Welcome Home!!

Yea!! After six long months, Branden is finally back home in San Diego. He arrived early yesterday and immediately had a job interview for his next position. He was offered a great opportunity working for an admiral here in Point Loma. So, it appears we will be here in San Diego for another 18-24 months. If you haven't visited us yet, now is your chance! Hope all is well and enjoy the holiday weekend!

Sorry, I didn't manage to get any pictures of B getting out of the helicopter. I was too worried about getting my first kiss! We look a little tired in this pic because we had to be up by 4am for his 6:30am arrival back in San Diego. It was worth it, of course!
The helicopter was wheeled inside for the homecoming ceremony...doesn't it look great?? I can't tell it has been out at sea for six months. Branden's team of maintainers did an awesome job getting it ready for the homecoming (and subsequent inspections).
Every "DET" (a group of about 20 guys from the squadron that "detach" and get temporarily assigned to a ship) has a name...because Branden's DET was DET #2, they chose the name "DET Dos Equis". To welcome them home, some of the wives put together these gift baskets and Dos Equis donated a six-pack of beer for each guy.



Branden was lucky to get to fly in early, so after he arrived, we went over to the ship to pick up the rest of the pilots and maintainers to bring them back to the squadron, where their families were waiting. It was fun to see both the ship and the squadron homecomings. The ship does all sorts of fun things, like the "First Kiss" (one or two sailors are picked at random to get to be first off the ship so they can get the "First Kiss") and "New Daddies", who also get off before everyone else. There were seven babies born in the six months the ship was gone. It was so sweet to see these daddies meet their babies for the first time. After that, the gates are opened and everyone is allowed on the pier to find their sailor and welcome him or her home!

Welcome home, USS Vandegrift!

Singapore!

After three and a half long months of waiting, I finally got to go see Branden! After several date changes, we finally met up in Singapore last week. We got to spend four and a half days together, which went by much too fast, of course! Singapore is a wonderful city/country. It is a great introduction to Asia, as everything is in English (former British Colony) and it is a melting pot of Asian culture. In Singapore, the Chinese, Malays, Indians and Thais all live in relative harmony. The people are very polite and friendly and the city is very safe. The top things to do are shop and eat...my kind of town! Enjoy the photos!

Enjoying dinner at Blu, a restaurant on the 24th floor of our hotel...great food and a great view!

Little India's version of Pike's Place Market. I think I'll take Pike's Place...I only lasted about 30 minutes in Little India.

The smartest toilet I have ever seen (it was actually in Japan, where I had a layover coming and going)...it had various buttons, including one to release extra air freshener and another to play "loud flushing noises" in case you needed a little extra privacy!

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the squatter toilets! To be fair, I only saw these twice in Singapore, but I wasn't a big fan!

Despite all of the fancy restaurants in Singapore, we found the local haunts to be our favorites. On the East coast of Singapore, there is a Seafood Center consisting of your choice of several seafood restaurants. As the sign says, "if it swims, we have it". The food was memorable and delicious!

Deep-fried lobster covered in "oatmeal" (a sweet cornflake mixture). Sounds crazy but it was so good!

One of the most famous dishes in Singapore, Chilli (their spelling) Crab. It is a whole crab in a sauce of chili, tomato sauce and egg. Not my favorite, but Branden loved it! We both loved the fried rolls (just like a dinner roll, but fried)
served with it.



Singapore has an amazing Botanical Garden. It is very interesting because the rest of the city is a collection of high-rises and modern buildings. Then, right in the middle of it all, is this beautiful garden. The highlight of the park is the Orchid Garden.




Singapore has these crazy places called "Hawker Centers" all over the city. It is a crazy version of our food courts. They are outdoors and have three or four rows of all different food stands. It is very overwhelming (try finding a seat...a sweet couple took pity on us and showed us the ropes!) but once you find something you are brave enough to try, the food is delicious! There are stands for all types of cuisine (we even saw a stand with spaghetti bolognese) and for drinks. The stands are graded based on cleanliness and hygiene, being assigned an A-D. Supposedly, anything A-C is okay, but I stuck with an A. Branden chose the stand with the longest line. Both of us were very pleased with our choices!



