Winter Vacation

We are (finally) currently enjoying week 2 of Ryan's holiday leave.  It's been incredibly wonderful to have him home and to assist with the girls.  My house is now clean, my freezer stocked with meals, my hair is trimmed, and Ellis is now wearing big-girl panties at home.  Ryan didn't complain when I asked if he would mind if we started a full-court press on potty training during his vacation.  Probably not what he had in mind and the first few days where less than fun, but she is getting the hang of it and it is necessary if she is going to start school in April.

This was Christmas Day.  Looked a bit sad since we had already opened everything two days earlier.  This is what I reserved from 'Santa'.  

'Not my favorite Christmas'

It was a long 12 days.

Finally Daddy came home.  He had to work all the first week, but now he has two weeks off.  

We spent a couple of nights last week in Tokyo.  Ryan was very sick, so we didn't get to do much, but we still made the best of it.

We played in the hotel pool, visited some nearby temples and shrines, and watched cable TV (the girls still don't understand commercials).

We also trekked the 1.8 miles from our hotel to the Tokyo Tower -the second tallest building in Tokyo.  It was, of course, the tallest when it was built 55 years ago, and modeled after a famous Parisian landmark.

The girls, of course, could have totally cared less about the temples, shrines and towers that Tokyo had to offer.  They did, however, enjoy the parks.

If I were to pick travel companions based on cuteness, then these two would totally make the cut.  However, if you like your travel companions patient, interested, and with some stamina -I recommend you not choose 2- and 4-year-olds.  

Ellis did like pushing the buttons on this loud robot thing.  It spoke Japanese, though, so we had no idea what it was saying.

Tokyo Bay and the Rainbow Bridge

Tokyo and Mt. Fugi

Not really their 'thing'

Looking down from the 'viewing window'

150 meters up.  We also did the 'special observatory, which is 250 meters up.

Afterwards we enjoyed some delicious crepes.  I appreciated the irony of 'Japanese' crepes next to the Japanese Eiffel Tower. 

Tokyo Tower mascots

We also walked to a nearby park.  We stayed in the Rappongi area of Tokyo, where most of the foreign embassies are located.  Our hotel was next door to the French embassy, and we also passed the Australian and German embassy on our walk.  It is a lovely part of Tokyo and it gave it a very international feel.  

Being in the worlds largest city, you are always surprised to see such lovely, peaceful, and quiet parks.

There were a group of elderly Japanese men fishing with traditional poles in this pond.  They were actually catching fish too.

If you are ever wanted to visit a safe, interesting and beautiful city, you should absolutely consider Tokyo.  It is so clean and everyone is so friendly (which has actually been our experience for all of Japan).  We saw construction for the 2020 Olympics, perhaps we will make the trip back to watch.  Though they will be summer Olympics and having experienced a Japanese summer, I already feel sorry for anyone competing (or spectating) outdoors for any length of time.  On second thought, maybe we will just watch those Olympics on TV in air-conditioning and remember our lovely trips to Tokyo.

