Something a little lighter

My last post was a little heavy.  So today I thought I'd share a quick e-mail that I typed out to a co-worker of mine back in MN today.  I don't know if you'll think it's funny.  I did.  But I'm a terrible judge of humor and tend to be full of myself.




From: Kotschwar, Kate
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 12:50 PM
To: Doe, Jane (Professional)
Subject: Just saying hi


Jane,


This is a totally un-related to work e-mail.  I just wanted to say hi, and let you know that the pictures that you posted of your daughter (last week?) on Facebook are adorable.  Really.  You and your husband do good work.


I've decided to rename my house Gasthaus Kotschwar because of all the people that are living here at any given moment.  (And because Kotschwar is Germanic - otherwise is would have been Chateau or Chez.)  I'm considering installing a large electronic board in the living room showing arrivals and departures.  This week alone looks like this:


Claude (living here) leaves on Wednesday.
Senora X (my friend's mom) comes to stay on Thursday. [My friend's husband comes back after a deployment.  She wants a few days with just her, her husband and their 11 month old, so her live-in-mother is coming to stay for a few days.]
Senora X leaves on Sunday.
Claude returns on Wednesday.
Zac returns on Saturday.
Clarice (Claude daughter) arrives on Saturday.


Somewhere in there our friends from Hawaii are visiting but, by the grace of God, they are staying with other friends for their visit.  But they will be here for socializing and we'd like to have a big party some time Memorial Day weekend.  Am I bound by etiquette to try and remove the fine film of remodeling dust that has covered every surface in my home before I have company over, even when the work is ongoing?  Where does Emily Post come down on stuff like this?  All I know is people are getting paper plates and the napkins don't match.  I'm a terrible hostess.


And I still don't have a functioning kitchen.  I do the dishes in my bathtub.  I fill my coffee pot, which is now housed in the garage, in the bathroom sink.  My stove sits in the dining room, mocking my desire to boil water.


I laugh, because I have no other healthy options.


[It's really not all that bad.  I'm just incredibly melodramatic.]


I hope you're doing well and that you're enjoying the late-spring there in MN.  I'm still planning on coming to MN at some point.  Maybe mid July?  I'll let you know ahead of time so I can try to squeeze in some time at the Mother Ship.


Talk to you soon,
Kate

Taking the reigns from someone amazing

I met with the out-going ombudsman and my two future co-ombudsmen last night for dinner.  It was a chance to learn a little but more about the command (as it works from her viewpoint) and what was going to be expected from us.  I know that for the first six or eight weeks of our tenure the other two ombudsmen will probably be leaning on me a little more because they won't be able to go through our Basic Training course until July.  That's okay with me, as we will all have a learning curve.  I need to learn about the Special Warfare community and they need to learn about the responsibilities of becoming an ombudsman.


Being an ombudsman is really about becoming a source of information and referral.  As an ombudsman, I am not a babysitter, but I can give you a list of places to find childcare.  I am not a taxi driver, but I can tell you about transportation that's available.  I'm not a marriage counselor, but I can refer you to someone that is.  We are bound by confidentiality, except in a few cases where the safety of the service member or their family is in question.  Then we become mandatory reports.  We maintain websites and produce newsletters.  We attend functions and act as representatives of both our spouses and the command we serve.  It's not a role that I take lightly.  It is an opportunity to take care of our fellow families.  I enjoy the work, but I take it seriously.  I am hoping that my co-ombudsmen feel the same way.


I feel like this new OMB position carries greater weight than the last command for a variety of reasons, including the fact that while I'm going to be an OMB here in lovely Southern California, at the same time our  out-going OMB is going to be wearing 60lbs of body armor and carrying a rifle and pistol in Afghanistan for almost a year.  I really don't want to mess this up, knowing whose shoes I'm filling.


It was a little bittersweet, being able to get to know the out-going OMB.  She's a Navy Reservist and has been called up to active duty.  She's got two boys, ages three and six.  She'll be training for four months and then she'll be in Afghanistan until next summer.  In the few hours I've been able to spend with her she's impressed the hell out of me.  She's kind and funny.  She loves being a mom, a wife, and a sailor.  She's equally determined to do her duty and sad to be leaving her family.  We stood in the parking lot and talked for a good 20-30 minutes after dinner.  Just shooting the breeze.  About normal stuff, like taking photos with your kids before you leave because you can't be sure that you'll come back.  Or being a 4'11" female in an armed conflict where being female poses additional issues if you're captured.  You know.  Totally normal stuff.  If you spend even five minutes talking to someone like her you realize, quickly, how incredibly brave and self-less service members are.  They voluntarily serve.  For us.  She's leaving her two little boys and her husband, for us.  We should all be in awe of that.


As she only has a few days left with her family before she leaves, she's stressed out about many things, including this ombudsman change-over. I've been to retirement ceremonies where they've told the out-going sailor that it was okay to leave, because the continuing sailors would continue the watch in their absence.  I've heard this poem read at those ceremonies:

The Watch 

Aye mates, for many years
this shipmate stood the watch… 

While some of us lay about at night,
this shipmate stood the watch… 

While others of us were attending schools and,
yes, even before some of us were born,
this shipmate stood the watch… 

As our families watched the storm clouds of war
brewing on the horizons of history,
he stood the watch… 

Often he would look ashore and see his family
needed his guidance, but he knew he must stay because,
he had the watch… 

For many years he stood the watch so that we
and our fellow countrymen could sleep soundly
in safety knowing that this sailor would
stand the watch. 

Today we are here to say…
“The watch stands relieved…” 

Relieved by those you have led, guided, and trained…
Shipmate 

“You stand relieved…
We have the watch.”

I would never be so arrogant as to compare being a ombudsman with being a service member.  But as we parted ways that evening, the poem popped into my head.  I didn't want her to stress out about this anymore.  "Don't worry," I told her.  "We've got this."  And I mean it.  My job now is to take care of her family and every other family in this command.  I will do my best, because it's the least I can do.

Ombudsman again, and the remodeling continues

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, you'll remember that I was an ombudsman at Zac's last command.  I had been warned by other ombudsmen that once you're an ombudsman, that tidbit of information will precede your spouse to every one of his/her subsequent commands.  It must be a small pool of people who are willing to volunteer for this position because, sure enough, as soon as we arrived at the command they had caught wind somehow that I had been an ombudsman in Hawaii.  Within a couple of weeks of our arrival Zac's command was already letting him know that a vacancy was going to be opening up soon.  (This command has more than one ombudsman.  More on that later.)

When Zac and I were wrapping up our time in Hawaii, we had talked about whether I'd be interested in being an ombudsman again when we got to San Diego.  I finally decided that I'd like to be an ombudsman again, but that I wanted to wait at least a year before throwing my hat back into that ring.  San Diego (and the Big Navy associated with it) was a little intimidating.  I didn't know the city, the different commands, the way it all worked, so I wanted to give myself some time to learn about the area before I looked into serving in that capacity again.  Truthfully, I was also hoping that when we got to San Diego that, 1.) I'd get an awesome new job (ok, any new job), and /or 2.) Maybe we would have had a baby in the first year.  Alas, I think we all know how those two goals have been working out for me . . .


So here we were, six months into our stay in San Diego (six months?  SIX MONTHS???  When did this happen?) and Zac and I attended a meeting that his command put on for the families.  We learned about the command, it's structure and what types of deployments we could expect to see during our time here.  They also mentioned that they needed some new ombudsmen.  Zac and I looked at each other and I gave him a shrug.  He nodded in agreement and after the meeting we went up to meet with the out-going ombudsman to offer my candidacy.  She was thrilled that I was interested and she said she'd be in touch to set up an interview with her and the command support team.