Our daily cocktail hour at the beautiful Shangri-La hotel! I told them it was our honeymoon and they upgraded us to this special wing of the hotel. The room was beautiful and we were treated to a complimentary gourmet breakfast each morning, as well as snacks and cocktails from 10-10 each day. The house champagne was Moet White Star...not too shabby! We enjoyed a snack and a couple of cocktails each afternoon.

A fun reminder from the hotel...everyday the carpet in the elevator told you what day it was. "Monday" came too quickly!

Enjoying the beautiful pool! Singapore is just 1 degree off the equator, so between thunderstorms, the temperatures soar! The pool provided much needed relief. That's Branden cooling off.


Chinatown! The best place for buying all sorts of Asian souvenirs, if you can tolerate the pushy shopkeepers. Chinatown is also home to beautiful temples, both Hindu and Buddhist.


Time to go home! The trip went much too quickly, but now we're looking forward to Branden's return home in July!

Update from B

While I have been jet-setting all over the country, my wonderful husband has been keeping busy as well. Here is a recent experience he had, hosting some locals (giving them tours of the helicopter and ship) and enjoying dinner at the Mayor's house (Mayor of where, I don't know). I cut and paste these excerpts from a couple of emails he sent, so forgive any grammatical errors or anything like that!

Giving Tours
It was a busy day for me yesterday with all the tours. We give tours pretty much everyday when we pull in, so it is kinda a pain in the butt. I don't really think most of the people on the tours speak English, but they seem to have fun and like I said before take a lot of pictures. I think they are at awe with my height because these people are so small. These little old ladies just run right up to me for a picture. And it is usually not just one. I have to get one with each of them and then some with two or three and then some with the whole group. That is only one group and I think I had 10-12 yesterday. It is not that big of a deal though and there are definitely worse things that I could be doing. I am excited to go to the Mayor's house tonight and have dinner. It should be very interesting. I'm sure I will let you know all about it tomorrow.

Dinner at the Mayor's Home
So I had a very nice evening last night. The food was great as well as the company. The mayor probably has the biggest house in the city. So we got picked up from the ship and we had a police escort throughout the town. Sirens blaring and everything. It was pretty crazy trying to go through these tiny roads that were suppose to be two lanes, but really only made for one car. Everyone would stop and stare. It was like the president was going through town. It was pretty crazy. I think that if we just went through without than nobody would have given a care in the world, but we drew a lot of attention our way when we had the big police escort. So it took about a half and hour to get to the mayor’s house. He has a very beautiful house and not just in that country. He built it himself and everything is made out of pine wood, so it smells really good as well. It looks like a log home in the US, but about double the size. He has a huge yard as well with a couple man made ponds and he had a swimming pool in the back. The whole estate has a 10 foot stone wall around it with barbed wire above that. He also has police and army guards. Pretty crazy.

Dinner was awesome. We started off with some sushi, which was really good. Then we had prawns, fish and pig. Yes they had a whole pig that was roasted. It was really good. The also had some really good rice and what I thought was black beans with bacon in it. I ate it and thought it was awesome. Come to find out it was pig’s blood cooked with pork in it. I am glad I didn’t know that before I ate it, but now since I thought it was really good I would probably eat it again. You would also be happy to know that I had wine for dinner. In fact I had Redwood Creek Cab and Carlo Rossi California Red. Good to know that in PI they support Gallo. It was nice to have some wine. They only had a few bottles, so I only had 2 glasses. It was very nice to get a little wine though. For dessert they had this great fruit cocktail and a mango cake. I know you wouldn't like that, but I thought it was delicious.

After dinner we just conversed with the mayor’s children and grandchildren. He has four girls and two of them were there and they are both lawyers. The other two live in Chicago. They were very interesting to talk to. Their children reminding me a lot of Michael’s kids, when they were a little younger. They look very similar. They are very cute children. I actually had given them a tour of the aircraft the day prior, so they were still asking questions about it. We left shortly after for the same drive back to the ship.

