Updates - kid stuff, flight school, food storage, weight loss, etc

I realize that most of my posts are of the update variety, but I feel like this one is more "updatey" than usual. I have pictures of the kids in here of course, but between the pictures are little update regarding, flight school, food storage, and even my weight loss goals.  So enjoy. 

The weather has been super nice lately (except for today when it's supposed to turn all scary-nasty, but more on that later.)  I took this picture on February 12th.  The girls are wearing jackets, but that was more out of habit than anything.  Spring is definitely in the air. I took this picture to celebrate the totally awesome fact that I'm able to get these kids dressed - including shoes - and ready for school on time every day.  A year ago I wondered if that would be possible.  But we've been able to do it. 

Brandon and the kids made a kite on Presidents Day.  A storm was rolling in by the time the were able to test it out so it had a rough maiden flight. 

Now that the days aren't so rainy or cold we've been able to re-discover our back yard.  Its been pretty awesome. 

Charlotte has a bunch of rocks that she pretends are her baby chicks.  She carts them around and takes really good care of them.

 Little school has returned thanks to Derrick's insatiable love for letters.  I write the alphabet for this kid at least 5 times a day.  I've started holding his hand and helping him write letters.  This is a big deal because he used to be really stiff and resistant to holding a pen.  But his teachers at school have helped him get used to it, so now he likes to do it with me.  I've also discovered that he knows how to write letters.  The other day he wrote all the way to H before he wanted me to take over.  It's amazing.  This kid is amazing.

 Antler came to little school one day and Charlotte helped her write her letter B.

 On Wednesday we went up over to the community garden and I was able to plant some more peas and get some garlic in.  Here's what our plot is looking like these days.

 And here are my little peas that have already sprouted.  So far I'm a huge fan of southern gardening.  But we'll see if that changes when things get hot and the bugs start coming out. 

 Thursday was a pretty awesome day.  It started out with P31.  We decorated tiles with Chalkboard paint to make coasters.  We also learned about being kind.  I had a lot of fun chatting with the other ladies who came.  (And if you live around Fort Rucker you should really come to P-31 it's super fun.)

That afternoon we went to the park by my friend Melissa's house.  Lydia really likes playing with her daughter Katelyn so we knocked on their door and invited them out to play.  We ended up hanging out with them for like 2 hours.  Melissa's family is getting ready to move.  She had all sorts of stuff that she was giving away.  She gave us some clothes and a lot of books (including most of the Harry Potter Series).  The most amazing thing she gave me was wheat.  Brandon and I bought a wheat grinder, but we've been having a hard time finding somewhere local to buy wheat. So I was very grateful when Melissa gave me some of hers.  The next day I made whole wheat biscuits and they were so good!

Usually that would have been enough socializing for me, but I still had one more thing for the day.  I was recently called to be on the Relief Society Enrichment Committee (or what ever it's called these days) and Thursday was the first activity I was helping with.  Our stake is putting together gift bags for cancer patients and that night we were sewing the bags.  

My friend's Kelli and Destiny and worked hard to make sure that we'd have sewing machines, irons, scissors, fabric, people at the activity.  But about 5 minutes before the activity started we realized we'd forgot something important.  None of us actually knew how to sew the bags!

Fortunately the wonderful home-making genius Sister Mary B____ walked in.  She took a look at the instructions, confirmed our suspicions that they were poorly written, and figured out how to make the bags.  I went to work sewing a prototype while everyone else worked on cutting out the fabric.  Mary walked me through the steps.  She's always reminded me of my mom, but that night she REALLY reminded me of my mom.  My mom taught me to sew by helping me out every time I got in over my head on a sewing project.  (Which was quite often in the early years.)  So this was just like old times for me.  By the end of the night we had the prototype done, several other bags partially done, and tons of bags cut out.  We'll be having a "Part two" to the activity in a few more weeks to finish more bags.

But that's not all that happened on Thursday. Because while I was busy with craftiness and socializing, Brandon was doing something super important.  

He has his instrument check ride.  This is where he flew with someone who graded him on how well he flew.  Now before I tell you how that went I have to give you some back story here.  

