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Morel Mushroom Mania
We are having the most beautiful spring season that I can remember! The front yard is painted with pastels and lavender. Red bud trees (which are covered in pink-purple… don’t you think the powers that be would have picked a purple name?) are out in bloom. Daffodils are still up and tulips have spotted the our gardens with deep dark red. It is just gorgeous out there! As we walked and took in the palate of colors and the scents of the blooms, we spotted in the grass a gazillion morels! Never before had we noticed them growing… or maybe this is the first time they appeared here. We know…
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Rocking the Avenue — Win an iPod
MilitaryAvenue is going to Rock the Avenue with a monthly contest for our MilitaryAvenue Alerts and monthly Family-Newsletter readers! Winners will win an iPod Shuffle provided by USAA, a great military association and one of our sponsors. What do you have to do to win? Subscribe before the end of the month and wait for your valid email-address to be pulled in a random drawing! (See contest rules @ Rocking Down the Avenue Rules) We will send you an email if you are a winner on the 5th of the month. (Be sure to add leanne@militaryavenue.com and dale@militaryavenue.com to your address book.) Let your friends know so they can also…
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Posting Old Pictures
I love pictures. I love capturing memories, tagging moments and displaying the love of friends and family. Photos do that. I started young with a brownie camera. Saved my allowances to pay for flash bulbs, flash cubes and finally a new camera that had a built in flash attachment. Wonders would never cease. Then, I saw the big screen and fell in love with slides, and movies. We moved around a dish pack box full of boxes of slides trays. Setting up each house had to have a good spot to enjoy the pull down screen which we used when we would pull out the projector for our movie/slide show.…
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Networking is Important! Your Next Job Could Depend On It!
Maintaining contact with friends and associates has always been a challenge for military personnel and their families due to their frequent relocations and changes to their address, phone numbers, etc! But…the internet has changed all of that with a worldwide resource for maintaining relationships! Add in Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and other social and professional networking tools and the opportunities for maintaining a network of friends and employer contacts continues to expand! How important is networking? When was the last time you heard of a great assignment opportunity in the unit, or talked on the phone, emailed or responded to a friend on your Facebook accounts? All are networking opportunities…
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Fish for your Health
The Internet articles are praising the value of fish: brain food, heart healthy mainstay and a great Omega 3 source. I love it that fish is good for you, as I love fish. Have always loved it, and have a storehouse of recipes to flip through each month while I make up the monthly chart of ‘marvelous meals’. I started this monthly chart when the kids were little and they started arguing over who was going to pick what we had for dinner. Cut out that opportunity for a brawl as soon as I could! Their dinner inputs were always welcome and sought after as I wrote up the menu…
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Care Packages & the USO
My deployed-Hubby is quite frequently asked by family & friends for things he might want sent to him in care-packages. He has told me on several occasions that they just don’t have a lot of room out there. His ‘choo’ (aka room) doesn’t have a lot of room & the Army does take pretty good care of their food-needs. I frequently ask what was for dinner and it sounds like the Army has come A LONG WAY from the days of *MASH* and their chow-hall. Apparently they have quite a few ‘critters’ over there. This was news to me. I think of the desert and I think of cactus, lizards…
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We Have Established Communication
Hubby is finally at his final destination. After months of training and then integration they finally set up ‘camp’ for their remaining months while overseas this week. I am happy for him as I know he hasn’t exactly enjoyed all of the, what he feels as, unnecessary training. I think now they will settle into routine and we can pray the rest of our deployment time will fly. The best part of his settling down for the long-haul for us though is he finally has his own Internet access in his room, albeit it a bit archaic. It is so much better then relying on quick phone calls. Up until…
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Vacationing While Military
I just read an earlier blog from Deb for the strawberry and rhubarb jelly roll and thought: Wow what a great summer special recipe and dessert that is. Then I remembered reading a blog from Leanne that said she remembers her family vacations as visiting family enroute during PCS moves! It sort of made me cringe a bit but then I started thinking about it. That seemed to be the best way for us to maintain those family ties and let the kids know that they too had grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins (prior to the internet; cell phones, Facebook and many other communication devices–yeah, I know the dark…
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People in the News… Military Brat Work… And the Homefront View
Daniel, the oldest son of the Kissinger family, packed his belongings; made friends; and learned the ins and outs of world travel. Dan recognizes the need for communication and the flow of information that is readily available via internet. With his sister Leanne, another class act brat, created an avenue of information that is a super highway and an integral part of thousands of military family PCS’s (moves). I think that number is too small… Now Daniel has established his own family in Grand Rapids, MI. He travels to meet and speak with military personnel. With friends stationed all over the world topics of conversation often boggle the mind of…
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A New Way to Connect
I haven’t contributed to the “Letters to You” blog before today, but I’m excited to do so! I joined the MilitaryAvenue team in early 2008 and it has been fun to jump into a new and exciting project. If you are reading this blog, you are probably familiar enough with the Internet to have at least heard of Facebook. It has gained some popularity and success over the past couple of years – roughly 65 million users with an average of 250,000 new users signing up each day! That’s exciting for the people at Facebook, but what did it mean for us at MilitaryAvenue? In mid 2007, Facebook created the…
