to read about the difference in command and control back then, before satellite communications or Link 11 or OTCIXS or AIS. Those ships went into battle in the pitch black of night, and they weren't really sure what toll the battle had taken until it was all over and they did roll call. The radioman on the flagship called out for a response and damage report from each of the ships in the task force. "USS SAINT LOUIS" Roger. "USS NICHOLAS" Roger. "USS HELENA..." Silence. "USS HELENA..." Silence. "USS HELENA...?" Silence. It wasn't until the roll call after the battle was over that they discovered the HELENA had been sunk, and then went in to rescue the survivors.

Week in review

Here's a smattering of random observations from this last week:

PRT - Considering I had a deep chest-cough, nasty boat-crud cold for the past two weeks, I was pretty pleased with my results on the Physical Readiness Test (PRT) this week. I was still coughing a bit the morning of the PRT, but I managed to crank out 85 situps, 65 pushups, and did the 1.5 mile run in 13:22 (just a smidge under a 9-minute per mile pace). That's pretty good for me. (For my age group, I have to do 40 situps, 33 pushups, and finish the run in 14:45 to pass).

My Disappointment with McD's: To celebrate the completion of the PRT, I felt the urge to go to Micky-D's for breakfast and get something really bad for me. I suddenly had a craving and zoomed on over to the McD's drive through and ordered a chicken biscuit. The lady on the drive-through microphone said, "A what?" A chicken biscuit. "Uhhh, I'm sorry, but we don't have those here." You WHAT?!?!?!?! What sort of anti-American pinko-commie type of establishment are they running on this base?!?! My LW reminded me that we're not in Virginia anymore. I guess the chicken biscuits are a "southern" thing? Well, at least they have haupia pie here.

The Wise Old O-6 in Action: I had the opportunity to attend my second meeting with the Wise Old O-6. Man, that was like watching a bull in a china shop. He's very different than what I expected from the rumor mill. I expected a screamer, and he's not (at least I haven't seen it in my two meetings with him so far). He's actually very calm, very polite, and extremely professional, and I've gained a great deal of respect for him. He just does not accept any non-commital or open-ended answers and asks very good, laser-guided questions. I have to thank my first CO on my DH tour for training me to never accept the proverbial "they said..." or "they're working on it" without knowing exactly who "they" were and exactly WHEN they promised it would be done. I put those management techniques to use during SRA in San Diego dealing with multiple contractor organizations ripping out our radio room and installing the HDR mast (there's a handful of future blog posts to come right there).

The Barge: LW and the Boys came down to check out the barge. I figured they'd like to see it while we're on the sub base side of the harbor. Once they move us over to the shipyard side, then I won't be able to bring them inside the Controlled Industrial Area (CIA). Before EP reports me for a security violation, don't worry - the screen saver on the computer was locked, so ES is staring intently at a locked computer. I took a great picture of LW laying on the couch in my stateroom on the barge, but she won't let me post it.

Get Sirius: Have I mentioned how glad I am to have Dish Network back? I think I might have mentioned that once or twice. One of the reasons I'm glad to have it back is to have Sirius satellite radio back. I never even thought twice about XM or Sirius at first. Then one day, Sirius partnered up with Dish Network, and all of a sudden, the Sirius music channels were available on my Dish Network receivers. I found that I really liked channel 22 (First Wave). Their Contemporary Christian channel 66 (Spirit) is good, too, but not as good as KLOVE. For Father's Day a couple of years ago, LW got me these awesome wireless outdoor speakers that I mounted on our back deck. They got their signal from the Dish Network receiver, so I could tune it in to First Wave and listen to music out on our back deck while we were barbecuing or eating dinner. A few nights ago, I went to bed early in preparation for getting up for the PRT, and I was able to turn on First Wave in our bedroom. The very first song that came on was one of my old favorites from The Cure, and it was really nice to go to sleep with Sirius.

Save the Cheerleader, Save the World: I finished watching the last episode of Heroes Season One last night. What a great show! I really like Hiro Nakamura. Last weekend, I did a mad rush to record all of this season's HIMYM and Heroes onto DVD before the local cable company came to retrieve their lame DVR cable boxes. I think I successfully transfered them all to DVD. I look forward to seeing what happens to Hiro in Kyoto.

Kryptonite

So, as some of you know, I suffer from migraine headaches. I mean, we're talking down-for-the-count, totally-incapacitated, and unable to accomplish anything when I get hit by one. I've had them at least since 3rd grade.

