Carrie Bartkowiak v. 5.0

Mike came home today in one heck of a mood.
After being the unlucky recipients of this for about half an hour, I suggested he’d feel better by making fire. Burning things. For some reason firing up the grill seems to awaken an ancient “fire in the belly” kind of response from men, and they immediately feel all manly.

He’s even been known to grunt and do the Tim Allen “arruff ruff ruff” sounds while he’s out there.

His immediate response to my suggestion was “but I don’t wanna grill.”

Apparently the mere mention of fire can change a man’s mood… 10 minutes later he was out there with the coal and aluminum foil, happily poking around in the grill, and even cracking jokes and (gasp) smiling.

Okay, so our grill isn’t one of those big nice stainless steel jobs tied into the house’s natural gas line, but it works fine… especially for cheering up cranky hubbies.

This is what Alex looks like even when asleep - he needs bigger hands to hold all of his cars. He’s a little gearhead, like his Daddy. Anytime he sees a camera now, he yells “CHEESE!”  All of our boys are pure hams.
And yes I know, we need to mow. Spring is officially here.

Note: Ignore the post date. I wrote this Friday evening but couldn’t get it to publish to the blog because I’d forgotten to resize one of the pics down from 5 megs.

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Living in the port city of Portsmouth Virginia, this week’s assignment of “water” was easy! I just popped downtown and walked around a bit while the boys were having their book club at the library.

This is a shot across the Elizabeth River, looking at Norfolk, Virginia. You can also see part of the world-famous Norfolk Naval Shipyard in this shot. We’ve got two celebrities in port this week!
From this little dock you can take a double-decker ferry across the river for just $1 per person. It’s a great ride, as you go past the shipyard and get to see all of the big impressive naval ships being restocked and repaired. It takes about 10 minutes to get across the water, and the ferry runs every half hour.

I love the weathering on this.

Here’s one of our celebrities: The USS Iwo Jima!

It’s hard to get an idea of just how massive this ship is from the picture.  Her flight deck spans a full 2.2 acres, being 819 feet long and 119 feet wide. She boasts a full 600-bed hospital with 6 operating rooms, three dental operating rooms, x-ray rooms, labs, patient wards, and even a blood bank. You can find more facts on her armament and the vehicles she carries here.  Standing on the other side of this little dock, a football player with a good arm could easily toss a ball onto her flight deck; I love being able to get so close to impressive ships like this.

Here’s a shot of her from the air while in deployment; check out all of those helicopters! (Photo courtesy of the Navy)

 
The Iwo Jima has served as President Bush’s flagship, and is only the second ship to be presented with the flag of the President.

A note on her history from her website:

On August 31, 2005, IWO JIMA was sortied to the Gulf of Mexico to provide disaster relief and to conduct support operations in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. IWO JIMA sailed up the Mississippi River to the city of New Orleans to directly support relief operations and act as the central command center for all federal, state, and local disaster recovery operations.

During this critical period, IWO JIMA also served as the region’s only fully functional air field for helicopter operations, conducting over one thousand flight deck operations; provided hot meals, showers, drinking water, and berthing to thousands of National Guardsmen and relief workers; provided medical services, including first aid and surgical services, for disaster victims; and conducted clean-up operations in the city and suburbs of New Orleans.

Also in port this week is the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier CVN-71, aka the USS Theodore Roosevelt. I couldn’t get a shot of her, though. Maybe I’ll take the boys on the ferry this weekend and see if we can get a shot. Here’s the little ferry that you can ride across the river - note the flags painted on the Iwo Jima behind her. The words under the flag say “Beware of Jet Blast and Rotors.”  Ack!

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I started reading Jack Canfield’s book The Success Principles tonight, and I realize I’m not going to be able to zip through this one. I’m only on page 28 and he’s already got me doing my second exercise.

In this one, you create an I Want list.
30 things you want to do, 30 things you want to have, 30 things you want to be before you die. 

Here goes.

