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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Visits

It's been a while since I've blogged and I haven't been all that busy, but it's been hard to get the computer from Matt in the evenings.  He's studying hard just about every day and is doing very well in his classes. 

Besides the classes we've had a couple visits.  At the end of July we went to Panama City to visit with Matt's parents and nephew while they were camping.  It was a short visit but very good to see family. 

Then a couple weeks later my sister Abby came down for a week.  It was soooo good to have her here.  We didn't get to go to the beach or do anything too spectacular, but we did catch a drive-in movie (Abby's first).

On Saturday I'll be headed to St. Louis for a week of training for work.  I'm not terribly excited about the training, but I'm very excited to get to see friends and hang out.  It's going to be a long drive there and then my mom is going to drive back with me.  Because of this trip, it'll probably be a couple more weeks before I'm back.  Hopefully I'll have some good pictures from the trip though.

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Status

Total hours of studying..... 350ish

Average number of hours of sleep each night.... 5.5

Hours of studying still to come..... too many to count

First Apache checkride passed with flying colors.... priceless

4 checkrides to go.... slightly daunting

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Happy Birthday

I had a birthday last week... I feel really old.  Between Matt being super busy (homework) and super exhausted (3:30am alarm) we really didn't do much on Tuesday.  He did bring me some really pretty flowers though.

He also brought home a Dairy Queen cake (my favorite!!!).  I didn't get a picture of the whole thing, and as you can see we didn't waste much time eating it.

On Friday we went out for a nice dinner at Olive Garden.  I told Matt it would have been nice if he looked like he was enjoying taking me out for my birthday, but at least I'm bringing the camera places with me and taking pictures.  This is something I rarely did in the past.

We had already decided that we wouldn't be getting birthday presents for each other this year and that the new camera was our gift.  The flowers, cake and dinner was just perfect!

My sister Abby gets the award for the best birthday card this year.  Congrats, Abber!  For your prize I will take you to dinner at BWW on Tuesday when you come to visit me ;-) hehe!!

(and yes that's what I'm leaving you with :-) )

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Questions

Matt and I had been eagerly anticipating the next several months and the birth our first child. We had just started spreading our exciting news to friends and family when I started having some problems. A quick trip to the doctor confirmed our worst fears. The baby's heart was no longer beating and a few days later I miscarried.

While I would love to have a happy post with pictures about our everyday life, I just can't do it right now.  Today my heart is torn and my mind is reeling with all sorts of thoughts and questions.  I know that most of these questions don't really have answers but they are still there.  I also know that God is still holding me tight and there will be more happy picture posts later, but this is what's going on now.

how do you say goodbye to someone you've never met yet already holds a piece of your heart because you love them so much? how do you talk or even think about someone when you've only referred to them as "it" because you don't know whether to say "he" or "she"? can you really be a mother when you've never even seen your baby, much less held or fed them? and what kind of mother are you when your only baby's body, although very tiny but still precious, was flushed down a toilet? what now and where do i go from here?

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Apache Course!!

So Matt has been on hold for a couple months now.  Those days consisted of going to PT (physical training) at 0600, coming home for a couple hours, going to work from about 0900 to 1230, and then he had the rest of the day off.  He spent some of the extra time studying for the Apache course, but oftentimes I'd get off work and come down stairs and find him napping on the couch.  It's a good thing he got to sleep while on hold because now that he's started class there won't be much of that.  That's right... he's in class!!!  He started at 0400 (yes that's 4am) yesterday and has a few more of those early mornings to come, but he's back in class which makes me very happy!

This picture was not taken at 4am because there was no way I was getting up to do that, but I did get this one on day 1 when he didn't have to start until around 1100.  This class will last about 6 months and then he'll be finished!

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New Toy!

We've been playing with our new toy for a few days couple weeks now.  It's keeping me both entertained and confused at the same time.  Things that I have said while testing...
"Smile bigger! It doesn't think you're smiling."
"Move your arm around and see if it will follow."
"It can even get the hairs on my legs!" 

So it only took me a couple weeks to figure out how to get the pictures onto the computer.  I haven't figured out all the features yet, but so far it works pretty good and should mean the blog will see recent photographs.

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