Late yet again!!  I was hoping to have updates done before halloween, but I didn't make it.  However, since, as always, I found some great websets that some wonderful graphic artists have created, I didn't want to miss out on using them!  I am up in Maine, and although it's beautiful here, I can't really enjoy it while missing Michael and the kids so much back in Virginia.

I am busy on the ship though, although we are not actually on the ship yet.  Move aboard is December 1st - which should be nice and cold here in Maine!  Think of me out on some windy, cold pier carrying stuff up on the brow!!  For the time being, we are living in a hotel, which you would think would be nice.  However, it's navy contract, so not a nice place really, and trying to cook meals in a microwave gets a bit old after the first week, much less after more than a month.  Navy chow on the ship come December is sounding better and better!

It has been nice to be up here and able to visit my sister and her family in New Hampshire on a couple of weekends.  An added bonus was my parents visiting her, so I got to see them as well.

I got the opportunity to catch a military flight down  to Virginia on October 29th, which returned on November 1st.  For the cost of a couple of days of leave, I was able to be home and go trick-or-treating with the kids, which was a bargain at any price!

I took some lobsters down with me, so Michael and I had a late 7th anniversary dinner.  Parker was scared of the "lobbers", and was happy after we had eaten them and they were gone.

Michael is doing a good job coping with school, the kids, house, and everything else while I'm away.  I know he'll be ready for a big break from it all when I finally return in February.  I think he is looking forward to a small break at Thanksgiving, when I'll be home for a week.

Please note that with me in Maine and Michael in Virginia, we are using separate email addresses.  I don't always have the opportunity to check mine, and that opportunity may very well go away once we move aboard the ship, but I will switch over to my ship email address then.

The below photo was taken in December while we were in Australia.  It was taken by Michael Thorne, a wonderful photographer, who also took our wedding photos 7 years ago.  We should not have planned the session to be so soon after the long flight over, but we didn't have a lot of time to deal with considering the Christmas season and trying to work around schedules.  Parker was not too cooperative during the process, but with some digital merging of two photographs, we produced one of the four of us.