Reflecting on this past year

As the year comes to a close, you find yourself reflecting on the past year. I am so thankful for such a wonderful family. They have gotten us through so much this past year. I am not going to dwell on the negative but just know that 2010 has so much to offer us right now. We are so looking forward to seeing our families again. Being able to attending family gatherings such as my nephew's up coming wedding. The boys being able to spend time with their cousins (both sides). I am gratful that Mark is home to stay, no more deployments on Coast Guard cutters. Our family is together again...forever. So as you all think back on this past year...be thankful for each other and your families. I sure am!

The Things We Are Looking Forward Too!!

Well since Mark is retiring we all have been thinking of all the things we are excited about when we move back down to the lower 48. Of course family is #1 on our list. To be able to spend the holidays with family will be beyond wonderful. We are definately looking forward to that the most. Then as we have been shopping ( I use that term loosely considering we are in Kodiak Alaska) the thought of going to more than just Wal-Mart has really got us excited. Internet shopping is ok, but actually going to the mall will be fun. I know I am absoultly going to HATE the traffic in the Seattle area, but I am sure as with most of our moves...I will adjust!

Restaurants are high on our "we can't wait for" list. More choices other than Henry's, Subway, Angelios, Mc D's (which we refuse to go too!). The thought of going to Olive Garden r Quizno's is just too much sometimes. 

Patrick is excited about actually going to a High School with a soccer program. I did tell him that the cheerleaders in the lower 48 are skinnier too! I know that is mean but remember we are in Alaska and you need to pack on some extra padding to stay warm up here! 

Going for a drive...actually going further than just 45 miles roundtrip! Speaking of roundtrip, it won't cost us our first born to actually take a plane trip. Here in Alaska it will cost us approximately $4000 to leave this rock! Not acceptable by any stretch!

While decorating for Christmas it was a mad dash to make sure we got our Christmas lights before Thanksgiving to ensure we actually get the lights. To go to Home Depot or Lowes to check out what they are carrying, or go to Rite Aide because they have inexpensive lights will be awesome!

Oil changes to came to mind the other day...Jiffy Lube!!! They really need one up here. A mechanic that actually has parts and can actually fix your vehicle within a few days in comparision to a few months!

Grocery shopping is a big one. It is so much cheaper in the lower 48 than here. When you go to the store and they are completly out of milk and bread and you have to wait for the barge to bring it in can be difficult at times. A person told me that once the stores get their turkeys in, grab two instead of one because there will be no guarantee that there will be any at Christmas. It is a must to have an extra feezer to store all of the things you need to buy when you see them or they will be gone!

We are heading for Anchorage this next week. It will be a day trip and we will be in a mad rush to get some Christmas gifts for the boys on our one trip we will be taking thanks to a medical follow-up appointment. Next year will be so much easier.

So the title of my blog is "The Things We Are Looking Forward Too" or should it be "The Little Things We Miss The Most". You decide!

Finally!!!!!

As the days continue to count down to Mark's retirement, we need to get over specific hurdles. Today we cleared one. I am thankful for a set of orders that came through. Mark no longer is attached to the MUNRO. When we first got orders to that ship, we were very excited about it. Considering all that has happened in the past year...we are very excited that he is finally off of it. Our count down to leaving Kodiak is 194 days, not that anyone is counting. Our next hurdle is TAPS class in January, which will give us a look into what we are to excpect for retirement. As I have told many people who have rallied in our corner, we are taking it one day at a time. The future is looking brighter everyday. As far as my anger, well it is still simmering, but now that Mark is no longer attached to that boat...I am sure it will fade even more. As long is he isn't around those people anymore, it makes us both happier. So that is the newest update. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is preparing for a wonderful Christmas season. By the way, if you have comments on any of my posts, feel free to post in the comment section. I don't believe you need a blog account, but you do need to sign up for a google ID. Happy Holidays!

The Final Choices!!!

These are the three pictures that have the most votes (I mean A LOT of votes). I am thinking the second one for the yearbook and the third one for family and friends.

Well that stinks!

While editing my latest post from November 2nd, it seems I have deleted it on accident. For those who saw it, you know what I said. For those who have been "lurking" in my blog, you also know what was said. Bottom line is I still hold a particular person responsible for making a great Coast Guardsman put in his retirement letter before HE was ready. I am still working on harnessing my rage I feel for the events of the past 11 months. I guess you could say it's still a work in progress. We recently went to the CCTI dinner. To listen to the speeches, I was really disappointed. You see they were talking about how the Chiefs were about to embark on a new adventure. That commands were going to look at them differently because they were Chiefs and there would be respect for those Chiefs by the commands they were serving. In theory that would be true. At every other unit Mark has served with as a Chief that was so true! What people need to understand is that these "senior enlisted" have so many years in the Coast Guard that they are there to mentor the junior enlisted and to teach the new young junior officers how things really work. Unfortunately, that is not the case here. I will say my prayers for the remaining Chiefs at this unit and hope that they come out of this unscathed.

We saw the Chaplain last week and he said I should forgive...at this point I just can not do that! Forgive a person who purposely targets people at his unit and makes sure they are forced to retire or make his life more difficult is hard to "forgive".

One particular passage the Chaplain read to us was Matthew 5:1-12a:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain,
and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him.
He began to teach them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the land.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you
and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
Rejoice and be glad,for your reward will be great in heaven.”

Father Dan felt that this particular Gospel of the Lord was very relevant to our situation. I was very much moved by this. I have to say that Father Dan is quite an asset to the Coast Guard. He has calmed me quite a bit. We have to be positive about our future. We take it one day at a time. That is all we can do at this time. We can not change what has happened, unfortunately. I guess that is what angers me the most at this point. There is just nothing that we can do.

