Today is Molly's mom's birthday. We want to wish Lydia a sweet and happy birthday! and thank her as always for being a wonderful mom/in-law :)
skillet pierogi with mushrooms
2 weeks ago
Showing posts with label birthdays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthdays. Show all posts
13 December 2009
13 November 2009
Happy Birthday Sissy!
Well, it's quite the birthday season here now isn't it?!
Happy Birthday to my amazing sister, Betsy. Betsy, Young & Miss A live in Boston and thus I don't get to see them as much as I would like but I hope that you have a wonderful day with your family. I wish I could come up there with Mom in a few weeks but I miss you all so very much!
Here we all are in March of 2008 when Mom & Bets came to visit me in Jacksonville. We have the best time when we all get together and I have so many wonderful memories from my trips to Boston. Luckily being with the Kwon's helps to counter the miserably cold Boston weather that I am absolutely NOT accustomed to and am so happy that Boston is not only home to my family, but also many viable grad school options. We hope to be spending a LOT more time there in the next few years.... :)
Happy Birthday to my amazing sister, Betsy. Betsy, Young & Miss A live in Boston and thus I don't get to see them as much as I would like but I hope that you have a wonderful day with your family. I wish I could come up there with Mom in a few weeks but I miss you all so very much!
11 November 2009
Happy Birthday Tammy!!!
Happy Birthday to my talented, amazing, and selfless sister-in-law, Tammy. (Yes, I think it is AWESOME that I can actually put a link of someone's name to their webpage named after them :)
Tammy has an exciting and adventurous life story and has been and lived everywhere! However, we were fortunate to spend a little over two years living in the same state and so we got to see them frequently which was really special for us.
Tammy is a writer of two award-winning novels. If you haven't read them yet, you should. One of the best parts about having a family member who is a writer (especially when you are really far away!) who is wonderfully well-spoken and always know just the right thing to say is that you get the most wonderful emails from them. It has been such a wonderful treat every time I open my inbox and have an email from Tammy, and I love that I can grow closer to my new family even though I'm far away. (Plus, we even have the same blog background, we're obviously in sync :)
In addition to being a great big sister to Dan, Tammy has done so much for us in our relationship- provided another family to us in Florida, made us the most emotional slideshow ever for our rehearsal dinner (anyone know how to post video links to blogger?) and helped to collaborate on the family cookbook. And if I ever do get around to writing that book about my time in the Navy that Dan thinks I should write, I know Tammy is the first person I will go to!
I hope you have a wonderful day with your family!!!
Tammy has an exciting and adventurous life story and has been and lived everywhere! However, we were fortunate to spend a little over two years living in the same state and so we got to see them frequently which was really special for us.
Tammy is a writer of two award-winning novels. If you haven't read them yet, you should. One of the best parts about having a family member who is a writer (especially when you are really far away!) who is wonderfully well-spoken and always know just the right thing to say is that you get the most wonderful emails from them. It has been such a wonderful treat every time I open my inbox and have an email from Tammy, and I love that I can grow closer to my new family even though I'm far away. (Plus, we even have the same blog background, we're obviously in sync :)
In addition to being a great big sister to Dan, Tammy has done so much for us in our relationship- provided another family to us in Florida, made us the most emotional slideshow ever for our rehearsal dinner (anyone know how to post video links to blogger?) and helped to collaborate on the family cookbook. And if I ever do get around to writing that book about my time in the Navy that Dan thinks I should write, I know Tammy is the first person I will go to!
I hope you have a wonderful day with your family!!!
07 November 2009
Happy Birthday Rachel & NEW YORK!
28 October 2009
Happy Birthday!
Today (it's still the 27th in San Diego, which is where my heart is, so I can say today still :) is my brother-in-law and Dan's older brother, Aharon's birthday!
13 October 2009
Happy Birthday US Navy!!!
I know it seemed like just yesterday that the Continental Congress was commissioning her inaugural fleet of Six Frigates, but in fact it has been 234 years today since the birth of our Navy. I've got just six words for that- "You've come a long way, baby!"