First - what does instrument flying even mean?  When someone is flying instrument it means they aren't looking out the window of the airplane.  Instead they are paying attention to the instrument gauges in the cockpit.  These gauges indicate the aircraft altitude, attitude, airspeed, etc.  The pilot is also listening to the radio calls of other aircraft and the tower to know where they can fly.  A really simple way of thinking about it is to think about driving a car by only looking at a GPS and a speedometer.  That's kind of what flying instrument is like.    

When I met Brandon in the Fall  of 2006 he was working on his instrument rating as a airplane pilot at Utah State.  It was something that should have lasted only about 9 months at the longest, but due to a ridiculous combination of bad weather, incompetent instructors, limited finances, lazy instructors, busy schedules, and just poor management on the part of USU Brandon didn't get his instrument rating until the Fall of 2009.  

He ended up with over 200 hours of instrument rated flight.  At the time I remembered saying something like, "there better be a reason why you had to have so much instrument time. Hopefully in the future all this instrument experience will come in handy.   

Well fast forward to last December.  Brandon started instrument training just before Christmas Break.  The classes started out in simulators for about four weeks and then went back to the TH-67 Helicopters for another four weeks.  In addition to all the flying practice he also had class every day to go over more information relating to instrument flight.  And guess what?  All that instrument time from USU came in real handy.  

While everyone else had to study really hard to understand the concepts Brandon was basically just having a review.  He passed every written test with only a little bit of studying.  It was really nice to finally have his USU education be worth something.  I even feel like maybe that school deserves a little bit of credit as a somewhat decent (albeit mismanaged) flight school.

Still, when it came time for the actual check ride, I was nervous.  When he took his instrument check ride in 2009 he actually failed it on the first try because he had spacial disorientation for the first time ever. He passed it on the second try a week or two later.  I was worried that something similar might happen on this try.  

So when Brandon came home on Thursday I couldn't wait to find out the results.  He broke into a big grin and said, "I passed!" Brandon is now instrument rated - again, but this time it's for a helicopter instead of an airplane. And I have to hand it to the Army for doing in 8 weeks of training what took USU over 3 years to do. 

Now Brandon is starting BWS which stands for Basic War Fighter Skills.  This is where he learns to fly low and fast.  From what we hear this training is really fun.  It will last 4 weeks and then we have Selection Day where Brandon chooses/gets assigned the type of helicopter that he will fly while he is in the Army.  We'll have a bit of a wait before he starts that training.  (I'm hoping for at least 4 months so we can do some traveling during the summer, but we'll see what happens.)  Then the training starts again and lasts about 4 months.  After that he'll graduate and we'll move to our next duty station.  

But that's not all that happened on Thursday.  (It was an insanely awesome day.)  A few weeks ago Brandon and I found a giant picture frame at my favorite thrift location - the curb.  We brought it home and I put it up in the living room.  I stared at it for a few weeks trying to decide what I wanted to put in the frame. 

Finally I decided on the life motto from the movie "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty."  Brandon and I watched that movie a few months ago and we fell in love with it.  Its a really great reminder to not get so stuck living your life that you forget to live your life.  

Brandon and I played around with lots of different layouts on Adobe Illustrator before he came up with the final product.  Then we had to find somewhere to get it printed.  We don't have a Staples nearby so their inexpensive engineer prints were out of the question.  And neither Office Max nor Office Depot could print a 36 X 36 image.  Finally Brandon found an online company named PosterBrain  that could print the image.  They also turned out to have awesome customer service and I highly highly recommend them for all your poster needs.  

This was one of my birthday/Valentines Day presents so I was super excited when it came in the mail on Thursday.  It was a pretty awesome 5 minutes when Brandon told me he passed instrument !!!!!!! and then we got to unwrap this beautiful art project !!!!!!!  and then I had to run out the door to go to Enrichment !!!!!!!

Brandon mounted the image while I was gone and when I came home I got to see this hanging on the wall.  

The picture I took really does not do it justice.  And in case you can't read the words here is what they say.

To see the world, 
Things dangerous to come to, 
To see behind walls,
Draw closer, 
To find each other,
And to feel.
That is the purpose of 
Life.