We are slowly getting our belonging sorted through and downsizing. After 21 years of marriage we have been pretty good at keeping and throwing stuff out because of weight limits for our moves, but we have a pretty large storage shed full of our past and some of it needs to go. As most of you know, we are retiring back to the Seattle area. We look forward to our next chapter of our lives. We will be around family and friends there. As I said in my now deleted post, Mark and I have a strong marriage. We have been through a lot in our 21 years. We will take on this new adventure with as much enthusiasm as we did every time we transferred to new units. Again, I thank my friends and especially my family for being there for us. You all are wonderul people. We couldn't ask for more!

Munro in the news

I am posting this late but I wanted to make sure that my family and friends can see what is going on with the ship. So far this patrol is going good. My friend Emily and I were appointed as Ombudsman for the MUNRO. We are the link between the ship and the spouses. We are going to training next month and it should be fun.

In other news the boys are doing great in school. Matt is President of the band and he is trying to make sure that the cheerleaders, choir and everyone else is all on the same page. Being his Senior year he is enjoying it very much. Patrick is joining wrestling this year and he is very excited about that. He is also having fun in school. Last night was the bon fire and tonight Homecoming.

Anyway, here is the link http://uscgalaska.com/go/doc/780/322148/ check it out and see what the MUNRO has been up to since it left homeport!

Also, most importantly, the BLOG is up and running again.

http://uscgalaska.blogspot.com/

Enjoy your weekend!

It's That Time Again!!!

So yesterday was a rough day. You would think that after 21 years of being married to a Coastguardsman I would have gotten use to him getting underway. That is so not the case. I have to say looking back at when we were first married and he would leave I have gotten better in the crying department.I only did it twice this time. I guess what made it a little harder yesterday was the fact that Mark had OOD. His first "official" day. During this last in port he was a "break in" OOD. For those of you that are sitting there reading this going "what the heck is an OOD", it mean Officer of the Day. He is basically in charge of the whole ship. Anyway, so back to my little pity party...so because Mark had OOD, I had to drop him off at the ship around 6ish yesterday morning. To make matters a little worse, they were suppose to leave at 3 pm so liberty expired at 1pm. So others got to spend more time with their hubbies. Oh well, old news now I suppose. So I drove into town to get the boys, because they wanted to see their dad off and since they got out of school at 2pm I had plenty of time to go get them. We made it to the pier around 2:30pm just in time to give him one last quick (and I mean quick) kiss goodbye! The plan was to turn the ship around and do some weight testing on some thingymajigger. To make my long story shorter, they didn't actually leave the pier until 6pm! But I did get to chat with Mark in those 3 1/2 hours we waited. You see every since we were married and he has been on ship, our closure is seeing the ship leave. We have always watched, except for one time when Patrick had an ortho appointment and we missed it. I rememer when Matthew was just a little guy and we were living in Port Angeles. Mark was stationed on the CGC ACTIVE. Matt about 6 years old at the time. We were standing there as the ship pulled away, there was this little old lady standing with us watching (it was a public pier). Matt screams out "please don't take my daddy". The little old lady burst into tears! I am not sure who was crying more, her or Matt. Anyway, so we have always been there. Not quite as long as we were yesterday though. So once the ship started to leave, my friend Trudy and I (and the boys) followed it out of Woman's Bay. Below are shots of the ship leaving, the boys throwing rocks into the bay, the small boat behind the MUNRO. Enjoy and keep an eye out for the homecoming. Because of OPSEC rules, if you are on my Facebook, please don't ask me when they are due home. I will also post some more wonderful snow pictures once it starts falling again next month. NOTE: some of the pictures below were taken by Trudy they are also out of order!

My first Puffin siting. Thanks Trudy for getting a shot in of him!
My handsome husband

MUNRO from Deadman's Curve

Patrick skipping rocks

MUNRO from Deadman's Curve

MUNRO in Woman's Bay

The boys looking for rocks to skip

That would be Patrick

The ship pulling away from the pier Mark is just behind the gun along the railing.

The boys and the MUNRO

MUNRO with the small boat following behind. Trudy and I were wondering if they were every going to let them back on the ship.

This shot was from Jewel Beach

Kodiak Bears Part 2

These were taken August 10th. Mark and Patrick decided to head back down to Sergents Creek to fish, but the bear was back. So Mark came home to pick up his camera and we all went out. This time he had walked down to the Russian River and was hanging out eating his catch. We were not that far away from him. There is a parking area for the fisherman who fish the Russian and we were parked there. Look down the embankment and there he was. You could hear him crunching the bones of the fish. People were telling us he is a 2 year old. Not a large bear, but still the power behind him is remarkable, especially watching him fish. He ate there for awhile as the crowd grew bigger. He then looked at all of us and started to come up the hill, people then started to back away and leave. He went back to fishing and then walked up river and disappeared. Between the eagles, bears and fish this is such a cool place to live!

August in Kodiak

You can always count on the fish running and the Kodiak Bears feeding. Mark and Patrick went down to Sargents Creek to fish this afternoon. I got a call from Mark saying that there was a bear down there, so Matt and I hopped in the car and drove down. There he was out by the waters edge. As we watched him wander farther away, we drove down to what is known as "Sometimes Island" which is exactly what it means, sometimes it's an island and sometimes it's not. Anyhoo, we watched him for a bit and noticed that he was heading back towards Sargents Creek, so we headed that way ourselves. The path you see him on is the same path the bear last year took. It heads right up to the road where we were standing. He crossed not even 50 feet from Matt and I. He headed over to the creek across the road. That is where he hung out for over an hour, fishing. There were at least 3o people watching this bear fish. It was very exciting to see. This bear also has two wounds on his backside. We all speculated that it was an larger bear that took out two chunks. Enjoy the pictures!!!

Look at those teeth!