Luckily, I have discovered the triggers that cause them. It took years of pattern analysis, mainly by tracking what I ate immediately prior to getting the headache. The two biggest culprits for me are MSG and Splenda (which, I found out the hard way is sometimes listed as "sucralose" in ingredients).

The way I figured out the MSG was when we were in Monterey, there used to be this little Thai food cart that set up in the courtyard outside Root Hall. I developed a very noticeable pattern there that every time I ate the Thai food, I had a raging headache by the time I went home in the afternoon. I tied that together with the fact that I frequently got headaches after eating Chinese food, and finally I figured it out it was MSG.

Also luckily, the docs finally found a drug that works pretty well. If I take Imitrex when I start feeling the pre-cursors (sensitivity to light and sound,and this weird feeling or "aura" around my head), then the Imitrex usually does the trick and either stops it from ever manifesting or gets me through it in 30 minutes or so. The problem I have is when I have something for dinner not realizing there was MSG in it and I go to bed, then I wake up with a migraine, and then it's too late and I'm suffering and miserable all morning.

Not-so-luckily, I have been finding MSG appearing in more and more types of food, and Splenda is becoming more and more popular in diet sodas and other "healthy" eating alternatives. As a result, I have started seeking things that actually use sugar so I know it's not splenda, which in turn means I'm consuming more calories than I used to - not exactly helping my "culture of fitness" battle.

On the shore side, most places when I ask if they have MSG in the food or Splenda in their Diet Coke, the waitress will look at me like I've got three heads. I've found that (a) it's not worth the hassle of asking them because they never know the answer, and (b) it's not worth the risk when they tell me the wrong answer (intentionally or not) and I end up knocked out of commission for a half a day.

I used to love going to Jamba Juice all the time in San Diego, and I was really excited to find Jamba Juice here in Hawaii... but I think they must have Splenda in the non-fat frozen yogurt they use, because I've gotten a headache most times I've gone there since arriving in Hawaii. Once I suspected it, I asked someone at the store if they had Splenda in it, and the girl behind the counter said no, but I still got a headache. Bye-bye Jamba Juice. :-(

It used to be safe on the boat. I went an entire 6-month deployment without a food-induced migraine (the worst headache I had in Chin Hae, Korea, came after a night out with a Korean submarine wardroom, but that's another long story). When I got on the MSP though, I spent like three days in total agony. It really pissed me off and I went to the Chop and the CSC (chief cook) and said, "Look, SOMETHING you guys are cooking with has either MSG or Splenda in it. FIND IT!" Well, wouldn't ya know it? Both the beef base and the chicken base they were using for ALL the soups and many of the other things they cooked had MSG in it. Plus, you know how the CS's (Culinary Specialists - formerly known as MS or Mess Specialists) take the leftovers from lunch and/or dinner and mush them together into some casserole for midrats? Yeah, they use the beef base or the chicken base to sort of add moisture and hold the stuff together, so most midrats were off limits for me. Luckily, once we identified that, the CS's were very good about briefing me at the beginning of each meal on which items they used the beef or chicken base so I wouldn't eat them. Once or twice it resulted in me only getting to eat cake and ice cream for dinner because there wasn't anything else that didn't have MSG in it. (Once again, oh-so-helpful in my "culture of fitness" battle).

As a result though, the guys on the boat now refer to MSG as "XO Kryptonite." At least one of my JOs (Mark) has learned to recognize the facial expression I make when I'm in agony and battling through a headache. It has even become the theme of our next official wardroom function. The Captain is hosting an MSG party. That is to say, a "MSP Social Gathering." The theme is everything MSG except for monosodium glutamate. The Captain plans to serve MSG's, or Mai-Tai's in Small Glasses. I was thinking about making some Mango San Gria. Given my affinity for Mexican food, I suggested we have Mole Salsa and Guacamole. Or maybe some Mini Steamed Gnocci? Anyone got any other good "MSG" ideas for the party?

Happy Halloween

Okay, first of all, what the HECK was up with traffic here yesterday and today??? It was like some bizarre alignment of the planets or disturbance in the gravitational field resulted in near-gridlock conditions around Pearl Harbor yesterday and today. Normally, it takes about 10 minutes to drive from ES's school to our house. We left his school after his piano lesson got out yesterday around 4:40, and by 5:15, we still hadn't even made it to the Makalapa Gate yet (only like a third of the way home). I stuck my cell phone out the window and took the picture on the left to help pass the time as I was bored out of my skull sitting there listening to ES complain about how hungry he was. Of course, we were in my car with no DVD player, so there wasn't anything to really entertain him as we SAT there. I tried working up a conversation with him, but it was the fairly typical, "What'd you do at school today?" "Nothing." At least I already knew they went on a field trip to the fire department that day, so I could ask him specific questions about the fire department. By the time we got the Makalapa Gate, I said to myself, "Self, this is absolutely ridiculous, let's get some dinner and wait out the traffic." So I called LW (she was like 5 cars in front of me) and we turned right at the Makalapa Gate and went to Sam Sneads to get some dinner and watch the traffic go by. By the time we left dinner at around 6:30, it was still congested and took us another 20 minute to get home.