I feel like this sums up the way I see life in general and military life in particular.

Here's what our living room wall looks like now.  We are still debating on staining the picture frame, and I've got to figure out how to get my pressed pennies to stay mounted (glue dots and tape have both failed.) but it's coming together.

Okay so that's all for Thursday.  On Friday Brandon had the day off - sort of.  He didn't have to fly or go to class, but he did have to work on "the map" cue ominous music.  This map is a right of passage of sorts for flight students.  They have to put it together before starting BWS.  It's about 50 hours of labor that involves cutting, tracing, folding, and gluing.  Here's Brandon leaving for the library for a day of map tracing.   Working on the map took up a good deal of our weekend. 

Here are some cute pictures of the kids.  We got a Snuggy from my sister Hillary for Christmas and Charlotte likes to use it as a cape.

Here is Lydia in her cape.

On Saturday Charlotte announced that it was Antler's birthday.  (Antler has a birthday about once a month.)  She had some presents for her and so I gave her a gift bag to put them in.  She decorated it with stickers and Brandon helped her spell out "For Antler" on a paper that she glued to the bag.  

Antler was very excited about her presents.

Brandon worked on the map most of Saturday morning.  By the afternoon he was ready for a break so we went to Lake Tholacco to roast hot dogs as an early dinner. The kids had fun on the play ground there.

Everyone liked this teeter-totter.

Derrick was very excited about the fire.  He'd been looking forward to this all day and had been repeatedly asking me for "FIRE?"

He sat and watched it burn for a long time.

He was excited when it was time to roast hot dogs.

Lydia found this giant pinecone and wanted me to take a picture of it.

Here's Charlotte eating a s'more.

After we were done eating we decided to go for a walk by the lake.

There was a gazebo and the kids had fun playing there.  I took a video of them jumping off the stairs. Veronica was jumping off of the lower stairs, but as soon as the camera was on she turned into a daredevil and jumped off the higher stairs.  As you can see she got hurt at the end of the video, but she was fine after a few minutes of crying. (We are used to things like this because Veronica has no caution whatsoever.)

We decided it would be safer to go over to the dock.

I feel like now is a good time to share something really cool about this lake.  This is one of those things I don't talk about that much, but I figure if you've read this far you are one of my devoted fans and you deserve to hear this story.

Oddly enough this story starts about the same time Brandon was trying to get his instrument rating at Utah State.  I don't remember what year it was, but it was sometime in 2008 or 2009.  We were really frustrated with the USU Flight Department and we were feeling stuck in our lives.  It seemed like Brandon would never graduate and never be a professional pilot.  And I was feeling like I'd never have a baby.  We were both worried that we'd be stuck living in Logan, Utah forever.

One night I had a dream that we were visiting a lake.  We were there with our young children.  There were airplanes flying overhead and somehow in the dream I knew that Brandon was also a pilot there. Here's the really crazy part.  I can't remember how I knew it, but somehow I knew that we were in Alabama near the capital of Montgomery.

Now, I'm not one to put a lot of stock into dreams - especially my dreams.  Usually they are just weird.  But something felt different about this one.  At the time I thought it was odd that I'd known the capitol of Alabama was Montgomery.  Because, honestly if you'd asked me when I was awake I would have told you that the capitol of Alabama was Birmingham.  Normally, I forget all about my dreams within a few hours, but I still remembered this one later in the day.  I even looked up the capitol of Alabama and was surprised to discovered that it was Montgomery.  I remember telling Brandon about the dream and how my subconscious was smarter than I was.

But still something kept nagging me about the dream.  Like I said, it felt different. It almost felt real.  Could it have been some sort of premonition about our future? Maybe it's because we were just so sick of feeling stuck in Logan, but I did a google search for "Flight schools in Alabama."  I can't remember if Fort Rucker showed up in the list, but even if it did I would have ignored it because there was no way in heck that Brandon would ever want to join the Military.

