The Big Trip

So much time to make up. I have been offline for nearly a week and a half. I left off a week ago Thursday. We have been busy beavers during that time.

Well Zach did complete the crucible with not too much problem. He certainly has an interesting perspective as to whats challenging and what isn't. More on him later.

On Friday the 5th Ike went to the movies with the cute girl from church he met with my assistance. Forthwith we will call her Naomi. They started texting incessantly and still are. They really hit it off and Ike has been unusually chipper although somewhat obsessed about texting her. On Saturday they went to the mall for awhile. Then after we headed to San Diego on Sunday morning they had to go back to texting all week long until we returned this last Saturday from San Diego. Of course it took all of an hour to plan another movie for later Saturday night. Then magically Naomi, the shyest most quiet girl in the world for the last year and a half she has been at our church, was now sitting with ike in church and goofing around with him. So this is where I will go "They're so cute!". This is where the extrovert Ike however can turn into complete 14 year old embarrassment. It is a bit fun to watch his demeanor change when bringing up the subject of a girlfriend. If he wasn't so brown I'm sure his face would turn red.

On that same subject, we are still waiting for EZ to ask Kt out. They hung out the Friday before we left for San Diego and apparently made several attempts to open his mouth and get the words out but fear and trepidation got the worst of him and he chickened out again. We all decided it was very cute. I'm sure it would be so much easier for him to ask her out if he knew how we talk about him being such a cute, shy, teddy bear of a 6'2" 200lb football monster.

Alright. On to San Diego. We had a good trip out there and the contrast of leaving our car at the airport with it being 4 degrees and arriving with it being 70 degrees was extremely gratifying. K's parents arrived a couple of hours after us and we all proceeded up to Escondido to the resort. It really was a great place. I thoroughly enjoyed the stay there. It was up in the deserty hills north of San Diego. After we got there we hunted for a place to eat dinner. We went to a "restaurant row" in San Marcos but not before Karen cut off a cop in her crazy mario andretti fashion trying to follow her lane changing father. Of course as you would expect the cop pulled up next to us at the light on the passenger side where I was sitting and proceeded to yell at me for not using my signals and how his verbal warning was better than a ticket. I should have mustered up my best english accent and told him "Spot on chap I thought I was on the wrong side of the parkway." Well skippy the wonder cop pulled ahead and we went our separate ways but I couldn't help but note that even when I'm a passenger in a car I get yelled at for what it does wrong. Just as our food arrived at the California Miner's restaurant Zach called. I'm guessing he smelled the burgers and knew he should call right then. He bought the call from the DI for $10 for 5 minutes. The DI takes the money and buys new drill belts for the platoon so when they have final drill they look sharper. Its almost like having a bake sale for the Marines.

We spent Monday checking out the resort, doing homework, sitting in the hot tub etc. Tuesday we went to the San Diego Zoo. It was great. 75 degrees and partly sunny as well as being a very nice zoo. I took 150 pictures on my new camera here alone. We had a lot of fun. Wednesday was beach visit day in Oceanside, CA. It was too cold to swim but we walked on the pier and then around the beach. Kt and Ike found sand dollars. More pictures.

Finally Thursday was family day. We headed down to MCRD and ate breakfast on base at a "restaurant". I caught a glimpse of zach practicing their marching and formation on the parade deck for graduation. We met up with the McCorkel's and Laupan's and waited for the Moto Run to begin. We got 3 opportunities to see zach during that....yeah I got pictures. After that we got a little intro to the DI staff and what their training was all about. After that Zach was dismissed for 5 hours of base liberty. We ate lunch at a pretty decent buffet where we observed Zach down voluminous amounts of food. Then he showed us around. The Marine Corps museum was pretty interesting but my family wouldn't let me read all the placards next to each exhibit. After buying some souvenirs and watching Zach eat more food we had to turn him back in. They had to spend their evening packing and preparing for graduation the next day. We had to spend our time crawling through downtown San Diego rush hour traffic but that hot tub was still nice later that evening

Friday we left a little bit earlier for the Morning Colors ceremony. It was cool and particularly because the Secretary of the Navy was there for both that and the graduation ceremony. Thats a pretty cool thing to get such a dignitary for his graduation. The graduation ceremony was very cool. Just seeing 455 men marching in time like that was very impressive. It was a great way to see history. At the end Zach was dismissed and he got his bag from where it was stored and just wanted to high tail it out of there. No lingering around or remeniscing. We took him to eat at subway where we found Mr. Crust avoider now eating every scrap. He says yes maam and no maam to the workers and always stands with his hands behind his back like he's at rest. Lots of subtle diffrences. We went back to the hotel after lunch and Zach modelled all his various uniforms.

When Gma and Gpa S came back we went out for dinner to Red Robin where Zach feasted on a burger and hot wings. He looked happy. Back to the hotel and hot tub time after a very long day. We packed up and got ready to return Saturday morning.

Well we returned alright Saturday morning. After the little snafu of backing into a cement gas pump protector after we filled up the rental car with gas to return the car right next door (It came from nowhere and jumped behind the car) We had to fill out a little form and thankfully the extra insurance rider we purchased for the car was purchased. everything was taken care of and we were only delayed 5 minutes to the airport. Our Flight home was uneventful.

However getting home became eventful. We discovered that our house had been robbed. They took Kt's TV and DVD player, they took $180 of Zach's wish list food he had wanted us to get. It was sitting in gift bags hidden in Kt's closet. They took Ike's 2004 world series ball signed by most of the red sox. They took an xbox and a sub-woofer and all the liquor!!!! They took my beloved ATT Uverse TV/ internet modem (which is worthless without a subscription), They took my laptop and an ancient video camera. Worst of all they took K's jewelry box. This makes me want to cry. Not that it was so valuable and thankfully they missed the two most valuable things that were stored elsewhere but lots of sentimental jewelry from her grandmothers and such. If I could get anything back it would be that. There were a few other small things like coin jars and such.

So that sort of bummed out our return a bit. Ike cheered himself up by going to the movies with Naomi and Zach and Kt went to Wind Lake for the big welcome home party. We were thinking of going but didn't feel very motivated anymore. We sat and found a TV that played VHS tapes and watched the Muppet Christmas carol to cheer us up because our TV and internet was gone with the missing modem box.

Sunday after church I started writing my research paper. Much of my resources and research were on the laptop that was stolen. So I had to recreate a lot of it from memory. I ran down to work to connect to the internet and submit my paper by 12:55 am...5 minutes to spare. I doubt the paper will get a great grade but we'll see. It was pretty good considering the circumstances. Devry has a no excuse policy on deadlines and such. I'll be curious to see what comes of my reconstructed paper.

So its 9 days to Christmas. Well I can tell you I am not ready for that. I'm looking forward to it yet feel grinchy when I'm at home. I don't feel like putting up anything or decorating or any of that. I will try to get the Christmas spirit here right after I don't feel like punching a robbery suspect. I'll probably need another day.