This afternoon it was a little bit better, but not by much. It normally takes about 6 minutes to drive from my house to the boat or vice versa (via the Halawa Gate). I can do it on my bicycle in 12 minutes. This afternoon it took me 30 minutes. Yep, you read that right - I could've JOGGED and gotten home faster than I did in my car!

Today the rain might have been a factor. It has been raining cats and dogs and buffalo and sheep and elephants all day here. I snapped the picture on the right of the gushing water from our rain gutter on my way into the house.

So I just barely made it home in time to help get the boys in their costumes and leave for the Halloween kick-off at the community center in our Navy housing area. ES was a soldier. If you asked YS what he was, he would have told you, "my favorite Luke." You might have to have some experience playing the Lego Star Wars video game to understand this. As you get through each level of Lego Star Wars, you unlock different characters you can use with different skills or weapons. There are like five different versions of Luke Skywalker in the game - the original Luke with a blaster and no Jedi powers, the Hoth ice planet Luke, and others. YS's favorite character on Lego Star Wars is the Luke in all black with the green lightsaber and Jedi powers. So he dressed up as his "favorite Luke" for Halloween. Special thanks to my MIL ("Grammy") for making the black cape to go with the costume.

It still rained on us a bit while we were at the community center. We had a costume parade around the basketball courts so everyone could see the costumes. They handed out glowing necklaces to put on the kids so they'd be easier to see in the dark. There were some really cute costumes there. Two families had their twins dressed up as Thing #1 and Thing #2 of Dr. Suess / Cat-in-the-Hat fame. Actually, in the picture on the left, you can see the lady in the orange shirt holding Thing #1 (you can't miss the red suit and bright blue hair), and the dad to the right of the umbrellas holding Thing #2 in one arm and holding the hand of the Cat-in-the-Hat on his other arm. There was a really good Gandolf costume (the mostly white appearing costume on the right side of the picture), Chewbacca, two ladybugs, and a really cute Little Mermaid. Pirates were a pretty popular costume across the board, but no two pirates looked exactly alike. Much to my surprise, the most common costume I saw was Joe Dirt. There were three Joe Dirt costumes that I saw.

The best part though was when Darth Vader showed up with his red light saber. YS just lit up with glee as he got to play his favorite Luke and have a light saber duel with Darth Vader. They went at it for quite a while and had an absolute ball. If you can open the second picture below, check out how big the smile is on YS's face!

"A-haaa! I've got you now!
Wait a minute... aren't you a little young to be my father???"

I hope you all had a Happy Halloween!

'Tis the season

Yep, it's that time of year again, folks. Drive onto any Navy base any morning in the fall or spring, and you'll see large groups of sailors in PT gear gathering on the athletic fields to do their pushups, situps, and running their one and a half miles for the PRT.

I have earnestly embraced the culture of fitness and I'm working on breaking the cycle I have gone through each sea and shore tour. In case you didn't know, being on a submarine is not exactly conducive to staying in shape. The food is fattening (at least the food that tastes good is fattening - there are no healthy alternatives that are enjoyable to eat), and there's very limited resources for exercise - limited both in time-off and in available space or equipment. On a typical 688-class submarine, I think you'll be lucky to find one or two exercise bikes, and maybe a rowing machine or a stairmaster. On the MSP, this is the first boat I've been on that actually has a treadmill.

When I left college, I was in decent shape. I was never a PT stud. My roommates in college always made me sick. They were on the 3-mile-per-year running program. In other words, they would merely show up at the PRT twice per year and run their 1.5 miles in like 10 or 11 minutes without any sort of preparation. I'm not a fast runner, and I've always had to get out there running regularly at least a few weeks before the PRT in order to get a passing run time.

