Yea! Todd's Home!!

After a week of leave in Ohio for Thanksgiving, four weeks on temporary duty in Falon, NV, and then another week of leave in Ohio for Christmas, Todd Williams finally decided to come back home! Todd flew in yesterday and Yvonne went to the ariport to pick him up. Then he hung out with us for the afternoon. It's really nice to have him back home.


Elizabeth, our younger daughter flew in from California to visit Sarah and Brian. She came over yesterday and hung out with us for the afternoon too. It was nice to have her here too!


To top off the day, Andy came home from work and cooked his personal chili. We all dove into that with great gusto - and it was delicious.

Christmas 2008

We had a really neat Christmas! It actually started early. Andy gave Yvonne several of the attachments for her Kitchen Aide for Christmas. They made preparing our Christmas Eve dinner much easier.







Sarah (our daughter) and Brian (our son-in-law) came over and we had butternut squash soup and bread and cheese for dinner. Afterwards Andy participated in our family gift exchange and then baked cookies for us (last post).


Here Sarah's taste-testing the cookies!

Finally, we lit the candles on our Christmas tree and watched them for a while.

On Christmas Day Nicole Thomas (USS Carl Vinson) came over and joined us for Christmas dinner. We baked a ham, and Nicole helped with the preparations by making the mashed potatoes. Nic jumped right in and did the dishes after dinner! What a help these two were.





We went into the living room and lit the candles on the tree again. I asked Nic if she had ever seen real candles on a Christmas tree before, and she said she had. I was surprised and asked where? She said at her grandmother's. Her grandmother had been from Germany and brought the tradition with her from there. When I asked Nic if her grandmother was still living she said no, she passed away in October. It made me feel good to think we shared a family tradition with her that was a pleasant reminder of her grandmother and actually part of her own family tradition.

I read the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke and then shared the Four Spiritual Laws Tract. Then we prayed. Yvonne made a cheese cake for dessert, and before she cut it she had us all sing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus. It is His birthday after all!

Nic had to go back to the ship because she had duty, while the rest of us watched the movie "It's A Wonderful Life!" with Jimmy Stewart.

NavyforMoms.com

We've also discovered NavyforMoms.com which is an online support community for moms who have sons or daughters about to join the Navy, or in the Navy. When we were told about it and checked it out it too became a means of making contact with sailors and their families. Now, I realize I'm not a "mom" and neither Yvonne nor I have any biological children in the Navy. But we have hundreds of "sons" and "daughters" around the world in the Navy, the Army, and the Marine Corps. So, I thought we met their qualifications :)

I've really learned a lot about moms who have adult children in the military. They worry. They have tons of questions. They pray. They cry. They miss their sons and daughters. They hope that they are safe. And, they search for information and answers to their questions. The more information they obtain the more it eases their anxiety.

So, Yvonne and I try to help by providing what answers we can. But we also try to let moms around the country know that we are here to provide a home away from home for their sons and daughters in the Norfolk/Virginia Beach area if they are interested in participating in our activities.

We had one mom contact us and let us know her son was coming to Norfolk for a month and needed a place to "crash". We invited him to stay with us. So, as I write, Andy is here with us. He was even able to spend Christmas with us! On Christmas Eve we had dinner together with my daughter and son-in-law. Andy made some of his famous chocolate chip cookies. I took pictures of him doing it and emailed them to his mom right away. So they were included in our activities almost as they were happening.


I know there are other moms who are trying to encourage their sons and daughters to check us out too. This seems to be a tremendous door that the Lord has opened for us to make contact with sailors who are in the area or are coming to the area. Hopefully we can help them so they don't have to feel so alone in a huge, strange area. And, maybe we can provide some level of comfort and support to the moms of the sailors too.

Facebook

I was thinking about getting on Facebook for quite a while. Then Sgt. Ashley Sangret invited us to become friends with her. So we figured out how to set up a Facebook account and invited people to be friends with us too.

