Birthday Thoughts

Thinking of my children's father on his birthday. Hope they remember to call him.

Happy Birthday!

And God bless!

LA Times Homage to Brett Favre

This is really a nice read, and can be found online here. I don't know if it was front page or not, but I am glad the article was sent to me.

But c'mon... Green Bay has more chipmunks then people?? LOL

Michele wrote:

Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 17:57:27 -0600 (Central Standard Time)
Subject: LA Times Homage to Brett Favre

Thought you might be interested in what appears on the front page of the LA Times newspaper!   Man of the House Favre homage: on bended, creaky knee  NBC has 'Bionic Woman.' The NFL has Brett Favre, the bionic man. Guess which one is having the better season? I don't know what you're eating, Mr. Favre, but pass the candy dish.You're maybe the last  American hero. A postmodern DiMaggio. A Wyatt Earp. You're about 140 years old, with the smile of an 8-year-old and a gun like Zeus.    You do all the things the other superstars don't. You play in that city by the bay, an obscure little place with more chipmunks than people, more deer rifles than cellphones. Up there in northern Wisconsin, you don't ride in limos; they just send over Santa's sleigh. You're us, which isn't so bad -- at least if you ask us. You're not some natty dude, a blingy gold-toothed Liberace. No three-pointed kerchief in your suit pocket, like the male mannequins back in the Fox studio. No sir. You wear your hair like the 18th green, short and fast. You could comb it with a golf towel. Yep, we appreciate your sense of style -- the plain gray T-shirts and the faded jeans. You've got that same lovely wife you started with. Your beard's getting a little frosty, the jowls a little puffy, but she's stuck by you, that woman. Through your tough times. And you through hers. Love your loyalty, love your work. The cynics claimed you were done. 'Retire, fool,' they said last season. 'Put a fork in Favre. His popper has popped.' Turns out they were the fools. They forgot you were part Choctaw, part '56 Chevy. You're having your greatest season yet, playing like a legend. And like a scrub who just appreciates the chance to suit up. Sure, your wheels don't work like they used to. People forget that you have the same degenerative hip disease that permanently sidelined Bo Jackson. At 38, you can sprint with the kids for about three half-steps, then look out ... cruuuuuuunch. Those first steps on a Monday morning must really snap-crackle-pop. Talk about a working stiff. Welcome to the club.  When you're not at work, you're at home, just like the rest of us middle-aged saps. I'll bet she's already nagging you about all the Christmas junk, huh? Brett, can you bring those boxes up from the basement? Brett, how about hanging the outdoor lights on the birch tree? That sort of stuff. Like the rest of us, you don't need a holiday to remind you of your blessings. Yep, you're us all right, and we couldn't be more thrilled. You don't like to miss work under any condition. It's just the way you were raised. A guy thing. You don't miss work. In almost 300 games, including two Super Bowls, you haven't missed a start. It is the sports stat of our time. And we certainly don't mind your sense of craft, your safecracker's cool. One moment, you're zinging thunderbolts across the middle. The next you're looping 9-iron shots in the end zone. The laser bomb that beat the Broncos? Boom! Brilliant. You're what we all hoped to become in the backyards of our youth. You play as if you're hanging with your pals, and the sun is setting and the moms are calling everyone home for supper. Come on, Brett, your buddies say. One more. One more series .... Blanda. Nicklaus. Aaron. They all played their respective games a long time, gave us old-timers hope. Now you're our time machine, our fountain of goof. Lombardi will be watching from his skybox, barking out commands, wondering where the hell Hornung is. Also cheering will be millions of gimpy guys a little past their prime for whom you've become this year's most compelling sports story. An inspiration. A Perseus in cleats. So, come on, Brett. One more. One more series

---

Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.

Missing Marine 2 "A Sad and Tragic Case"

The burned and buried body was two bodies... one and infant 'inside the abdominal area of the adult'. The Sheriff described the baby's tiny hands, balled up in tiny fists. They have determined that the manner of death was 'violent'.

A warrant for first degree murder has been issued for the arrest of the man now missing. A warrant for the death of the child cannot be issued...... I pray he is found swiftly.

How tremendously sad for all involved. My heart goes out to the families. My sincere condolences.

Missing Marine

How can you have a Marine, who is supposed to be reporting for work/duty, be missing for any length of time, and NOT have someone out there looking for her, so that her family member has to report her as missing? How can you have that same Marine be scheduled to testify at a hearing for her accusation against a superior officer, is also pregnant not be protected as the date for that hearing approaches?

And knowing what the allegations WERE, with the added fact that she is SUDDENLY MISSING, just before her due date and date of testimony, HOW CAN YOU NOT KEEP A VERY SHARP EYE ON THE PERSON WHO WAS NAMED AS THE ALLEGED ASSAILANT??? How is it that they now have HIM missing??? Oh... they found her, by the way.