Today I had lunch today with Zac's Executive Officer (XO) and Command Master Chief (CMC), plus two other wives who are interested in the position.  Luckily they are looking for three ombudsmen.  The Navy would like there to be an ombudsman for every 150 sailors at a command.  Our command is around 375 right now and we'll be up to 600 in 24 months, meaning that down the road we may even want to consider having a fourth.  The other two wives haven't been an ombudsman before, but they seem eager and enthusiastic, which is promising.  I did take a moment at lunch to tell them both that I really want this arrangement to be an equal (at least as equal as possible) division of labor.  I told them that I was volunteering for this position with the expectation that we would all be contributing and that most of the time we would all be carrying our own weight.  Clearly the benefit of having multiple ombudsmen is that when you do need help, your kid has a fever, you want to go on vacation for a few days, you've got finals, etc., you can lean on one another to keep things moving along.  I just know of many situations where there are multiple ombudsmen and one does most of the work while the others (who do little) still get equal credit.  It isn't fair, it isn't right, and I wanted to be clear about that from the get-go.  I know I take this role and the accompanying responsibilities seriously and I want them to take them seriously as well.


So probably by next week I'll have a letter in hand saying that I'm part of an ombudsman triad at Zac's command.  I won't lie - I'm a little nervous.  This is a totally different type of command than before.  That was shore duty where most of the sailors were home, this is sea duty where 60-70% of the sailors are deployed at any given time and, unlike a ship, our sailors are deployed in multiple locations coming and going at different times.  This command is much larger than Zac's last command, and this command has many more junior sailors.  It's a whole different kettle of fish.  I'm expecting this command to require more time and attention than Zac's last command, but I'm excited about the learning curve and the new challenges.


If you're here for the latest installment of Extreme Makeover: Kotschwar Gasthaus Edition, here are the first few days of work:

The beginning of the demolition.  

The guy had a heckuva time taking out the cabinets.  They were really sturdy.  There was much  noise.

The debris pile. 

A little more than half-way done with Day One.

It's pretty empty in there.

The demo guy framed an extension of the wall.  This will allow us to have a pantry.  Oh, to have a dedicated food space! On Day 2 the electrician wired the new wall so we can have a light switch there.  Now we don't have to walk across the kitchen to turn on the light for the kitchen or dining room.

Canned lighting going in, the old fixtures about to come out.

Day 4, the sheet-rock guy sanded the dried mud and then sprayed the appropriate areas with orange peel (or whatever you call it) to make it match the existing walls.  Toivo was just happy to be able to lay on the tile again after being shut out of there for most of two days.

It's ready for some paint, I'm told.  Are we already at the painting stage?   Cool.

I'm excited about the little things.  Like this new light-switch that is easy to reach when you walk in the kitchen door.  No more having to close the door to get to it over by the hinges.  Hooray! 

So that's where we are.  I have to admit, it's pretty neat watching how much things change day-by-day.  They delivered the cabinets this afternoon so those will start being installed in the next couple of days.  I'm happy with how things are going and so far the guys that have been here working have been very nice.  Here's hoping for continued smooth sailing.

It's hard to keep up!

There's been a flurry of activity around here lately, and it's hard to find time to sit down and blog about it.  I'll try to catch everyone up in an abbreviated fashion.  But before I get to that, you'll notice I changed the name of my blog again.  I forgot to update the area code when we bought our new house.  I kind of like the flow of area codes that I've been able to maintain: 612, 808, 858 now 619.  Since I've been in San Diego I've had some issues with people getting my cell phone number wrong, which is a (612) number.  I'll tell people my number and they hear 6 . . . 1 . . . and then they tune out, thinking I'm about to say "9".  I've learned to preface my recitation with, "It's a Minnesota number," to put people on notice that a "2" is about to rock their 61-world.

Let's see what else is going on at the Kotschwar Gasthaus.  Zac's sister was in town for a handful of days.  Zac had to leave to attend some schooling off on the East coast so he wasn't around for most of her visit.  She and I had a good time despite Zac's absence.  We were able to throw in a few new items in to the entertaining-the-guest repertoire I'm developing.  We took a tour of an U.S. Olympic training facility, hiked the highest point in San Diego, ate at a few new restaurants and took a tour of the Hotel del Coronado.  Throw in a yoga class and some massages and it was a fun visit.

