Fun Birthday Present!

The second of August was my 25th birthday. Oy! When did I get so old? ;)  I got such fun presents and messages from all sorts of people, but I wanted to feature one present that will look so nice in our new house!
    

  

"Oh! You have the camera out...

  

  

  

...that must mean you want a picture of me!"

     

     

No Bings, actually, just the sign.

    

    

   

There we go.

    

Thanks Corey for the awesome gift!

Stories from Afloat

"Warm Weather Penguins"

in an email from Austin July 29, 2009

"The Penguins are from the local beach in Simon’s Town, South Africa. There are thousands of them and you can walk right up to them. They came here a very long time ago from Antarctica. 

They just swam too far north and decided to stay. They’re like the northern most penguins in the world or something like that. It was really cool. 

     

I wanted to pet one, but apparently they bite. Not hard, but still nobody wants to get hurt by a penguin."

Ha! That bolded line made me laugh for a while. To read more about African Penguins click here.

I hope I have a kid like this.

A New Blog

Yup, another one.

But this one is not just mine. My friend Kat, of Kat's Adventures in Movieland had an idea to start a book blog. She, Corey and I were discussing it and decided to give it a go as a group!

Check it out here: http://lovegoodbooks.blogspot.com/

Stories from Afloat

"Gift to the Master"

in an email from Austin July 29, 2009

    

"It is a Navy tradition that after a UNREP (Underway Replenishment) the ships play loud music and offer a “Gift”. A long time ago it was a bottle of wine or something nice for the Captain of the other ship. Now it is more of a joke. 

    

     

So they put us in sumo suits and we fought for the master. At that point in the picture I have fallen over and can’t get back up, in part because I was laughing so hard. Everyone else had a good laugh too. It was hilarious."

    

Tough job, right?

   

To read more than you probably ever needed to know about UNREPs see here.

Introducing...

"Stories from Afloat"

This will be a new type of post for the blog where I post stories that Austin has written to me to give to share with you all! This will probably be the closest he ever gets to an actual blog post, but maybe we can change that when he gets home.

Stay tuned!

Arleigh Burke in the News...

Check it out

Addition to the Sidebar

Look over there -->

To the right.

I have added a countdown clock for the new, projected, homecoming date. As it changes I will update the countdown :)

Austin Update!

I got a wonderful email from Austin at approximately 3:30 am this morning with tons of details about his life on the ship.

 

For example today, which is now yesterday for him, they had some drills:
 

"We just had an abandon ship drill. I’m in life raft ten. When the ship is under attack or we have a fire or something, we go to what is called General Quarters (GQ). It’s like a battle station. My station is in the control room. I take reports on where the damage is and plot it on these large and confusing charts of the ship. Anyways, they treat like a real emergency. A guy over the 1MC (ship’s speaker system) yells “BOOM, MISSILE STRIKE PORT SIDE MIDSHIPS” for example. And that means we got hit on the left side about the middle of the ship. And we have to respond by sending in firefighters and such. It’s pretty cool. And today we went all the way to a scenario of the ship sinking. I have my own life jacket, gas mask and flash gear (fire fighter stuff)."
 

Sounds like a blast, right? Apparently he is also taking some sort of class on security at the end of which, he will need to be sprayed down with pepper spray and then has to complete an obstacle course.

Overall, he says he is doing well and staying busy. He seems pretty happy, and we have a tentative return date of October 25th! (only one day after our 9 year anniversary!)

Check out

Jessica's blog for some OSL awesome photos of Shelby's recent visit and the Mazzio twins being held by anyone other than their parents.