Lexi's Sabres Debut

Lexi made her first appearance at the HSBC Arena Saturday night as Buffalo hosted the BlueJax. No, she isn't the secret weapon to fix the power play (but it couldn't hurt). A picture of Lexi and Daddy, both sporting Sabres gear, made the Fan Scrapbook that is shown on the Jumbotron during a stoppage in play.

Baby Firsts

Lexi has had a couple of firsts recently. About two weeks ago, she moved from the bassinet in our room to her crib in the nursery. She took to this change very well.

The other first happened this morning while in the nursery at church. She was laying on the floor on a blanket and, after a couple attempts, she rolled from her back to her tummy.

Back from Hawaii

I got back from Hawaii Wednesday night. After all, air shows are a vital part of our National Defense, and you can't drop Navy Seals out of an airplane at an air show without maintenance to support the plane. It was a very nice trip. We had a down day on Monday and I was able to get in another dive trip and visit the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. (See picture at right) It is a very nicely done memorial. It takes about 75 minutes to see everything. The tour starts out with a video that documents the days leading up to Pearl Harbor and actual video from the attack. For those of you who do not know, the Arizona was sunk when an armor piercing bomb penetrated the deck and struck the ships forward ammo hold. It seemed like you could feel the blast watching the movie.

After the film, there is a boat that goes out to the memorial. The memorial is build over the wreckage of the Arizona. From the memorial, you can see some of the ship, including the mount for one of the gun turrets, above the water. Since the ship was refueled about a week before the attack, there is still fuel oil bubbling up from the tanks.

I have uploaded all of my pictures to Flickr. In the pictures, there is another battleship moored not to far from the Arizona. The is the USS Missouri. This is the ship on which the treaty ending WWII was signed. This battleship was in active service as late as the Gulf War in the 90's. It is now set up for tours. Unfortunately, time did not work out to allow us to tour this.

If you plan on visiting the memorial should you ever get out to Hawaii, make sure you get there early. We tried going one day after work, but ended up getting there about a half hour too late. The last tour starts at 3:00 pm so make sure you get there in plenty of time.

Aloha

Here I am in Hawaii, playing a vital role in our country's national defence (read: airshow). Today was a down day, so I was able to get some diving in. The first dive was to a site with two wrecks about 100' from each other. The dive was around 70-100' with great visibility. There was a pretty strong current, so it took a little work swimming around. The second dive was to a reef around 35' deep. The current here wasn't nearly as strong, but the visibility was only around 30'. The water was a nice 79 degrees. I did the dives in just my dive skin, but if I get a chance to go again, I'll probably wear a thin wetsuit. The 79 degrees may seem warm at first, but after being in the water for a while, I was getting a little chilly. I saw a bunch of turtles, some eels, two shark, and the usual assortment of tropical fish. I have the pictures from my dives on my flickr page.

New Job

My days of being a cable guy are over. Last Monday I started new job. I am now working full time at the Air Force base as an Air Reserve Technician. This job is the civilian equivalent of my reserve position. This job is a big jump in pay as well as more time off. The down side is I will probably have to deploy more.

In fact, they are sending me away already. I am going away for a week tomorrow to Hawaii. (Unfortunately all the deployments aren't going to be this nice.)

Three month update

Lexi is now three months old. She is very alert and vocal. She has a good assortment of oohs, ahhs, and coos. She likes it when I mimic her sounds back to her. She also had her first cold last weekend. She was very stuffy and sneezey for a couple days. She's mostly better now, but she still has a couple sneezes occasionally.

While we were camping last weekend, Lexi found her first geocache. Here's a picture of the find: