Tobin Family Website

I hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend last week.  In the DC area, we had absolutely beautiful weather!  We spent quite a bit of time outdoors enjoying it.  Unfortunately, on Sunday and Monday Ben was ill with a fever.  We were concerned it might be strep based on his history, but he was better by Monday night.  As it turned out, I was next in line to get it and ended up staying home Tuesday and Wednesday with a fever and a stomach virus.  Thursday night it was Karen’s turn, although hers only lasted about a day.  Delaney seems to be the only one who avoided it altogether.

Despite the Monday holiday and being ill on Tuesday and Wednesday, I still managed to get 26-hours in at work on Thursday and Friday.  After working all day at the office on Thursday, I came home and changed clothes and then traveled to one of our operational sites in the DC area to oversee a software upgrade.  The upgrade was supposed to complete by 2AM, but ran into some database problems and didn’t finish until 6AM.  I then had to hang around to brief out the results of the upgrade to various offices that were reporting back to work on Friday morning.  After the briefings were over, I traveled back to my office for a meeting at 11AM and to finish up some other work that I needed to get done.  I finally got back to the house at 2PM on Friday afternoon and laid down for a much needed power nap!   

Last weekend, we went and saw the movie Pince Caspian, the latest movie in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series.  It was a very good movie, although not quite as good as the first in my opinion.  I had read the series a long time ago as a kid, and had always liked Prince Caspian, although I had forgotten the storyline.  As before, the movie was visually rich with some amazing graphics.  All in all, the family really enjoyed it.  We would also like to go see the new Indiana Jones movie.  Perhaps we will get that in during the next month.

Tomorrow, Karen and I will celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary.  It is amazing how time flies!  We have been together now for 20-years, which is almost half of our lives!  It has been quite a journey so far and we are looking forward to the next 20 years.  We have covered a lot of ground in those years, starting out dating while I was at school in Vermont and Karen was at school in Virginia.  After we married, we spent almost 5-years in Dayton, Ohio, before moving to Los Angeles and living in Redondo Beach and San Pedro.  During the 3-years we were living in California, Ben was born.  Then we moved back to the east coast and lived in Satellite Beach, Florida, for 3-years where Delaney was born.  Then it was north to Springfield, Virginia, for 3-years while I worked at the Pentagon.  After going through the surreal events of 9/11, we moved back to Florida.  This time we found ourselves in Fort Walton Beach up in the Panhandle along the gulf coast.  After 3-more years of soaking up the sun and perspiring in the heat and humidity, it was back to northern Virginia and the greater DC area.  Now we are trying to decide where to go next and what to do as I plan to retire from the Air Force next year.  We are looking forward to settling in a little longer than 3-years at one location, although it has kept things fresh and exciting.  We don’t have any grand plans on what to do on our anniversary, but we will be happy to just be together as a family!

Speaking of how time flies, Ben and Delaney both returned home with their latest school photos yesterday.  It is hard to believe that Delaney will soon be 9 years old and Ben is approaching 12!  They are both such good kids (most of the time), and they have really enriched our lives.  We are enjoying our time with them now, as we know that time is a fleeting thing and it won’t be too long before they head off to college! 

In the hockey world, I am looking forward to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Finals tonight on NBC as the Penguins will be looking to even up the series 2-2.  I am hoping they can do so and send the series back to Detroit tied at 2-games a piece.  If they lose tonight, it will put them in a very precarious position going back to Detroit losing 3-1 in a best of 7 series!  For full coverage, you can check out my hockey blog at http://nhlpens.com.

Tags: Hockey, Photos, Tobin Family Update

Memorial Day weekend is upon us and I am finally finding some time to post a note here in the blog.  First, aside from being just another Government holiday, Memorial Day is a time to remember those who have put themselves in harm’s way and made the ultimate sacrifice for our country and for freedom around the world.  For many Americans, it is sometimes easy to forget that we are still a nation at war, as our daily lives continue on just the same.  Yet, well over 100,000 U.S. troops remain deployed today in hostile regions around the world, and won’t be sharing time with their families this weekend.  Please keep those courageous and selfless Americans in your thoughts and prayers this weekend, and reflect upon the sacrifices that many before them have made for our freedom and way of life.

I spent most of this past week in Florida at a meeting for work.  Interestingly, the meeting was held in Melbourne, Florida, which is where we used to live from 1998-2001.  The meeting was hosted by Harris, which is less than 2 miles from my old office at a Northrop Grumman facility.  It was kind of neat to see all that has changed in the area over the last 7-10 years.  I used to live on Patrick AFB in base housing, which has since been sold to commercial contractors.  This process, called housing privatization, is where base housing is sold to private companies who then refurbish/rebuild and maintain the properties and rent them back out to the military/public.  Much of the old ugly housing has been bulldozed and rebuilt into attractive homes, however, the two houses we lived in are still just the way they were when we lived there (ugly).  While there, I did manage to make a run up to Coconuts in Cocoa Beach and have a Pina Colada and a blackened Mahi sandwich out on the deck overlooking the ocean…mmm!  I returned to Virginia on Thursday afternoon and was given a military pass (day off) for Friday, but still had to go in for about 5 hours to brief at an Ops/Intel meeting at 0630 and to also meet with a Senate committee staffer regarding the program I used to manage.  I managed to get home by noon, so it still made for a nice early start to the extended weekend.   

Prior to leaving last week, we went out and bought Ben a Sony MP3 player.  He has been asking for an MP3 player ever since Delaney got one for Christmas.  I have to say that this little Sony unit is awesome!  I am thinking of getting one for myself.  It has a gorgeous 2.4″ screen and holds 4GB of video, music and pictures.  It also comes with upgraded earbuds that sound great.  I personally like it better than the iPod, which is more expensive.  Of course the iPod has a lot more accessories available for it, but you have to use iTunes which is less attractive to me.  iTunes charges you 99 cents for every song you download.  I use Realplayer which charges a set monthly fee ($14) and I can download as many songs as I want to multiple devices.  I just have to synch the units once a month to ensure the licenses are up to date.  This is a more attractive option to me, especially since the kids are constantly wanting to change the music that is on their mp3 players.

Karen went out for a day of shopping today with the lady who drives the kids’ bus.  They are heading up to Leesburg to an outlet mall, so they should have fun.  The kids and I haven’t decided what to do yet, but we may not do much as both of them are complaining of sore throats and both are running a low fever.  It figures they would get sick at the beginning of a 3-day weekend!  I am hoping it isn’t strep.  We were planning to go to the movies this weekend to see either Prince Caspian or Indiana Jones (or both), but that will likely depend on how the kids are feeling. 

We continue to watch the housing market closely as house prices continue to plummet around here.  Houses in our neighborhood are now as low as $350K.  When we moved into our house, similar homes in the neighborhood were listing at $550K+.  I am so thankful that we leased and didn’t buy in high.  It is getting tempting to buy now, but the uncertainty of what I will do after retiring is holding us back.  If we stay here, we do like this neighborhood and the schools.  I am pretty certain that if we stay here, I could easily find work with all of the choices in the area.  Given the economy, staying local may be the best thing to do.  I think the DC area is relatively recession proof in terms of the job market.      

Finally, the Pittsburgh Penguins have managed to make it all the way through the playoffs and were crowned the Eastern Conference Champions last week.  As a result, they will take on the Western Conference Champion Detroit Red Wings for the Stanley Cup.  The best of 7 series starts tonight, and yours truly is excited to see how the series plays out!  I am expecting a lengthy battle (6 or 7 games) to determine the winner, and I think either team could win.  Of course, with bias, I am picking the Penguins in 7!