Also currently residing in our Gasthaus are our friends, Claudia and her husband, who I have yet to assign an alias.  I guess I'll go with Claude?  It just seems easier to keep married friends paired up with fake names that match.  Anyhow, like I mentioned last time Claudia and Claude moved to San Diego and have been staying with us for a couple of weeks now.  So far it's been going really well.  Sometimes our dogs get after each other, but for the most part everyone is co-existing peacefully.  C&C (oh! look how easy that is) have been house-hunting like crazy since they've been here.  They've put some bids in on houses, but nothing has happened yet.  They've also signed up for housing but have been put on a wait-list.  They might be able to get into housing sometime in June.  I guess the long and the short of it is that they may be here for a while.  

Adding to their urgency is that their teenage daughter will be moving out here to join them in a few weeks.  They'd like to figure out where they're going to live so at the very least they can figure out which high school she's going to be attending.  PCSing (i.e. moving) is stressful enough when it's just two married adults.  It's even tougher when you've got school-aged children that are in the mix.  I wouldn't even begin to know where to look for information on school districts.  (At least anywhere outside of Minneapolis.)  It's a good thing that if we do have kids I will at least have four or five years to figure that issue out.  And then if we did have kids Zac would be out of the Navy for most of their schooling, so we'd be able to find a place and stay put for the last 8-10 years of their K-12 education.  I guess that's one of the few benefits of having kids later on your Navy career.

The other big news around here is the kitchen remodeling that began last Thursday.  You say you want some pictures?  Well okay, then.  Here you go.

Here's the kitchen.  Not an awful kitchen, granted, but by no means great.  What were our issues?  Let's start listing them, shall we?  1.)  The lighting in the kitchen was bad.  There was no light above the sink and the main lighting fixture was centered such that you always cast a shadow on to the counter top no matter where you stood in the kitchen.  That is, the light was always at your back, instead of where it would be useful for helping you see what you're chopping up.  2.)  The (only) light-switch for the kitchen was located in an inconvenient spot.  You'll see it there, on the right of the photo.  You'll notice that the hinges for the door are right there too.  That means that when the door is open, you have either close the door or go around the counter to reach the switch to turn the light on/off.  It is also the only light switch for the dining room light and outside door light.

  3.) There was an 18" apartment-sized dishwasher.  Not really practical for a family-sized house. Now, while it's true I made it through my formative years without a dishwasher, I feel like if you're going to have one it should be full-sized.  4.) The cabinets were much too high above the counter tops, meaning that only the bottom shelf of the cabinets could be used for storing things that you need to get to regularly.  (The space between most counter tops and cabinets is something like 18".  Ours was 27".)  5.)  The bottom cabinets had no lazy-susans in the corners, meaning that those corners (and there are three of them) were hard to reach.

As you can see, the issues with the kitchen weren't huge by any means, but they were annoying in total.  The kitchen was minimally functional, but not efficient.  And when you have a small kitchen (with little other storage in the house) you need to use your space as efficiently as possible.  We could have waited to do this project, true, but we wanted to be able to enjoy our new kitchen for as long as possible.  What is the point of dropping money on a new kitchen if you're about to move and won't have the opportunity to enjoy your investment?

But you know what's not as fun?  Not having an oven or stove for four weeks or so with four (soon to be five) people living in your house.  It's been manageable so far, but I'm not sure if I'll be so chipper three weeks from now.  I'll just chalk it up as another adventure in homeownership.  

The whirlwind of visitors continues.  My folks came out last weekend for a few days.  They let us know beforehand that they weren't coming out to do any sight-seeing.  They were coming out to see us and help us out with some home projects.  We took them up on their generous offer and ended up getting a couple of major projects completed, including getting the garden cleaned up and installing flooring in the rafters of the garage so we could have some more storage.