This is my 7th year of "celebrating" the Navy's birthday and I'd have to say, this time is probably from my least favorite location. However, one of the ships is making us a cake to bring over for us, so I'm sure we'll celebrate the traditional Navy way- with mandatory fun! My only guess is this time it will probably be US only, I'm not sure if the Iraqi's consider our Navy's birthday as a cause for celebrating.
Looking back at fonder times, I stumbled into some pictures of my favorite Navy Birthday pictures from my fourth year of college at UVA. Rachel was the "platoon commander" in charge of the birthday celebration, and in true Rachel fashion, she threw a swinging cocktail party at West Main in Charlottesville.
Here are my best ROTC girlfriends from college:
From left to right, that's Rachel, a SWO who just finished up her first tour on the USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN, a CG, and is heading to a brand-spankin' new DDG in San Diego to be the Training Officer; me- whose story you probably already know; Caroline, a Naval Flight Officer who is currently serving in Al Udeid near Qatar as a EP-3 NFO; and Cole, a SWO who just finished up her first tour on the USS NEW ORLEANS and is heading to Washington State to be a Training Officer on a Frigate. Miss you girls :)
And here is one of me with my college roommate/best friend/Maid of Honor/friends for life who will probably kill me if she saw this picture here and order me to take it down, so I suppose this will be a good test of whether or not Rachel actually reads the blog :)
Ah yes, those were the good old days of Navy Birthdays. I will see if there is anything picture-worthy today and perhaps post them tomorrow.
Today is a good day too to reflect on my first week and a half on ABOT. While I know we all do our fair share of griping and complaining about the US military (myself included), after only about 10 days working with the Iraqi Navy and Marines, let's just say I have never been more grateful and proud to be in a such a fully-functioning, effective and productive military. Say what you want or what you read in the papers, but until you spend 6-8 hours a day, every day (that's just me, we actually do it 24 hours a day), side by side working with the Iraqis you will not see how truly great our military is. The supposed inefficiencies that we gripe about getting in the way of accomplishing anything are really just that- our way of accomplishing the mission of protecting whatever we are supposed to, keeping people safe, and getting the job done. I know that sounds rah-rah Navy or whatever, but this is the kind of stuff you don't read about in the papers. It is easy too when you are on a ship floating around to think "wow, this is a LOT of red tape and bureaucracy" and while sometimes it wastes time and money, there is a lot of time out here that it saves lives and keep OTHER nation's governments running and afloat (literally).
I'm not condoning everything that the military does or everything we've ever done but right now, I know that I sleep (relatively) safer at night knowing that we are protecting this terminal and while our procedures may seem cumbersome, I'm starting to see why we do what we do. All I know is that when it comes time to turn this place over fully in a few years, I'm glad I will hopefully be 9,000 miles away.
I truly have never been so grateful to be part of this organization and while I wish I could have just learned this lesson and come home, I don't suppose that's in the cards.
Anyways, back to work. I'm working on getting caught up to speed on the status of all of our ships, which is hard to do because they are spread out all over the area of responsibility that we are in. Unfortunately also, our department has had a LOT of turnover in the past 3 months before I got here so a lot got lost in turnover and translation. Luckily there is a guy back on the Nimitz working basically "my job" while I get caught up to speed on the side so as not to confuse the other Training Officers. I thought it was hard managing one warfare area but managing four ship's schedule, training plan, waivers, problems, etc it pretty difficult. It also is hard because the guy on the Nimitz doing most of this is a pilot, which means his interactions and knowledge of the surface navy and how we do things is not only foreign to him, but probably just downright ludicrous at times!
Alright, now really back to work then off to watch. If I don't come back wanting to pull my hair out tonight (like I do every other night), I will work on my trivia game. I've been told that the clues are too hard so I'll give one clue for each port as soon as I get a chance, that is, if I'm not too busy rockin' out at our birthday party :)
Miss you all!
