United States Marine Corps Commandants Birthday Message
CMCA BIRTHDAY MESSAGE FROM THE COMMANDANT OF THE MARINE CORPS United States Marines represent the best young men and women our Nation has to offer. To be a Marine is to be a member of America's warrior class - to be one of the few who steps forward with the courage and conviction to face whatever dangers await. Our Nation expects her Marines to be ready when the Nation calls; to leave family and the comforts of home behind; to march into battle and thrive under austerity; and to come home under a victory pennant. From Al Anbar in the west of Iraq, to Helmand Province in the south of Afghanistan, our Corps of Marines can always expect to be found where th

The Great Depression revisited
There is nothing more exciting then being thrown what sounds to be a daunting task at the very last minute. That's what I thought I was dealing with when at 4:30 this afternoon Brandon informs me that tomorrow, TOMORROW is their Great Depression unit celebration for his reading & language arts class. As he's telling me this I vaguely remember seeing an e mail about 3 weeks ago letting me know all the details. I just seem to have forgotten to transcribe this to Novembers calendar. So here it is, 4:30 and I don't even know what types of things people ate during the Great Depression so off to Google I went. I came across quite a few bread and cake recipes but 99% of them called for raisi

Looking to Robert Frost for wisdom
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” -Robert Frost (1874-1963)So I am sitting here thinking about this quote and the many thoughts running through my head at the moment. Do I really want to get into analyzing Robert Frost? Do I really want to analyze my personal thoughts? Why do I do this again? Ah, because I'm a nut!So here we are at a fork in our road and faced with some major decisions. And to quote Barnyard Dog, I'm faced with the decision, "Which way do we go? Which way do we go George?"Beyond that, which road exactly is the one less traveled? The almost once i

Round and round we go, where we stop nobody knows
About the sixth time Brandon's school registrar called I was finally on my way to Ryukyu Middle. It finally worked out that we had the orders they were requesting and with 5 days to spare. I know Brandon isn't too happy about this but I sure am. We got the extension paperwork last night and now he can stay in school through May of 2010. Come May we're in a heap of poo, because honestly I may blow this island up. I have LOVED Okinawa but by then it'll be 2 months shy of 4 years we'll have been here. Even I can only drink so much pineapple wine before I sour. While out and about making sure we had all our Ps and Qs checked we found out lots of interesting things. You c

Did I leave ya hanging too long?
Figure it was only fair that you have to wait a while too, we've been waiting for this news for the past six months. We were teased a few times but each hopeful situation was shot down with one loophole or another. The latest loophole really pushed the line for us, as we are drawing closer to our rotation date. Seriously closer, 11 more days and the kids would be dis-enrolled from school, utilities get shut off and our drivers licenses expire and we have nothing to delay these processes. Not yet at least but today we got the ticket that will allow us to get that extension. Derrick's web orders finally came through!! All of his screenings are completed and there are n