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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