This is my 7th year of "celebrating" the Navy's birthday and I'd have to say, this time is probably from my least favorite location. However, one of the ships is making us a cake to bring over for us, so I'm sure we'll celebrate the traditional Navy way- with mandatory fun! My only guess is this time it will probably be US only, I'm not sure if the Iraqi's consider our Navy's birthday as a cause for celebrating.
Looking back at fonder times, I stumbled into some pictures of my favorite Navy Birthday pictures from my fourth year of college at UVA. Rachel was the "platoon commander" in charge of the birthday celebration, and in true Rachel fashion, she threw a swinging cocktail party at West Main in Charlottesville.
Here are my best ROTC girlfriends from college:
From left to right, that's Rachel, a SWO who just finished up her first tour on the USS LAKE CHAMPLAIN, a CG, and is heading to a brand-spankin' new DDG in San Diego to be the Training Officer; me- whose story you probably already know; Caroline, a Naval Flight Officer who is currently serving in Al Udeid near Qatar as a EP-3 NFO; and Cole, a SWO who just finished up her first tour on the USS NEW ORLEANS and is heading to Washington State to be a Training Officer on a Frigate. Miss you girls :)
And here is one of me with my college roommate/best friend/Maid of Honor/friends for life who will probably kill me if she saw this picture here and order me to take it down, so I suppose this will be a good test of whether or not Rachel actually reads the blog :)
Ah yes, those were the good old days of Navy Birthdays. I will see if there is anything picture-worthy today and perhaps post them tomorrow.
Today is a good day too to reflect on my first week and a half on ABOT. While I know we all do our fair share of griping and complaining about the US military (myself included), after only about 10 days working with the Iraqi Navy and Marines, let's just say I have never been more grateful and proud to be in a such a fully-functioning, effective and productive military. Say what you want or what you read in the papers, but until you spend 6-8 hours a day, every day (that's just me, we actually do it 24 hours a day), side by side working with the Iraqis you will not see how truly great our military is. The supposed inefficiencies that we gripe about getting in the way of accomplishing anything are really just that- our way of accomplishing the mission of protecting whatever we are supposed to, keeping people safe, and getting the job done. I know that sounds rah-rah Navy or whatever, but this is the kind of stuff you don't read about in the papers. It is easy too when you are on a ship floating around to think "wow, this is a LOT of red tape and bureaucracy" and while sometimes it wastes time and money, there is a lot of time out here that it saves lives and keep OTHER nation's governments running and afloat (literally).
I'm not condoning everything that the military does or everything we've ever done but right now, I know that I sleep (relatively) safer at night knowing that we are protecting this terminal and while our procedures may seem cumbersome, I'm starting to see why we do what we do. All I know is that when it comes time to turn this place over fully in a few years, I'm glad I will hopefully be 9,000 miles away.
I truly have never been so grateful to be part of this organization and while I wish I could have just learned this lesson and come home, I don't suppose that's in the cards.
Anyways, back to work. I'm working on getting caught up to speed on the status of all of our ships, which is hard to do because they are spread out all over the area of responsibility that we are in. Unfortunately also, our department has had a LOT of turnover in the past 3 months before I got here so a lot got lost in turnover and translation. Luckily there is a guy back on the Nimitz working basically "my job" while I get caught up to speed on the side so as not to confuse the other Training Officers. I thought it was hard managing one warfare area but managing four ship's schedule, training plan, waivers, problems, etc it pretty difficult. It also is hard because the guy on the Nimitz doing most of this is a pilot, which means his interactions and knowledge of the surface navy and how we do things is not only foreign to him, but probably just downright ludicrous at times!
Alright, now really back to work then off to watch. If I don't come back wanting to pull my hair out tonight (like I do every other night), I will work on my trivia game. I've been told that the clues are too hard so I'll give one clue for each port as soon as I get a chance, that is, if I'm not too busy rockin' out at our birthday party :)
Miss you all!
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