Zac, enjoying the manual labor of busting apart palettes.

The succulents and cacti across from our driveway.

It looks so nice now that it's cleaned up.  Before it was overrun with weeds and grass.

Dad and Zac, working hard on getting some boards ready for the garage rafters.

 When I haven't been busy playing Hostess With the Most-est, I've found some time to be crafty and have some fun.  Since Zac is obsessed with his garden, I decided that we should have something to identify all of his plants.  The people who sold us the house left a box of white ceramic tiles in the garage that I decided would be kind of cool for the task.  I took out some of my acrylic paints and painted on some of the vegetables that Zac has growing in the garden.  I'm not an artist - I don't pretend to be.  I am someone who finds clip art of vegetables online and tries to replicate them the best I can.  Yes, your six-year-old could probably do better.  

Just finished painting them.

After I was done painting them, I let them dry and then used a Sharpie to write what they were, just in case people couldn't tell what they were.  Because, like I mentioned, I'm not a great artist and honestly, a cucumber looks a lot like a zucchini.  Once I had that done, I used some spray sealant I bought at Michaels to protect them.  Hopefully that will keep them nice for at least one season in the garden.  Zac likes them.  I like them too.

And here are my latest crocheting creations.  When we were in a craft store the other day Zac found a book with all sorts of crocheted critters.  (Yes, Zac found it.  Occasionally he'll accompany me to Michael's or Joann Fabric.  He's a good man.)  I made an elephant as well, but that was given to a friend as a present for their new baby.  I'm particularly obsessed with the hippo at the moment.  After I made the one in this photo, I made another one where I modified the pattern to make the hippo fatter.  Who wants a skinny hippo?  Hippos, while vicious and lethal in real life, are cute and pudgy in Stuffed Animal Land.  So from now on my hippos will be heftier around the middle.  

A seal, a hippo and a gator.  

The other big news around here is that on Saturday Claudia and her husband PCSed to San Diego from Hawaii.  They'll be staying with us for the foreseeable future.  (And their two dogs.)  They would like to buy a house, but that process can take awhile.  Zac and I busted our butts trying to find a house and it took us three months before we had keys in our hands.  (We know how lucky we were to get into something that fast.)  I think Claudia and her husband are considering moving into military housing like we did until they buy a home.  They are welcome to stay with us as long as they want, but I know that it's not always easy living with other people.  They're good friends and, as it goes in the military, we're all in this together and we need to help each other out when we can.  We've offered them our opinions on the house-buying process when they've asked, but we're trying to make sure we don't meddle too much.  It's their journey, their adventure and they will figure out what living situation is right for them.  We just want to be supportive.


It is nice that slowly but surely many of our Hawaii friends are moving to San Diego.  Now if we could only get Bernadette and Ken down here, everything would be perfect.  It's comforting to have our Navy ohana nearby.

Two months???

I can't believe we've had our house for two months already.  On the one hand, I feel like we just moved in, but when I sit back and think about it we are remarkably settled in and well on our way to making this house into our home.  The weekends we haven't had visitors we've been busy with home-owner type projects.  After many days of hard work (and much cursing) Zac has finally got our sprinkler system working.  Hopefully with the newly installed drip lines we'll be able to be water-conscious and still grow some of the vegetables that Zac so desperately wants.  He's a farmer at heart, and he's happiest when he has a garden to tend.  Me?  I get fresh produce out of the deal so he's free to play in the dirt as much as he wants.  I'm more focused on becoming a cactus/succulent propagator extraordinaire.  I've become mildly obsessed with cacti and succulents since moving here.  They come in so many shapes, colors and textures that they just captivate me.  If I was a wealthy woman, I'd have a pretty amazing drought-tolerant garden.