Racking up the frequent flyer miles!

Wow, I am really bad at keeping up with the posts! Every time I log on, I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. I am very sorry. This month, I think I have good reason though...I have passing the time by traveling! I love to travel and I take advantage when Branden is gone, using the time to visit friends and family in far-off, fun places. This month, I visited my family in Texas for Easter, visited my sister-in-law-to-be in Seattle, went to Napa for work, hosted my sis, and went to Singapore to see Branden! What a great month. Singapore deserves it's own post, so I'll start here with Seattle.


Branden's "little" brother (he's 6'6"), Ryan, proposed to his long-time girlfriend, Ellen, right after the New Year. Pending Ryan's deployment schedule (he's a Marine), they are planning a December 27 wedding. Ellen is wonderful and recently moved to Seattle with her job at Kimberly-Clark. While Ryan is training on the East Coast, she is building her own career and hopes to transfer closer to Ryan sometime in the next year. While Ryan was away training for a few months and Branden was on deployment, we thought it would be fun to have a girl's weekend. So, my mother-in-law, Dede, myself, and Ellen's mom, Mary, met in Seattle for a fun weekend in early April. Ellen was the prefect hostess and showed us all the sights and sounds of Seattle! It was my first trip up there and, despite the cold, it is a beautiful city!

Dede and I enjoying the beautiful harbor views in Everett

Ellen and I braving the cold to get a view of the Seattle skyline

Pikes Place Market! What an awesome place...I wanted to buy something at every stand!

The very first Starbucks, located across the street from Pike's Place Market

A Seattle icon, the Space Needle (as seen on Grey's Anatomy)

Thanks for a great weekend, Ellen!

A Day in the Life

For those of you just tuning in, Branden has been away for just over two months, with a few months still to go. His months away have been busy, with work on the ship and a couple of port calls. Branden is the air maintenance officer on his ship, so he keeps busy all the time, not just when he's flying. He and his maintainers are responsible for everything on the helicopter, so you can imagine how busy they are. They do all repairs, checks, etc. He has a team of about 15 maintainers and he's lucky because they're a great group of guys.

For now, the ship is where it is going to be for the remainder of the cruise, other than when it heads into port. The pilots fly over to a nearby island about once a week for supplies, including food and mail. When the helo is down (i.e., not working), they have to take a small boat over to get the supplies. Recently, this happened, and Branden was invited to go along. You can see his big ship behind him in the photo.




To try and relax each week, the ship has a "steel beach" picnic most Sundays. They all cook out and try to enjoy some down time. Sadly, there are no Coronas to go along with the BBQ; this cruise is totally alcohol-free. It's not like the Royal Caribbean cruise you took last year; there's no Lido deck on this ship. Even still, BBQ is better than the cafeteria food they get the rest of the week, so it's a welcome change of pace. In case you're wondering, yes, that is Branden playing chef in the photo, and yes, his hairline continues to recede!


Once in a while, every few weeks or so, the ship pulls into port, either for supplies or just a few days of liberty for the sailors. So far, their port calls have included Hawaii, Guam, and Malaysia. The port calls are nice because they usually mean a day or two away from the ship, with time to explore the city, eat out, and have a few beers. They have another port scheduled in about a month, and this is the one I am meeting him at! I can't wait to see him and I'll be sure to blog all about it (okay, maybe not all about it, wink, wink).

Pics to go with Branden's post

Here are the pics to go along with Branden's post...

Better late than never...finally, an update!

Hi everyone! I know, I have been horrible about blogging lately. I sincerely apologize and I can see from the ticker many of you have been checking in for updates. It has been a crazy few weeks around here; I got really sick with just about every illness that has been going around. I'm finally on the mend, so I hope to get you all caught up on the life and times of the Martys. Branden has now been gone for over two months and has been keeping very busy. Most recently, he spent a day on land. Here is the day, as described by him...