Over the course of 42 months of my JO sea tour, I pretty much never exercised when we were underway. When I was standing 3-section watch, I just valued my sleep too much. Do your pre-watch tour, eat, stand watch for 6 hours, eat, do after watch reconstruct for a few hours (that was back in the day of paper plots and drawing by hand a reconstructed geoplot of what happened during your watch - man I feel old) , attend training, do your divisional paperwork, do your radcon audits and surveillances, do your training binders, review your PMS schedules, resolve whatever other crisis-du-jour had arisen, try to get 5 hours of sleep, pre-watch tour, eat, go back on watch. I think back then the "health nuts" would sacrifice some of their sleep in order to go exercise, but it just wasn't worth it to me then. Then there's the fact we had a prior-served White House chef in the galley, and the food was pretty darn good! By the time I finished my JO sea tour, I had gained 25 pounds from my college weight.

Then we went to Monterey. Whoa! Real quick tangent here...

For any of you reading this and wondering where to go for shore duty, GO TO MONTEREY!!! I mean, seriously, you get PAID the salary of a LT (or higher if you go later) to go to SCHOOL full time and get a FREE masters degree. It's more than that though - it's the LIFESTYLE! You sign up for which classes you're going to take each quarter, so you have some control over your schedule. I generally organized it so that I had a class from 8 to 10, then I went to the gym from 10 to 12 (including changing and showering, etc), then I had lunch from 12 to 1 p.m., then I had a 1 to 3 p.m. class, and then I went home. Better yet, classes were Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday. Fridays were for labs, so if you were in a non-engineering program (like, say, National Security Affairs), that meant no labs, so you had every Friday off. The engineering students referred to NSA as "No Studying Allowed". We called it the "book of the night club" because it was like, "Here, read this 300 page history book in two nights and be ready to discuss it at our next class." There's a great paved bike path all up and down the coastline through Monterey, and I loved going for long bike rides around Pacific Grove. We also did a lot of scuba diving there. I was already scuba certified, and LW got certified there. So if you think you're going to stay in the Navy for another sea tour anyway, why bother taking your chances on "the slate"? If you sign up for NPS, you're in! No questions or uncertainty in where you're going (and I highly doubt they'll pull any one out of NPS to go on an IA assignment).

Anyway, getting back to my point... By the end of my first shore tour, I had gotten back into good shape and got my weight back down to my college weight.

Then I went to sea duty again. It was immediately after 9-11 and everyone was lobbing tomahawks into Afghanistan or Iraq (except for us - somebody had to make sure things stayed calm and under control in other parts of the world). I spent 55% of my second sea tour out at sea and crossed the international dateline into Westpac 3 times in 3 years. During the time I was in port, I was working 12-hour days 6-days a week on average. Luckily for me, my CO had embraced the culture of fitness back then, and we had Command PT built into our in-port routine two or three days per week. That helped keep my weight in check, but wasn't quite enough given the amount of time we spent at sea and the lack of time for exercising at sea. So by the end of my three years as a DH, I had regained those 25 pounds I lost during shore duty and was back to my previous sea duty weight.

Then I went to NRO. Wow. What an absolutely awesome place to work! Not just in terms of the really cool super-secret stuff that I can't tell you about, but also in terms of facilities. They have an awesome gym there and you can sign up for a free personal trainer or any one of a number of free workout classes. There are a lot of nice trails outside for running through the beautiful parks of Northern Virginia when the weather is nice, or there's a couple of dozen treadmills to use when it's not so nice out. In the cafeteria, they had a salad bar like a mile long with dozens of fresh fruits and vegetables. I actually ENJOYED eating salad for lunch there almost every day (I had a weakness for Mexican day - I know that comes as a big surprise to those of you who know me well). My last PRT I ran before leaving DC, I made my best 1.5 mile run time ever - even better than when I was a midshipman! And... I lost those 25 pounds and was back at my college weight again.

Leaving shore duty to head to Groton for sub school and back to sea duty again, I dreaded what would happen to my physical shape. LW got me this awesome Polar heartrate monitor watch, and it does a fitness test that measures out in VO2. Leaving shore duty, my fitness test VO2 level was 48. In spite of the 12-hour days at sub school, I tried to go to the gym and run on the indoor track several times per week, so my fitness test only dropped to 44 by the end of sub school. Then I flew out to meet the MSP on deployment and went into the vampire routine on mission. I was CDO on the midwatch every night and in or near the control room most of the time, so I didn't exercise. By the end of deployment my fitness test score was down to 25 and I had gained back my sea-duty weight (turns out my metabolism has not improved with age), and not happy with my level of physical fitness. So I started pushing hard to get back in shape again. I made an effort to get to the gym in port, or use the treadmill or exercise bike at sea. I was a geobachelor then, so I tried to eat-right with healthy snacks and dinners. By the time we left Norfolk in July for our change of homeport to Pearl Harbor, my fitness test was back up to 37. My goal for the transit from Norfolk to Pearl Harbor was to run at least 3 miles per day on the treadmill. I almost made it. The ONLY day I DIDN'T run was the day we went through the Panama Canal, and I think that's a fairly good excuse. By the time we arrived in Pearl Harbor, my fitness score was up to 45.