Over time I forgot all about the dream. Brandon graduated, we moved out of Logan, we had kids, and Brandon joined the Army. It wasn't until Brandon had already submitted his Warrant Officer packet that I remembered the dream.  I realized that if Brandon got accepted to Flight school we'd be living in Fort Rucker, Alabama which is only 90 miles from Montgomery.  Oh and there happens to be a lake on post.  My premonition theory seemed a lot more valid.

So every time we come to lake Tholacco I'm waiting for a crazy deja vu moment where everything is exactly the way it was in my dream.  It hasn't happened yet, but this was pretty close.  Here we are in Alabama, visiting a lake, near Montgomery, with our young children, and there are helicopters flying overhead.  Coincidence?  I don't know.

Anyway, it was a beautiful day.  

Charlotte wanted a picture taken with this carving. 

We ended up running into two of my friends while we were by the lake.  My friend Emily was there with her family and we chatted for a minute and then after I said goodbye to her I realized my friend Mariah was at the play ground with her family.

On Sunday Brandon and I finally got to speak in our ward.  I'm one of those crazy people that loves public speaking so I've been hoping for a chance to talk since we moved in in May.  I was supposed to talk about Marriage, but I just could not figure out what to say.  Maybe it's because I gave a talk on the same subject last year.  Every time I tried to write my talk another subject kept coming to my mind.  I figured the Spirit was trying to tell me something so I ended up giving a talk on Member Missionary Work. It went well.  And unlike last time I spoke in church, Veronica did not end up bleeding.

After church we had Family Home Evening with the kids like we always do on Sunday.  Usually we are waaaaaaay laid back about Family Home Evening.  We sing silly songs, have a quick lesson, and make cookies.  But I decided it would be fun to introduce a little more structure.  I told Charlotte that she could conduct the meeting.  She was super excited to be in charge.  She loved the responsibility of calling on people to say prayers and choosing the songs. She totally gets it from me.

After home evening I realized that I haven't taken a picture of our new chest freezer yet so we did that.  We bought this chest freezer before my birthday, but they didn't have it in stock yet.  The next week Brandon and I got a babysitter to watch the kids in the afternoon while we went on a hot date to go clothes shopping and pick up the freezer.  (Don't laugh, it was our first time away from the kids in weeks.)

We brought home the freezer and now we are trying to fill it.  I'm so in love with this thing.  For one, I feel like I can really stock up on food now.  Also it's helped us save money on milk.  Derrick is drinking milk like crazy.  Usually I buy three gallons of milk to last us a week, but when Derrick's on a milk binge he'll see all that milk in the fridge and just keep asking for more and more milk.  Now that we have the freezer I can hide two gallons of milk in there and get them out when we need them.  That's helped cut back on Derrick's milk drinking.

My plan is to start making freezer meals.  And I've started a few of them.  But here is a picture of my first freezer "meal" project.  We bought a giant bag of chocolate chips at Sam's Club and I divided it into 1 cup portions and froze all of those.  Clearly my priorities are in the right place.

In all seriousness, I'm glad I've been focusing on preparedness this year. It's nice to have peace of mind in that regard.

We are actually under a pretty serious threat for tornadoes and other severe weather today.  The worst part is supposed to hit during the night.  I'll admit I'm a little worried about it all, but I'm also pretty pragmatic and so I'm not letting myself get caught up in some of the hysteria that's happening on certain threads on the local facebook groups. (Sleeping while wearing bike helmets has been suggested.) It's nice to know that we are as prepared as we can be.  No matter what happens we should be okay. And I will update you all if anything interesting happens.


Well that's it for me, but that isn't the end of this post.  Lydia and Charlotte found one of their digital cameras and started taking pictures.  (And I remembered while I hid it in the first place.)  Lydia wanted me to post some of her pictures.  I was going to have her narrate this for you, but she's at school and I want to get this post finished.  So I'll just tell you about them.

This is one of Charlotte on the swing.

A stick.

The stick again.

Our neighbors fence.  ( I actually really like the composition on this one.)

The park.

Bark on a tree.  (There are two trees that have grown together.)