The case of the missing Marine has been VERY confusing to me. I have heard the terms "adoptive mother", "step mother", and 'mother' as the one who reported her to be missing. I have to admit that in the very beginning, I did not listen very well, so had not paid much attention.

But then they began to say that perhaps she had 'run off' and implied that she is a 'compulsive liar' with 'bipolar' (according to a step mother who may or may not like her), and that statement changed the tone of news reports.

Pregnant Marine is missing
BY LINDELL KAY
January 8, 2008 - 2:31PM

Lauterbach, 20, of Midway Park, is with the 2nd Marine Logistics Group.
She last spoke to family Dec. 14 and was reported missing Dec. 19 by her mother who traveled here from Dayton, Ohio.
snip
The missing woman's cell phone was found Dec. 20 near the main gate at Camp Lejeune.
Lauterbach shared a boarding house with several people in Midway Park, which was searched by the Sheriff's Department, Brown said.

"There are several findings and pieces of evidence that have been discovered that cause law enforcement to be concerned with the circumstances surrounding Maria's disappearance," Brown said in a news release.

Brown did not reveal any information on the evidence for fear of jeopardizing the investigation.

"Things I know bother me; things I don't know bother me more," Brown said.

A day later, Fox News has a report that says she spoke to her mother last on Dec 13, and added that 'It is not clear why the disappearance wasn't made public earlier." The next report from JDNews says that her car was found at a bus station on Jan 7,

  "Investigators found her blue 2006 Hyundai Sonata at the Jacksonville Bus Station on Monday night.
It was not there over the weekend, authorities said."

That same news story includes the news that she was scheduled "to testify against a superior officer in a case involving an alleged assault against her", which had been alluded to in reporting what her mother had said when reporting her as missing, and then goes on to say:

Information has surfaced there was "suspicious activity" on her bank account Christmas Eve.

The Onslow County Sheriff's Department is holding onto "sensitive information"
pertaining to Lauterbach, 20, who has been missing since Dec. 14.

"Bank records indicate the victim made a withdrawal on 12-14-07. There was suspicious activity on her account on 12-24-07, but none since," according to information from the Sheriff's Department obtained by The Daily News.

That 'sensitive information'... hmmmm what was it? That apparently was released later. And that 'suspicious activty on her account on Christmas Eve? ... Well.... according to Fox News...

The warrants said a white male tried to use the missing woman's ATM card on Christmas Eve and attempted to cover the ATM's security camera with a rag. Brown declined to say where the card was used.

....it was a white male who attempted to cover the camera!... but you know...that wasn't important?

BUT, the next article on JDNEWS has information in it that I NEVER heard reported on the Cable News, as often as it had been covered. From her uncle:

Lauterbach's uncle, Peter Steiner, a psychiatrist who lives in Louisville, Ky., and had been in Jacksonville
in the past week looking into his niece's disappearance, said
his niece called her uncle's home at least twice a week, because they were very close.

"She was a very beautiful, athletic young lady. She volunteered to join the Marine Corps.
She was very committed to the Marines, and she is being portrayed in a way that does not look well.
She was petrified; she has been continually intimidated and harassed by people (Marines).
She was not protected; she was not well looked after."

I tend to agree with him about some of the reports I have heard for the past couple of days, as far as her portrayal. And I wondered myself about why she was not reported as missing BY THE MARINES when she did not report for duty, or was not seen from Dec 13/14th until HER MOTHER reported her as missing on Dec 20th! 

On Jan 10th, Fox News (and others) reports this, and now her step mother is mentioned (bolded part was done by Fox News):

A pregnant Marine who vanished last month before she was to testify in a military probe claimed "a senior officer ... had raped her and that the investigation had gone sour," according to new court documents.

The woman made the allegation to her stepmother, who also told investigators looking for the 20-year-old lance corporal that her stepdaughter was bipolar and had a history of compulsive lying, the documents filed this week state.

and....(this time, the bolded parts were done by WI Catholic).... we now know the source of the 'reports' that 'the investigation had gone sour"....

According to search warrant affidavits filed this week, the stepmother has told investigators that her stepdaughter
"claimed she had been raped by a senior officer at her command, and that the investigation had gone sour."

"They" supposedly based their suspicions that she had run off on the finding of her cell phone, her car by a bus station, and 'she' had purchased a bus ticket which was never used? That does not sound like someone 'running off' to me. Sure, she may have thought out far enough to 'ditch' her cell phone (in order not to be traced), but if she was a cell phone user, would she not then also have had a replacement before she ditched that one? Would she not have then called family sometime in this past month to let them know she had a new phone number? And would she not have USED that ticket?