Short Notice Deployment

As Shannon mentioned in a couple previous posts, I was called away on short notice to deploy during Christmas and New Years. When I left work on Friday, 19 December, there were rumblings that the USS SHILOH might get underway to support "national tasking." After coming back from deployment on that FFG, I was still tapped to take my DET (DET 1) out on the USS MCCAMPBELL after she was fixed. The timeline for her to be fixed kept sliding throughout the month of December and it was looking like it wouldn't be until mid-2015 that she'd be ready. So the squadron was looking to move me to another one of the four DETs we have at HSM-51. It was looking like I was going to take over DET 4 and I would turnover with the current OIC once they got back in February from their two week deployment.  Because Shiloh was planning on getting underway in mid-Jan, a lot of the DET personnel were on leave, including the OIC. We officially got word that DET 4 would have to support the USS Shiloh's short notice deployment on 21 December. It was a Sunday afternoon and the family and I were at Camp Zama messing around and shopping and all that. I quickly went to work and started packing to onload on Monday and deploy on Tuesday. The Skipper told me that since the current DET 4 OIC was on leave, and that I was the one who would eventually take over as DET 4 OIC, he told me it was now my DET to get underway. About all the squadron came into work on Sunday, 21 December to help us pack and get everything ready. The semi-trucks would come the next morning and we had to get everything inventoried, packed and staged. The maintenance folks did some spectacular work getting our two helos ready to go. They had to install a dipping sonar in one and convert a data link to a different band in the other. We all left the squadron late that night and it was back to work the next morning to get everything on the trucks. The trucks got to the ship and we got everything on board. This DET has been together for a long time on Shiloh so it was a very easy process for them to get everything going. About 75% of the people took with me have been on that ship and on DET 4 so that made for minimal instability. We flew the aircraft on the next morning, 23 December, and it was adios Japan. We flew a ton while we were out there. I think we flew everyday except Christmas. The ship was actually really really good.  Unlike the FFG who hasn't had a Helo DET embarked in a while, this ship was very used to having helicopters onboard and working with them. It was a breath of fresh air to be on this newer, larger ship where people actually cared. When we left we didn't know how long we were going to be out there -- the best guess was 10 days to two weeks. Everything was very cryptic because of the "tasking" we had. They shut all internet and email down on the ship to avoid leaking information. We enjoyed Christmas and New Years onboard and had pretty good food; Steak/Crab and Steak/Lobster respectively. The weather and temperatures were bitter cold and it even snowed a couple days. The ship did what they had to do and we were told we could go home on 1Jan. It was a quick 2-3 day transit back home. The aircraft flew off on the morning of 3JAN and the ship arrived back in Yokosuka that afternoon. It was a quick in-and-out but we accomplished a lot. The DET and the squadron really crushed it to get us out the door in roughly 48 hours. It seems like a hard task but because we are supposed to be "always ready to deploy" it wasn't that bad. I was super proud of the DET and we are now back able to enjoy some leave. I am looking forward to remaining on DET 4 and deploying again with Shiloh. I took the next two weeks off so we are going to get to relax as a fam and hopefully see some of the Japanese sights.

These are my two helicopters getting prepped to fly out to the ship. 

All of our stuff lined up in the hangar waiting to be loaded on the trucks.  

This was right before we pulled in. Mt Fugi in the background. 

Pulling into Yokosuka

The war machines back home. 

Happy New Year

I try not to blog sad or angry (the exception being my last post about Christmas), the results come off a bit depressing.  Which is why I haven't blogged lately.  But today will be a better day.  Ryan is finally on his way home after his impromptu-cruise-to-I-don't-know-where.  Not my favorite Christmas or New Year.  I actually enjoyed tearing down all the Christmas stuff -made it seem less sad with it gone.  And I had planned to sleep through the New Year, but Japan had a 4.5 earthquake at 11:50p.m. So I was actually awake for that too.  Thanks for looking out Japan.  We played at the park and tried our best to stay busy while also navigating all the closed stores for the holidays.  Leyton was out of school -still is until January 8.  And our sitter is on vacation.  And the CDC has been booked or closed.  So just LOTS and LOTS of together time.  Woohoo.

Such a cute little stinker.  Her vocabulary is really coming along, but she does struggle with a few words.  Most notably 'castle,' 'fork,' and 'I'm stuck.'  She can't pronounce the 'c' in castle.  Or the 'r' in fork (particularly funny when she drops her fork on the floor and yells "FO-K!).  And when she gets stuck, she says "Mama! I suck!"  If you don't think that's funny, then you are wrong.  It's hilarious.

Took this New Years Day.  We tried to go to the park, but it started snowing.  And yes, they are both wearing pajamas.   We kinda went into survival mode this time around -which includes eliminating any unnecessary activities.  I wore the same grey sweat pants for nearly two weeks.  I did wash them a couple of times -and put them right back on.

I think you can see a little bit of snow in Leyton's hair.

The next morning -ready to play in the snow.  Always fun putting all those clothes on kids.  The girls both have snow pants, gloves and boots because we were supposed to leave on Monday for a week in the mountains.  But we had to cancel that trip because, though he will be home, Ryan will mostly be at work next week, wrapping things up.  Hopefully we can still make it to the mountains later this winter.

Yep.  That's it.  Still very exciting.

Ellis wouldn't keep her hat on so she only got to play for about 5 minutes.  It's an on-going problem that we are currently having.

I let Leyton stay in the yard and play.  We had a nice chat over our intercom.

The highlight of the past two weeks has been the gifts that keep trickling in. Every few days we get another package, which helps tremendously with the boredom.

Thank you to everyone for the thoughts and prayers and presents this holiday season.

Gotta go!  Ryan should be home in about 30 minutes and I should probably at least brush my hair...and maybe change my pants :-)