Zac's brother's family visited last weekend.  That included our three-year-old niece and five-year-old nephew.  They're great kids and, all things considered, they were very well-behaved.  Even before Zac and I knew we were moving to San Diego, Zac's brother's family was planning a trip to Disneyland for our niece's birthday.  So after spending two and a half days up at Disneyland and a chill-out day at the beach, Zac's brother's family came down to spend about three days with us.  I don't know about you, but after 2.5 days of Disneyland I figured that my niece and nephew would be totally fried and burnt out from the excitement and over-stimulation.  Let's just say that Zac and I set the bar pretty low in terms of what we were expecting in terms of the behavior of two kids that have had their sleeping and eating patterns severely disrupted for a number of days.  But, like I said, the kids were actually great.  There were a couple of meltdowns, sure, but overall they were a hoot to have around.  They loved our house and our citrus trees and pestered the dogs.  


Poor dogs, they didn't know what to do having the kids hovering around them the whole time. The dogs were great, very patient and accepting with the kids, but I know they were a little relieved when they left.  And poor Toivo, he was referred to as "the stinky one" all weekend, as my niece was having a hard time telling Toivo and Zoe apart.  "Is this the stinky one?" she'd ask sweetly.  "Yes, that's the stinky one," I'd answer.  "I don't like the stinky one," she'd state.  I'm pretty sure Toivo was a little indignant.


We got to see a few more San Diego attractions with Zac's brother's family as well.  We spent one day at SeaWorld and one day at the San Diego Zoo.  Both attractions were a lot of fun, but I'm constantly amazed at how expensive it is to visit some of these attractions.  Zac and I usually get discounted tickets because Zac's active duty military and I'm not sure I'd be willing to visit some of these places if I had to pay full price.  It's fairly ridiculous.  Plus, once you're through the gates, you face spending $15-20 for lunch per person.  Not for anything special, mind you.  You practically need to take out a loan to feed a family of four.


The last full day of their visit was just hanging around the house, trying to get the kids to mellow out a little bit. Zac and his brother worked for hours on the sprinkler system while my sister-in-law and sat in the living room, catching up.  The kids took a much-needed nap and it was a nice, relaxing way to finish their visit.  This weekend is a weekend off and on Friday my folks arrive for a short stint.  Then we have a weekend off, and then Zac's sister is coming to visit.  It's ridiculous how much company we have.  This means we will have had family here every other week for eight weeks. Again, we love our families.  It's just a bit much.  Thankfully my sister is saying that they may not be able to visit until September.  I'm totally okay with that.


We finally are set to have our kitchen remodeled, starting in a few weeks.  I went out the other day to pick out counter tops and back splashes for the new kitchen.  I can not wait until it is completed.  I know it will be a huge improvement over our current kitchen.  I know it will be a pain in the butt cooking-wise while it's being remodeled, but we've got a grill and a microwave so I think we'll make it through just fine.  Zac may be going off to another school in Indiana during some of the work as well, so for part of the time it will be only cooking for one.  I'll have to use great restraint in order to not just go over to the local taco shop every night for dinner.  So easy, so tasty.  I think I should go celebrate Easter with some al pastor tacos.  After all, I never was a Peeps fan . . .

Settled in, first guests already come and gone

I've been meaning to write about our new home since we got the keys last month, but I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and blog.  (Or, when I have had time, I've been to tired to type.)  Our household goods were delivered on February 13th, much to our delight.  It's kind of like Christmas unboxing all of your belongings.  A dusty, overwhelming, half-week-long Christmas.  At first it's exciting and invigorating, but 12 hours into it you start to lose a little steam.  Zac and I knew that we needed to get our house organized, though, as we were having company arrive in about a month.  It was nice that Zac's command gave him a couple days off to unpack.  It really did move along much more quickly having two people working on the project.