To me, those 'facts' sounded more like someone trying to cover a butt, and throw investigators off the track.

Maybe I just don't think like a run away.

And what happened to the 'suspicious activity on her account" by a MALE who tried to cover the camera???? Could he not also have TOSSED HER CELL PHONE, BOUGHT THAT TICKET, and TAKEN HER CAR TO THE BUS DEPOT????

To me, they have perhaps libeled this woman. And they have further distorted the story with allegations that she and her accused rapist were 'friendly' after she reported the incident. He was a superior officer. She was scheduled to appear to testify about her allegations. Why were they still in the same area and not being watched, so that as SOON as she went missing, SOMEONE was out looking for her?

So now we get the latest news. They have found 'burned remains' of a body buried six inches under the surface in the back yard of...guess who? The Superior Officer she had reported as having assaulted her, AND he is now 'missing'!!!

Tonight, they announce on the Fox News that the investigation has gone INSIDE the house, and blood found, as well as attempts to clean it and hide it.

AGAIN I SAY... WHY WAS HE NOT UNDER SURVEILLANCE????
HOW WAS HE ALLOWED TO LEAVE THE AREA???

And I won't even get INTO what I am thinking about the fact that he was married, living at his home, apparently burned a body, and buried that body in his own back yard, apparently also somewhere along the line sent a note and said she had 'killed herself'... and his wife still lives there, and 'is cooperating' with authorities.....

You really do not want to hear what I am thinking...

And worse, if the child is also dead, he cannot be charged with the baby's death. If the child is NOT dead... where is that baby??


To Maria Lauterbach's family, I extend my DEEPEST sympathy, and prayers for her, and for all of you.  I pray that you all find peace and comfort.

May she rest in peace.

God bless!

Leah Update - MRI results

Please keep this baby and her family in prayer! This is good news, and I hope that the next one will be even better! She has a repeat MRI in six weeks.
More about her progress is found here and here .

God bless!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Grace
Date: Jan 9, 2008 5:47 PM

Looks like prayers of thanksgiving but also continued prayers until this is all over.

God Bless!

Grace

Subject: Leah Update - MRI results


Hello all -

We were discharged from the hospital Monday night and we returned home this morning. It is so nice to be home! Before leaving, we got the final MRI results. The surgeons were really happy with the surgery - they were able to get 80% of the growth, they didn't do any damage to the dura, and they preserved all the nerves. They really did an amazing job. Because everything was extracranial, it was not considered a brain surgery, which made the entire process "easier" despite the very difficult resection. The pathology was returned and confirmed that it is a Giant Cell reparative granuloma . . not a tumor, which is all good news.

I am thankful for all the prayers and the surgeon's wonderful work, but I do not think I will rest easy or feel any peace until I know this entire mass is gone. The parts that were left behind were deep down in the inner ear and still up against the dura. We still have a long road ahead of us . . . more MRIs (where Leah has to go for hours without food) and more blood work. In six weeks, we will have a follow up MRI to determine what the growth is doing. They are "optimistic" that since they have surgically damaged the growth and have cut off over 75% of its blood supply that it will die off on its own. That is of course what I will be praying for over the next six weeks (and trying to keep what is left of my sanity). Depending on the MRI results, we may be looking at more surgery (not a good option) or going back to steriod treatments. Thank you for your continued prayers.

God Bless!
Tara and (a very cranky) Leah

"THANK YOU!" The Gratitude Campaign

LONGER version:



SHORTER version:




An email sent me to watch the long version at The Gratitude Campaign website, where I found that both the long version and the short version are also on You Tube.

It is a very easy way to say thank you to any of our Military. Wonderfully simple idea.

God bless!

Airforcewife

I was doing some clean-up on a few old links I had today, here and elsewhere. I also read a few of my archived items from a long time ago, and 'accidentally' clicked on one link to find out where airforcewife was now. I had forgotten to change the url in my left hand side long ago.

I apologize to her, and have corrected it and now direct to where she really is. BUT...

But I found something that really makes me just a little angry, and now I am wondering if this is what happens when someone leaves a blog up for us to go back to and read old, favorite posts from time to time, OR as a way for others to find us again if we go to a new blog....

The OLD Air Force Family template page is there, but 'Alice' has taken over since Sept 2007. And 'Alice' has also taken over at least two other blogs that I had read in the past. HOWEVER, the links, etc that USED to be there when the real blog owner had the blog...are still there. AND go to another webpage that sort of keeps things 'current'.

Is this what happens if I someday choose to not blog???

Blogger?? By the way, how DO we contact you anyway??

Google??

Anyone??

Unfortunately, I no longer have Airforcewife's email address, so I am not at all sure that she knows about this. TWO on that page have been 'removed' in some way, but the template still is there.