Oh and me.  I'm holding flowers that Lydia picked for me.   Want to know something cool?  Those are size 10 pants that I'm wearing.  !!!!!!  I bought them at a thrift store to be my motivation pants.  Then I came home and tried them on to see how much more weight I needed to lose before I could fit them.  I was absolutely shocked when I found out I could button them.

Well that's it for real for now.  We've been watching a lot of Little Einstein lately so I feel like I should finish this by saying, "Mission Completion."

It's the most wonderful time of the year

No joke, this week I've been walking around my house humming, "It's the most wonderful time of the year."  

For the past few months I've been getting really exited every time I see cute Valentine's Themed things on Pinterest.  I guess this is how some people feel about Christmas.  But I prefer Valentine's Day because its actually a relatively simple holiday.  Just get some candy, some red stuff, some heart shaped stuff, have yummy food, spend time with the people you love, and BOOM totally awesome holiday.

Of course since this is my favorite holiday I tend to go a little over board with how we celebrate.  And this year was no exception.  Here's the run down of this Valentines Day Week Extravaganza.

One of the things I saw on Pinterest - or maybe it was in a magazine - was how to make a heart shaped cake.  And even though I don't eat that much cake anymore I really wanted to make one.  (Plus Derrick thinks he MUST get frosting every time we go shopping at the Commissary so we always seem to have an extra can of that stuff around.) 

So on Wednesday all the kids helped out (to varying degrees) with making a square cake and a round cake.  Then on Thursday night I cut the round cake in half and put it on the sides of the square cake. Then I frosted and decorated the cake with sprinkle and voila, this beautiful cake was created.  I'm so in love with it. 

I also put together little goody plates with treats for the kids.  In years past we've bought them little boxes of chocolates, but no one ever really eats those.  So this year I decided to just do pretty plates.  I put everything away to wait until the right time to get them out.

Derrick came home from school on Thursday with a folder full of Valentines Day creations.  I absolutely love seeing all the little projects that he works on at school.  Unfortunately I never have time to do these kinds of things with him at home.  I'm always too busy helping Charlotte and Lydia and making sure that Veronica doesn't eat the art supplies to really sit down and help Derrick.  But at school he gets one on one time with the aides in his class.  They help him cut and glue and color.  I'm always so excited when I see his creations.

One of the aides from his class is in my LDS ward and she told me that Derrick held the pen while she helped him write his name on the paper with the hearts.  She said she had to guide his hand a little bit, but that he did a lot of it himself.  That made me so proud.

On Friday, Brandon got home from flying just as the twins were getting off the bus.  He hurried and set up the balloons that I'd bought earlier.  The kids were so excited to walk in and see balloons.  

Here is Charlotte with her balloon. (Her hat says that she loves orange, pumpkins, and pancakes.

And Lydia with her balloon.  She made a hat too and it said that she loved going to Walmart with her mom.

Veronica with hers.

And Derrick with his.

Derrick doesn't go to school on Fridays so his teacher made sure to send Derrick's Valentine's Day bag home in Lydia's back pack.  We dumped out his candy and I helped him open everything.  Most of Derrick's candy got split with Veronica.

Charlotte and Lydia dumped all their stuff out on the kitchen floor.  They had fun looking at everything and eating candy.

Later I filmed Derrick talking about some of the Valentines Day things.  He was so excited about everything. 

For an early dinner we had heart shaped pancakes with cute little heart decorations that I'd saved from some cupcakes a few years ago.

And then it was time for the cake.  Derrick had discovered it and had eaten all the little sugar hearts off the sides.

So we hurried and added the hearts from the pancakes. (And yes I did have a piece of cake and some chocolate.)

Throughout the day we'd also taken care of some not so romantic things like picking up the jeep from the mechanic (after almost 3 years it's air conditioner is working again), and I finally found a minute to spray the yard for weeds.  But after all those necessary yet sort of boring things, it was time to do something romance based.  We went to a wedding reception.

The groom was from our ward and the bride is from Idaho.  They got married in Idaho and had a reception there.  They weren't going to have a reception here in Alabama, but then they decided to move back here.  Some of the women in the ward decided to put together a reception for them.  I ended up making the invitation for the reception.  So even though we didn't know the bride and groom that well we wanted to go to the reception. 

