Happy 4th of July!

This past weekend we had a friend, Kevin, visiting us while in port on the USS Ronald Reagan. We went on many adventures consisting of beaching it, playing golf, touring the Reagan, fireworks on the ocean, a parade, a few bars, eating and of course napping. For some reason before and after everything we did all three of us would have to take a nap first. Forever this visit from Kevin will be known as "the napping weekend." We had so much fun! Having almost an entire weekend off with Jeff rarely happens. I did have to work 5 hours on Saturday and ended up getting called in to work Monday night, but the time in between was glorious!
The first night Kevin was here we walked the row of drinking establishments near our house. No, we did not go crazy with it, but we had a good time! We even knocked on one of our friends door on the way there and had him and his fiance join us for a bit. This was the only night we all forgot to bring a camera so there are no pictures to share. Oops!
Saturday Jeff and Kevin went golfing while I was at work. Golfing in Hawaii must have been a horrible experience for them...can't ya tell? lol

That night we all just relaxed and went to bed at a decent time.
Sunday morning, July 4th, we went to Pearl Harbor where the Reagan was docked to take a tour! I've never been on a carrier before so I was REALLY excited! Plus it helped a lot having a visual of Jeff's deployment stories. If he's stationed on it when he goes back to sea duty I'll understand a bit more of where he is and what he's doing. There are so many stairs! If you need to get anywhere on the boat you have to really work for it. I completely understand why they lose so much weight on deployment. Forget the poor food quality...these guys do stairmaster all day long everyday! I felt the burn by the end of the tour..ouch. Kevin was super awesome and even took our friends Tim and Anne with us to see everything (the same two we knocked on the door of the previous night). They had never been on a boat either despite Tim having been in the navy for 7 years or so..(not quite sure I'll have to edit this after he reads it). We took tons of pictures...they are posted on my facebook if you want to see all of them.

This is the 1st lt.'s chair overlooking the massive elevators that bring the birds down from the flight deck...

Jeff, Kevin and I on the back end of the flight deck overlooking the USS Arizona Memorial and USS Missouri.

My favorite shot of the day. Go America!

My F-18 Super Hornet...it's pretty cool huh..

Jeff in the whatever it's called...I always forget lol Kevin works with them so that's how we got the key to get inside of it...yes you actually need a key for this one!

View from the vulture's nest or whatever they call it...I need to take better notes.

My NCIS picture...they're always sneaking down these things looking for the bad guys!

Me and the pres.


Later that night, after a nap of course, we walked the long 0.8 miles to the beach to watch the Kailua Bay fireworks. Growing up down the street from Disneyland has made me hard to impress as far as fireworks go...but it was amazing! They shot them off from a boat anchored just 100 yards offshore and we sat right on the beach with nothing obstructing our view. Hawaii is so awesome because you can really just set up your beach chair and have a beer while watching them. It's not technically legal but it's one of those things that if you are respectful with your trash and don't cause a scene everyone just looks the other way...of course while holding their own beer. I secretly wanted to see the boat explode, no one was on it, but it didn't happen. They were really pretty reflecting off of the water.


Kailua held their July 4th parade on the 5th this year so we walked and set up our chairs just like the night before and enjoyed watching every politcal condidate walk down the street. It was ridiculous. I understand that it's an election year, but seriously there were twice as many people wearing "vote for whatever" shirts than horse units or floats. The shriners were there as well as every veteran on the island. I've never spent so much time standing and clapping for people then I did that parade. I just have this respect thing for veterans so if I see a car with the words "Pearl Harbor survivor" I just can't stay sitting in my chair. It was cool to see all of the medals they were wearing including the purple heart and others like it. The navy band marched and I'm so sorry guys but the marine bands are so much better. I caught myself checking their ranks as they marched on by and it cracked me up after I realized what I was doing. Hey but I got to meet Hawaii's governer! Her car stopped for a minute right in front of us. Who doesn't enjoy a good photo op right? Although I do have some beef with her but let's not get into that..lol.

During the parade my boss called and I ended up covering a shift for someone. So what did Jeff and Kevin do? Went golfing of course! They got this awesome shot of Jeff with a rainbow behind him.

There's so much more I can put in this blog post but I'll keep it at that for now. We fly out on Thursday to spend 12 days breathing California air...if any of you are in the Southern CA area let us know!