Our biggest hurdle was trying to figure out what to do with all of our kitchen stuff.  Our current kitchen doesn't have a lot of storage space and we knew from the time we bought the house that we'd be remodeling the kitchen fairly soon after we moved in.  We ended up bringing about half of our kitchen items into the kitchen and the rest are currently stored in the garage.  Once we get the kitchen remodeled - scheduled completion for mid/late May - we'll be able to move all of our stuff into the kitchen and that will free up some space in the garage to make that space more organized.  It's like one of those puzzles where you only have one free space so you have to move one piece before you can move another piece, and sometimes you need to move multiple pieces to get to the one you want.  The layout of our house (one-story, on a slab) makes me miss basements in Minneapolis.  It's nice to be able to store stuff out of the way and out of sight that you don't use all the time.  I also like being able to store root vegetables and onions in a dark, cooler place.  Ah, basements.  How I miss you.

We've been busy with home projects since we've moved in.  There was a stretch there where we went to Home Depot six days in a row.  One the seventh day we went to Lowe's, just because we needed to mix it up.  Zac was to the point that he felt uncomfortable when he didn't exit the freeway and swing by Home Depot on the way home from work.  It has taken some hard work and long hours, but we've got some of the pressing projects completed.  We've got plenty more to come.  Zac is getting handier by the day, which is fun to watch.  He's become a master at sanding metal things down and spray-painting them (two firepits, our outdoor furniture and a file cabinet).  When we're not working on the house, we're getting to know the neighborhood.  We've successfully found a delicious local taco shop, which was priority #1 for living in San Diego.  So far, being a home-owner rocks.

Like I mentioned above, we had our first house guests in the middle of March - my aunt and uncle from Minnesota.  It was great seeing them.  They have two daughters, around the same age as Megan and I.  We spent a lot of time together growing up.  My family gets together regularly, probably at least once a month, to celebrate birthdays or holidays.  It was a hard adjustment being away from the regular family contact when Zac and I moved to Hawaii.  My aunt and uncle are great people, very cordial and easy-going.  I was a little nervous about hosting them, as I knew they'd report back to my mother about the house, my well-being, etc.  Not that they're spies, but if I know my Mom, she wants to know that everything is going okay.  I know Dad does too, but I think Mom gets a little more antsy about knowing this stuff.   Love you, Mom.  :)

The first two days my aunt and uncle were here it rained.  It was awful.  Welcome to beautiful, sunny, temperate Southern California!  Instead they found a winter storm that dropped inches of rain in a cold 45-40 degrees.  We found activities to keep us entertained indoors and by Monday the weather had cleared to what it should be and we were able to visit some of the local beaches and watch the pelicans and seals hang out.  Tuesday was picture-perfect and we spent the day up at the San Diego Zoo's Safari Park.  One of the great things about having company come to visit is that it forces us to take the time to go see some of the cool attractions that San Diego has to offer.  (And try out restaurants I've been meaning to eat at.)  I prefer checking out places before company arrives so that I have a better understanding of parking, how long it takes to see the attraction, whether it's worth the money, etc., but sometimes it makes a better story to go on the adventure with family or friends for the first visit.

We had last weekend off, but tomorrow brings round two of company.  Zac's brother's family arrives after spending a few days up at Disneyland.  I wonder how our five-year-old nephew and three-year-old niece are doing after all the traveling and excitement.  They're good kids, so I'm sure they'll be fine, but I think I may go rent a couple of kid's movies to have in the house in case they need a decompress-in-our-pajamas-because-of-Mickey-overload day.  Two weeks after that my parents come out for a quick weekend visit and then Zac's sister might come out at the end of April.

Dear family and friends,
I know that many of you don't have each other's e-mails or phone numbers, but if you could telepathically coordinate your visits so that they don't all occur within a two-month window, that would be terrific.  Thanks!
Love always,
Kate

Ok, I'm kidding, but when it rains visitors, it pours visitors.  I suppose most people have time off during the spring, and many people are looking for some warm weather and sunshine this time of year as they're escaping the doldrums of winter.  And since everyone is visiting so soon after we moved to San Diego, hopefully they'll all be able to return in a year or two to see us again before the Navy moves us to someplace new.  And of course we love having people here, because we miss our friends and family.  I'm not sure how much we'll be able to travel now that Zac is on sea duty and will have trainings, schools, and deployments.  So c'mon down to SoCal!  The guestroom is ready!