Poor Veronica ended up falling asleep on the way there and spent the first 10 minutes screaming.  But eventually she calmed down and we were able to have a nice time.  We skipped out of there right before the couple cut the cake because our kids had already had enough sugar for one day. 

On Saturday we decided to go check out a waterfall that was over the border in Florida at Falling Water State Park.  I'll write about it on my travel blog tomorrow, but here are a few pictures that probably wont make it on there.  We had a picnic when we arrived and for dessert we each got a little Debbie Valentine's Day treat.  Charlotte looks really happy about this, but she actually only at one bite.

I should have only ate one bite, but I didn't and then my knee started hurting.  Dang sugar and it's effects on my body.

The state park had all sorts of boardwalk trails.  The kids had fun looking at the water that ran under parts of the boardwalks.

And here I am with the love of my life. Gosh I love him.

I swear the kids posed for this themselves.

Anyway, you read more about that State Park and see pictures of the water fall on my travel blog.  I'll have the post up in the next day or two so keep an eye out for that.

On Saturday evening we watched Sharks Tale for our movie night.  Uh, what a lame movie.  Then we put the kids to bed and I gave Brandon his early Valentines Day present - the movie The Martian.  What's funny is that he almost bought the same movie for me.  If he had bought that movie it would have made the third time we've bought the same movie for each other.

Anyway, the Martian was AMAZING.  When I first saw the preview for the movie I didn't want to see it because I didn't want to be worrying about the guy the whole time.  But then I started hearing about what a positive movie it was and how funny it was too.  So it's been on my list of movies to see.  And it did not disappoint.  I'd almost go as far to say that it's a perfect movie.  Go watch it.  Right now.  (But I will warn you that you'll end up with ABBA's Waterloo running through your head for the next three days.)

Okay so that gets us to actual Valentine's Day on Sunday the 14th.  The girls had wanted curly hair for Valentine's Day so I put curlers in their hair.  They were very excited to wake up with curly hair.  Charlotte gave a little talk in Primary and was very confident as she spoke into the microphone.  She'd pretty much written the talk by herself with a little bit of help from me.

When we got home we had a quick lunch and then I brought out the Valentines Day plates.  Everyone was excited about their treats.

Then Charlotte and Lydia helped me get things ready for a romantic evening with Brandon.  Six years ago Brandon and I created our own Valentines Day restaurant in our bedroom.  I thought it would be fun to do that again this year. So while Brandon kept Derrick and Veronica busy Charlotte and Lydia helped me cover my desk with a red sheet and put flowers out.

They had fun making all the little flower arrangements.

They thought it was so funny that I put a table and chairs in the center of my room.

They also helped me make some of the food.  They helped with a fruit dip, cutting up apples, making a salad, and the dessert.

They offered to be the waiters, but I told them they needed to go to bed.  Lydia cried in her bed for about 15 minutes because she was so sad she didn't get to stay up and help serve the food.  While she cried I cooked some shrimp that had been marinating all afternoon. (Here is the recipe.)  Brandon had made rice for the kids' dinner and there was some left over for our dinner.  He also steamed some broccoli for us.

Doesn't that look delicious?

While Brandon set up the plates I hurried and changed into the dress I wore to his Warrant Officer Graduation.

Here we are together on our fancy date. 

At the last minute I remembered the salad plates so we had to take another picture to document that. 

Dinner was so yummy.  And it was so fun to pretend we were in a fancy restaurant.  We joked that this place was so exclusive that it was only open when Valentine's Day was on a Sunday.

Later we got out dessert.  It was vanilla ice cream with dark chocolate, nuts, and white chocolate on top.  One thing I've learned from all my weight loss stuff is that when I do indulge on sweets I prefer quality over quantity.

As if that weekend wasn't already perfect enough - we didn't have to worry about anything on today because it was a holiday.  The kids didn't have school and neither did Brandon.  We had a nice relaxing day of puttering around the house and working on little projects.  Some of the kids never even got out of their pajamas.

Unfortunately now Valentine's Day Week is over for this year.  I guess I'll have to start looking forward to our anniversary.