30 Things I Want To Do Before I Die:

1. Publish my book.
2. Write and publish more books, both fiction and non-fiction.
3. Go back to college, a la carte, studying anything I’m interested in with no pressure to “get a degree”.
4. Foster (or adopt) children.
5. Get a pilot’s license.
6. Be a permanent non-smoker. And be happy about it.
7. Work with (or speak to) groups of children and young adults.
8. Travel to Ireland, Scotland, travel around the world and maybe even see the 7 wonders of the world. (Seeing the pyramids… wow. Can you imagine?)
9. Inspire and encourage others.
10. Feel pretty again.
11. Get more kids and parents interested in homeschooling.
12. Create a community. Or lots of ‘em.
13. Have time to work with my (polymer) clay.
14. Turn out to the world 3 healthy, happy, confident boys who have a love of learning, aren’t afraid to say no or do what’s right, and who are passionate about life.
15. Make a difference.
16. Take some cooking classes.
17. Start or join a book club.
18. Inspire, encourage, and support my husband to enjoy life, not be so angry/worried/fearful, and to live with joy and happiness.
19. Learn to play the guitar.
20. Get this country back on track.  (Now if that ain’t a tall order…)
21. Take a cruise to somewhere beautiful and warm where the ocean is crystal blue and the streets are overflowing with colors and sounds and culture.
22. Go to Mardis Gras.
23. Get my motorcycle license.
24. Go on lots of motorcycle rides with my Dad.
25. Take lots and lots of beautiful photographs - enough to fill a couple of coffee table books that can be passed down through the family.
26. Learn how to make “altered” books. (Like scrapbooking old hardcover books.)
27. Ride horses.
28. Visit every State in the country - with the boys. I want to especially see the Grand Canyon, the red cliffs of Arizona, the great redwood trees, Mount Rushmore, be far enough north that I can see the Aurora Borealis, and so much more that I can’t remember offhand.  Much of it on the back of a motorcycle.
29. Swim with dolphins. Really swim out in the water *with* them, not stand in a pool and stick my hand out as they swim by.
30. Take the boys camping and fishing more.  A lot.  Just go be in nature.

30 Things I Want To Have Before I Die:

1. A motorcycle of my own.
2. A ‘69 Mach 1 Mustang.
3. A big country farmhouse with a wrap-around porch, surrounded by lots of trees, and the kind of kitchen you could fit an entire greek wedding into and nobody feels cramped.  With big comfortable window seats.  And lots of animals. And juicy ripe vegetables that you pick from the garden minutes before dinner.  And more than one bathroom, with water pressure that stays put even when you’re running the washing machine or someone’s flushing the toilet. Oh, a gas stove, too, of course. And great old hardwood floors.  It would be great if it also had a wonderful swimming and fishing hole on the property.
4. Chickens.
5. Enough money to live comfortably, do whatever we’d like to do the moment we’d like to do it, and still enough left over that we can really support some good charities.
6. Cable or satellite tv with a DVR and all the good channels like HGTV, Discover, the History Channel… all that good stuff. Keep the Showtime and movie channel crap; I don’t want those.
7. A bathtub that I can actually stretch out in (I’m 5′9″), and has enough room around it that I can set down my drink, my book, a few candles, and a comfortably seated hubby to talk to. Or even big enough for him to get in with me and put his drink and book up on the side, too.
8. A really productive garden, with lots of tomatoes and herbs and zucchini and summer squash.
9. Fruit trees/vines. Lots of ‘em.
10. Regular dates with my hubby.
11. A group of strong, close friends that like to get together and just hang out without having to have something to “do” to entertain them. (I used to have this. *sniffle*)
12. A house next to my Mom and Dad. Or on the same property. This “pack everyone in the car and go see Grandma and PapPap” is much less appealing than standing on the porch and yelling for the boys to quit bugging Grandma and PapPap and come eat supper.
13. My own workshop.
14. God, am I only at 14?  Oh yeah.  Teeth pretty enough that I’m not embarrassed to smile again.
15. An entire bookshelf of MY books. As in *I* wrote them.
16. Children that pick up after themselves. And like doing it. (If you’re gonna dream… dream big!)

Yeesh… never thought it would be hard to come up with 30 of either of these things. It got tough at 10 for each of ‘em. How in the world do people ever come up with those massive “100 things to do before I die” lists? Egads.
I’m going to have to come back and finish this later, it’s 4:17am and I’m tired.  I think I’ll have the boys start working on this, too.

What do you think? I wanna know! Please leave a comment :)
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