I hope this finds everyone doing well back home. I am writing everyone a mass email because of a great experience I had the other day. It is going to be tough to explain about where it took place and when because all of that information is still very sensitive even after the fact. Steph and I have an idea of where I have been because we share an atlas and I give her the area of my location. So I hope that she will help me explain to you where I am talking about. I think that it might be pretty obvious what country I am in and I guarantee you haven’t heard of this city. Now that I have thoroughly confused everyone I will continue on.

About a week ago we found out we were going to be pulling into this place for a day. The local Navy and college asked us to set up a basketball team to play their teams. Of course me being me (I love basketball), I jumped at that opportunity. We had about 20 people interested and we needed 2 teams. It was decided that 10 would play against the Navy team and 10 would play against the college team. It ended up being a smart decision as I will get to later.

So yesterday was the big day of games. We woke up early and prepared to take off to the game. Now just because we pulled didn’t mean that everyone was allowed liberty. The only people allowed off the ship were those playing in the games. The threat level in this area was very high, so it included a lot of security. We climbed on the bus, but it was no ordinary ride to the game. We had two police vehicles in front of us and two behind. We also had a trunk of armed troops in front of us and behind us. The stopped all traffic to and from. I don’t really know what the locals thought as we came through, but everyone stopped and waved. The bus ride was only about 15 minutes, but a very interesting time. We pulled up to the school that looked more like a base. The gym was in the middle with dorms and classrooms that formed a square around it. It was also no ordinary gym as you will see. It was covered, but open on all sides. The floor was cement and the court was painted on. We arrived it was still somewhat early, but as the day went on the humidity and heat built up.

The Navy team played the first game and the other team watch. The school stopped classes for the morning so all the students could attend, so the stands were pretty full. Our first team won pretty easily. We all knew the second game was going to be the test. Most of the guys were young enlisted right out of high school, so 18 or 19 years old. Then there were the 3 officers. Myself, Josh and Ted who are a little older than that, but we added the height. Josh is the supply officer on the ship and he played basketball at the naval academy. I have a picture of the 3 of us and he is the tallest one (I think 6’ 9”). The college guys of course were young as well and ready to run us all over the court. They of course had no one over 6 feet tall, so they came out a little intimidated. We started the game on a 15-0 run before we ran out of gas and needed a time out. Now throughout the game we had armed guards around us the entire time. It felt a little like being in a European soccer match. Something that was very hard to get used to as you are playing a sporting event. Along with that the floor we were playing on was painted cement. Dust and dirt was all over it, so we were slipping and sliding around. They were definitely used to playing like that, but we were not. As you will see in a picture I ended up on my butt a few times.

We played a really good first half and we were up 15 points. They had some halftime entertainment. A young lady that sang a Whitney Houston song (I can’t remember, which one because I was concentrating on breathing), but if you weren’t watching her you would have thought Whitney was in the building. She was very impressive. During the second half was when the college team started making a run. We didn’t have much steam left in the tank. We ended the 3^rd quarter only up 7 points. At that point we could only hope to keep the lead until the end. The 4^th quarter proved to be very back and forth. With one minute left we were winning by two points. Coming out of a time out they full court pressed and we turned the ball over. They set up their offense and ended up getting an easy lay up. The score was now tied and we had the ball with 20 seconds. We set up a nice play, but ended up missing the shot and on the rebound we fouled one of their players with 5 seconds left. He went to the free throw line for two shots. If he made one the game would be over. He missed the first badly. The second shot rimmed out and I got the rebound as time expired. We were thinking overtime, but it was decided the game would end in a tie.

After the game the students of the culinary class cooked us some interesting food. I have no idea what any of it was called, but it was all very good. They were all some variation of rice patties. We shared them with the players on the other team and some teachers at the school. I got some pictures with the other team while we enjoyed the food. After about a half an hour it was time to depart back to the ship via the motorcade.

It was a great experience overall just to get off the ship, but also to interact with the native people. I hoped you enjoyed my little story. I am going to send pictures and I believe that they are pretty large, so it will be multiple emails. I’ll try to send them in the order of the day’s activities. If you have any questions feel free to ask. I just thought it would be nice to share the experience and let you know that we are having a little fun and doing some interesting things not related to our jobs.