Now, I'm working hard to maintain it. Thanks to the example set by my CO on my DH tour though, I saw that it was feasible to put Command PT into a normal in-port routine. So the COB and I have put Command PT into the MSP's in port routine to promote the Navy's culture of fitness. I think our Command PT program has been a pretty good success. I get lots of good feedback about it from the crew. We muster up three times per week and the COB leads us in warm-up exercises, then we go for a run around the base (sometimes we get some other guys to volunteer as guest PT leaders). Guys who want to swim instead can go to the pool right by where we do our warm-up exercises. It has really worked out well for us over the past three months here in Pearl Harbor. I just hope we can continue to keep it up through the shipyard.

Concessions - an ironic full circle

Whenever we move to a new duty station, we go through the experience of trying to find a new church home. This task was much easier before we had kids. When it was just the two of us, it was easy to go to a different church every week for several weeks until we decide which one to stick with. With kids though, it takes several weeks of going to a church before they start to recognize the Sunday school teachers and the other kids in the class and start to feel comfortable with you leaving them there. So each time we just visit a church to "check it out," it's nearly impossible to get the boys to stay in the Sunday school and they would frequently end up in the sanctuary with us.

We don't claim to be members of any given denomination of church. It varies from one duty station to the next. I was raised going to a Lutheran church, and LW was raised going to a Congregationalist church. I went to a Catholic university, and as a result, I had to take 9 units of religious studies in order to graduate.

Warning! Tangent ahead...

Both the best and the worst class I took in religious studies was "Christianity and Its Practice." This class was all about the different denominations of Christianity. Each week, we studied a different denomination, and each weekend we attended a church service at that type of church. The following week, we would write a paper about that church and what we learned from the experience. So, for example, one week we studied the Baptist Church, then went to a worship service at a Baptist Church that Sunday. The next week we would write our paper on the Baptist church while we also studied the Episcopal church in preparation for the following Sunday, and so on and so forth... From that standpoint, it was an AWESOME class. I enjoyed it tremendously and learned a lot about different practices and traditions in Christianity. It was a great class.

I say it was both the best and the worst class I took in religious studies because of the Catholic priest who taught the class and his spin on the class content. He claimed that the class was all about ecumenism, which sounds good and noble. However, the way he presented his introduction to each "branch" of the church was like this: "Here is the history of when and what caused this branch of the church to break away from us, the true church. This is what's wrong with their beliefs and what they have to do in order to come back and rejoin us in the true church." He just came across very pretentious and snobby. Also, when I wrote my weekly papers, I refused to spew the Vatican theology on what was wrong with that church, so I got a D in the class. Please don't take this the wrong way. I'm NOT bashing the Catholic church. I'm just bashing that one very close-minded priest, that's all.

Anyway, what got me on that tangent was thinking about what a great class it was to set me up for future PCS moves and finding a new church home in each duty station.

End of Tangent - Resuming My Original Line of Thought.

So when I was on my JO tour in Groton, I found a church home in Old Mystic Baptist Church (OMBC). OMBC is an "American Baptist" church, which I would have told you back then was a more traditional-hymn, low-key type of church and did not appear at all like what I thought a stereotypical baptist church was.

After LW and I first met, we spent every weekend together. In fact, the first weekend we met, I took her with me to OMBC on Sunday morning. If I didn't have duty on the weekend, then I'd go up to Boston and we'd go to Park Street Church. If I had duty on the weekend, then she'd come down to Groton and we'd go to OMBC.

Aside: This was back in the days before terrorist threats when LW could show a bag of Boston Market food to the gate guard and say, "My boyfriend is the duty officer on the PROVIDENCE," and the gate guard would say, "Okay, have a nice time," and let her through the gate.

In any case, the style of the two churches was very similar (traditional hymns, similar worship service format and prayers, etc) and we each felt comfortable in either church.

After we got married, our next duty station was Monterey. We tried several churches there, but none ever felt "right" to us. We became very good friends with our neighbors Steve & Kim, though. They introduced us to KLOVE (for which I am and will be eternally grateful), and they also invited us to their church, FPC (First Presbyterian Church) in Salinas. Having grown up with traditional hymns played on an organ, I was a little uncomfortable with the contemporary Christian music at FPC. I mean, it just seemed WRONG to have electric guitars and drums in CHURCH. However, we really enjoyed the worship service overall, and the fellowship we shared with Steve & Kim. So we made a concession to "get over" or "put up with" the contemporary music at FPC for the rest of our time in Monterey.

Now, to FPC's credit - they played a mixture of traditional hymns and contemporary music. After a couple of years of listening to KLOVE and going to FPC, it had grown on me. When we got to our next duty station in San Diego, we went to Eastlake Church. Eastlake Church is ALL contemporary music, and I loved it!

Then we went on to DC and found a church home with Christ Community Church (CCC) in Ashburn, VA. The music there was mostly contemporary with a few hymns thrown in here and there, and I loved it!

Now, here we are in Hawaii. We've decided to make our church home FPC in Kaneohe, but it came with another concession... it's all traditional hymns, NO contemporary music.

So why the concession (and hence the blog post)?

Going back to earlier in this post, I mentioned how "church-shopping" is a lot harder with kids than it was without them. So the kids play a large role in the decision. I wouldn't say we would choose a church solely based on the kids' liking it. If we did, I'm sure we'd find some Church of the Patron Saint of Legos and All Things Star Wars that served seventeen varieties of candy, cookies, and ice cream for snack and played video games all morning long. However, we would definitely NOT go to a church where the kids were NOT comfortable. So, in bubblehead terminology, I guess you could say it's a tripwire or a go/no-go criteria for us in finding a church home. Did that make sense? A better way of saying that using some of that college philosophy and logic class would be: The kids liking the church is necessary but not sufficient for us to choose it as our new church home.

So anyway, the fact that ES was almost immediately comfortable at FPC, and actually likes to go was an immediate big thumbs up for FPC. It was a big hurdle for us to get over so quickly in our search. I mean, it's not just that he doesn't protest us taking him there, but that when we didn't go last week he was asking us why we weren't going.

YS is a different story... It took us a long time to get him to stay in the nursery / pre-school at CCC back in VA. After many weeks of seeing the same people, he eventually grew to like staying there with Nanny. So far, he's refused for us to leave him in the pre-school at FPC. (I suspect part of this may go back to this thing about Daddy taking off for 10 months and betraying the trust he had built in me being there all the time on shore duty - see previous long rambling post on that topic). Luckily, FPC has these neat little bags set up for small children in the sanctuary with coloring books and crayons. This morning LW pointed out to me that we never would have put up with this with ES and we would have forced him to stay in the pre-school, so why were we being lazy with YS?

She had a point. There was no way we'd ever get him to go willingly until he felt comfortable with it. So this morning I went with YS to the pre-school class. I should have done an ORM worksheet for sitting in one of those teeny-tiny little kid chairs. Uncomfortable as it was, it was important for YS.

I sat there in that chair that was about a third as big as my butt and drew pictures for YS and held them up for him to see from his vantage point curled up in a ball in the hallway outside the classroom. I told him he was being a hermit-crab and drew a picture of a hermit crab for him.

Eventually, I went out in the hallway, picked him up and brought him into the classroom to sit with me. Soon the free-time was over though, and we sat down with the rest of the kids on the floor for the lesson. I was actually very impressed with the pre-school Sunday school teacher and the "regulars" in her class. There were at least a dozen kids there. She sang a little song about "It's time to read the Bible." Then she asked the kids, "How many parts are there in the Bible?" A loud chorus came from the kids, "TWO!"
"What's the first part called?"
"The OLD testament!"
"What's the second part called?"
"The NEW testament!"
"What's the OLD testament about?"
"God's people!"
"What's the NEW testament about?"
"Jesus!"
I thought that was pretty impressive from a group of 3 and 4 year old kids! She went on to cover a story about David as a shepherd from the old testament, and she used a story board to put up little pictures to illustrate the story. Then the kids all did an activity sheet where they put stickers of sheep behind David and a sticker of the shepherd's staff in David's hand. I think it'll be great for YS... once he gets to know the teacher.

Lest you think we're going to FPC just for the kids, Pastor Dan Chun is a great speaker and we've really enjoyed his sermons. He instantly made me feel at ease the first time we attended FPC, but that's another long story, and LW says I ramble too long and put people to sleep with such long posts. So I'll stop now and let you get back to doing something more important with your day.