Two Days Work

How much can two days work get you on home construction?  Actually, quite a bit.  I went to the house after work today and was very excited with what I saw.  The drywall was finished on the whole 2nd floor, the 1st floor had all the ceilings covered and the siding was almost finished on the outside.  It's really looking like a house now!

The view from our bathtub... not too shabby.

I do have one question though.  What does this street sign tell me?

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Back to the Lou

I'm back in St. Louis for 2 weddings, a week of work and lots of catching up with friends.  I drove by myself and decided to stop and take pictures of the state signs to break up the monotony.  I couldn't get the Illinois and Missouri ones though because I didn't want to stop in the middle of a bridge.

The first wedding was Adam and Andrea's.  It was beautiful and couldn't have been a better day for an outdoor wedding.

I went by to see the progress on the house this afternoon and am getting very excited about our return soon.  It's hard to tell by the pictures what you're look at since it's just framing everywhere, but basically the plumbing, electrical and HVAC stuff is almost finished and drywall will be going up soon.  There's also siding up on one side.

 

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Matt is Funny...

...except at 2 a.m.

Matt is now in his 4th phase of the Apache course which is nights.  His day starts around 1 pm with class and then he goes to the flight line around 6 pm.  This means he gets home around 1 am and tries to sneak in bed without waking me up.  This morning, for some reason, he forgot about the sneaking part. 

I was asleep when I heard him come in around 1:30.  He was actually really quiet brushing his teeth and getting ready because I don't remember any of that.  I was just vaguely aware when he slipped into bed.  I had just fallen back to sleep when all the sudden I was jolted awake by my sheet being ripped from the bed.  As I rolled over to see what was happening, the very bright overhead light in our room was flipped on.  I quickly shielded my eyes with my pillow but could just see Matt with the sheet wrapped around him standing next to the door where he had flipped on the light.  In my state of confusion and sleepiness, all I could muster was a moan to question what was going on when I hear Matt say "I think I saw a snake in the bed."  I was still too asleep to care but remember thinking that I was starting to get cold and frustrated that the light was still on.  I tried to voice that but I'm pretty sure I only moaned again.   He quickly searched for the snake and didn't find anything, turned out the light and came back to bed. 

As I tried to fall back asleep, I think Matt was already out and maybe dreaming about that snake because he was the most restless I think you can be and still be asleep.  Needless to say I wasn't getting much sleep and I didn't think it was very funny.

This morning after Matt got up I asked him what happened last night thinking maybe he was sleep walking or something.  He remembers "seeing" a snake and his heart rate skyrocketing as he jumped out of bed.  I have to admit it's kinda funny now. :)

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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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