This has been a fantastic way of staying in touch! It combines pictures and little comments and longer notes, private emails, and just so much fun stuff to stay in touch. And, if you hit it just right, you can even chat in real time. The more we use it the more we enjoy it! Amanda Coots said once, "Yea, its really addictive!" We agree. :)

Birthday greetings via telephone...

Yvonne and I try to call the people who have been part of our fellowship on their birthdays. Being human, sometimes we forget, sometimes no body's home and sometimes, eureka! we succeed. This month we've done pretty good. It was fun to catch up with Randy and Nikki Mayzak in Camp LeJeune, NC. Since their birthdays are a week apart we thought it would be clever to called them right in between their birthdays. :) We talked with Amanda Coots in Ft. Lewis, Washington; and with Danielle Neitzke who was home on leave in Cason City, NV. And, we got in touch with Melissa McCausland in Imperial Beach, CA. Cell phones are so awesome! You can call the same number and wherever the person is, they still get the call.

American Media Version of Throwing the Shoe

This post was originally a comment I made on NavyforMoms.com but I wanted to include it here too.

It's interesting. For many people the original reasons we went into Iraq have become so clouded that they don't even know what they are anymore. Our own media does the American version of "throwing the shoe" at our president. They distort his words and spin everything we've accomplished in Iraq in the worst light possible. If there are two possible ways to report a story they will opt for the negative one every time. The media in this country goes out of its way to maintain a deafening silence regarding anything positive and screaming incessantly about everything that is "wrong" in Iraq. According to our journalists we have essentially lost the war and have accomplished nothing.

Unfortunately, it is their incessant drumbeat that people, over time, believe - even if it is not true. It's like the old adage that "a lie repeated often enough, and loud enough, soon becomes the truth."

What breaks my heart is that I believe this incessant negative media coverage contributes directly to the post traumatic stress disorder which so many of our young warriors struggle with when they return home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Shoe Thrown At President Bush

I was shocked when I heard about the journalist that threw his shoes at President Bush! I read it inthe newspaper first. Then I saw it on the television.

In America this just looks funny. But in the Arab world throwing your shoe as someone is a tremendous insult! It is an act that can lead to fights between people in that culture.

I was shocked at the journalist's behavior. It was a grave insult coming from a man representing another nation as a journalist. I think it reflects shame on the country he represents as a journalist.

But, having said that, I was so incredibly proud of President Bush's response. For our nation's leader to simply shrug off and dismiss an insult such as that, with his usual wry humor, brings great honor to our country, and to George Bush as a Christian. I believe this is an example of the difference between the concepts of "an eye for an eye" and "turning the other cheek".

To me, this was another of many occasions where President George Bush has revealed his gracious character both as our nation's leader, and as a Christian gentleman. This makes me think of him even more as a Christian Statesman.

Fort Lee Army Band Christmas Concert

Sunday morning Yvonne and I drove to Petersburg, Virginia to listen to the Fort Lee Army Band perform their annual Christmas concert. It was really nice! SPC Evan Bunch, one of our soldiers is a percussionist with the band. What we didn't know, was that he was also going to perform as a vocalist in a quartet. They all did a great job!




The children in the audience were treated to the First Sargent reading the story "Twas The Night Before Christmas" set to the band playing.

And, of course, what Christmas show is complete without a visit from the fat bearded guy in the red flannel suit?


After the concert Evan had to help tear down the equipment and take it back to the band hall, so being the Civil War buff I am, Yvonne and I went to see "The Crater" in Petersburg. It was the place during the Civil War that the Union engineers dug a tunnel under the Confederate line and detonated a huge amount of explosives to cut Lee's supply line from the south. I had read about the Crater years ago, but have never seen it. I have to admit, it wasn't as big as I thought it would be.


This was the entrance to the tunnel (512 feet long).


This is the crater itself.
Finally, we went back to the base, met up with Evan and, after a tour of the band hall, Evan took us out to dinner at a Chinese Buffet. Yum! By that time we were all hungry, but especially Evan!

We prayed together and then drove back to Virginia Beach. Yesterday turned out to be a really special day...