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

Today we celebrated Ben’s 11th birthday.  He had a Star Wars themed birthday party and invited over a few of his closer friends.  All told, there were 5 friends here to celebrate with.  Karen made a really cool R2D2 cake and we had the kids build their own light sabers as a project (see below).  We built the light sabers out of pipe insulation, pvc pipe and colored duct tape.  They turned out pretty cool and were largely non-lethal.  Everyone had a good time!  Delaney had a friend come over so that she would also have someone to play with without crashing her brother’s manly event. 

In other news, we had a little bit of a snowstorm on Thursday.  We got about 4 inches of snow before it turned to sleet and then rain.  We still have enough snow to cover the grass and it has now gotten colder so everything is frozen solid.  It is supposed to get down to 10 degrees tonight, which would be the coldest we have seen here so far this winter.  I spent a couple days at home this past week dealing with another migraine.  The meds I currently have are doing nothing, so I am scheduled to go back to the doctor on 29 Jan for another visit.  The frequency and duration of the headaches has been getting worse than I am used to, so I hope the doctor can figure something better out.  Karen’s seem to be largely under control now that they put her on blood pressure medicine, although she didn’t really have an issue with her blood pressure.  The bad part for her is the side effects of the meds. 

Karen’s father continues to struggle with a staph infection in his leg that he has been trying to get rid of now for almost 4-months.  He finally was able to change doctors and they have correctly diagnosed the type of staph he is dealing with so that hopefully they can treat it more effectively.  He continues to need crutches and has pretty much been put on bed rest for the last several weeks. 

I am starting to look ahead to retirement as I hit 20-years of active duty in a littloe under 2 years.  It is a bit unnerving to be thinking about changing careers (or at least employer) at this point in the game.  The big questions are where we will ultimately live and what type of job will I pursue.  I have asked a number of friends and associates who work in different aspects of the defense industry for some insights as I try an ddetermine if I want to pursue Government civil service, a support contractor job, a major defense contractor job, etc.  I need to narrow down the vector I plan to pursue pretty soon as the time will quickly fly by, and I do not intend to take another military assignment after my current job.  As much as I love Vermont, it is a relatively expensive place to live and I am concerned that the job options may be limited based on my defense/acquisition background.  A good friend has informed me to expect that my military retired pay should just about cover my annual income tax liabilities……pretty scary when you figure my annual retirement pay should run about $38-40K. 

Tags: Family Update