House Update

The house is coming along pretty good.  It's actually starting to look like something we'll be able to live in soon. 
Two days of work goes from this...

to this...

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Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband!  Last year he spent his birthday roaming the woods during SERE so I'd have to say that no matter what we do it'll be better than that.

We went to a Chinese restaurant for his birthday meal.  Matt is always wanting Chinese but I'm usually not in the mood for it.  I actually like the food but I have to be in the mood for it to want to eat it.  Well, we've tried several places around Enterprise and none of them were that great.  For this time we thought maybe driving to Dothan would produce better results.  We were wrong!  We didn't get food poisoning like our friend did the last time he ate Chinese around here, but it wasn't very good.  My fried rice tasted fishy and all the food had been sitting out for a while.  I've given up trying to find a good one around here, but we'll see whether Matt is brave enough to try again.

Over the weekend I planned a quick trip to celebrate.  We went to Atlanta and I think I set my record for 1.5 days of pictures with 71.  That may not sound like a lot to most people, but that's a ton for me.  So here's what we did...

Coca-Cola museum

Cardinals game... went really well until the bottom of the 12th.

Georgia Aquarium



Touching the sting rays



Touching the baby shark



 

Me crawling through the kid tunnel

 

Penguins!!

 

Whale Shark

 

Shark... du dun     du dun    du dun du dun du dun

  

Smooch!

  

Albino Alligator



They also had a mini car show going on at the aquarium the day we were there.  There was some really neat cars.  Matt wants one of these.  It's supposed to be really fast.

We took a picture of one of the Porches just for Shaun.

Overall it was a great weekend and a fun city.  We walked around quite a bit and got to see some of the Olympic park and Centennial park.  There was a fountain where some kids were playing and if I'd had my suit on I would have been right in there because it was hot.  I don't know if we'll be back, but it was good to visit while we were within driving distance.

  

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Flying!

Matt is in phase 3 (of 5) of the Apache course called "the bag".  Basically that means the only way he can see is using his HDU (Helmet Display Unit that shows infrared images).  All the windows in the his section of the cockpit are covered so he can't see out.  Apparently it's really hard.  In the picture you can see a person sitting in the front (instructor) and then the white covered windows (Matt).  The circular part on the very tip of the nose is where his viewpoint is.

He took the camera with him and got some video.  The first one shows him hovering.  I cut quite a bit of the video and when I did lost all the audio.  I guess that's not too important watching him fly, but I'm going to have to figure that out for other videos.  The second one is him doing a rolling takeoff.  I thought they just went straight up, but apparently sometimes they do rolling takeoffs because it requires less power.

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St. Louis Trip

There might not be a ton of light where the Cardinals are concerned, but while I was in St. Louis in August they put on a show.  I got to see my only game of the season and I'm not giving up hope yet!

Beth and I were very glad to be sitting in the shade.

I'm pretty impressed with the zoom on this camera.

I went and looked at the progress of our house while I was there.  On Sunday after the game, there wasn't much to see but some dirt and weeds.

The following Friday when my mom and I stopped by on the way out of town there was a little more to see.

  

Hopefully we'll really start to see some movement soon.  I'm so excited about the house!  I met our neighbors while I was there too.  They had just closed on their house earlier in the day and were moving in.  It shouldn't be too hard to remember their names since it's Matt and Melanie and their son Aaron.

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