Painting

We're busy painting Landon's room right now. I'm putting the finishing touches on some other things that will be going in the room, but I don't want to spoil it because I want everyone to be surprised when they see how we are going to decorate the room. Christi's parents came over and her dad helped me paint last night and tonight. I'm very glad he came over and he's been a big help. Hopefully we will have everything finished by tomorrow, possibly Wednesday.

Apologies for the lack of posting. Things have been all over the place since our last updates. Because I'm about to go downstairs and finish painting, I'll keep it short and sweet. Last Thursday was Christi's 25th birthday! We had a great time eating with family at Outback. She got a lot of nice things and plenty of giftcards / cash to get herself some nice things.

Saturday we went to Marietta for our friends Jason and Meg's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding that was set outside and ended up spending most of the day there. Sunday we finished taking the last few things out of the office and setting everything up in their new locations. The computer is now upstairs in the Georgia Tech room and everything else has been stored in various places. We had to move a few things around in the Tech room and I think it turned out great. I'll take some more pictures once we get done painting and post them along with the pictures of Landon's room. We finally got the call that Landon's furniture had arrived. It's up in Lawrenceville, though, so we'll have to rent a truck and bring it down here (much cheaper than having it delivered!) I think next weekend we will go do that.

Christi had several things at school this week so we were up there doing a lot. This past Friday we went over to our friend Lynn's apartment and had game night with a few people. It was a lot of fun, although I have decided I'm not very good at Mad Gab. I think it was the people constantly saying a bunch of things out load and I couldn't concentrate on what the card was supposed to say. Either way, we had a great time.

Saturday I went to Lake Sinclair for my friend Kam's bachelor party. It was a blast. We rode in the boat and jet ski, went tubing a lot, played volleyball, tossed the football, and just had a great time. I got to see some of my friends that I haven't seen in a while. Overall, it was a fun time that I hated to end, but everyone had to go their separate ways now. Hopefully we can get together like we did in the future.

This has gotten longer than I intended. Time to go finish painting! I promise after this weekend things will be back to normal posting! Have a great week

Talent in Warner Robins

Congrats to the Warner Robins Little League girls for winning the softball Little League World Series 14-2!

Congrats to the Warner Robins boys for winning their 1st game of the Little League World Series against Iowa 11-3! They started sloppy and didn't look totally focused, but they had enough talent to win convincingly anyway.

In case you didn't know, I work in Warner Robins, Ga. The girls and boys teams are definitely the talk of the town (and all of middle Georgia). Most people know kids on the team (my step-cousin played with them in the regular season.) It's sort of ironic that a city that calls itself the "international city" is the first city in the world to win the boys and girls Little League World Series and now hope to be the 1st to do it in the same year. In case you haven't been to Warner Robins before, it's hardly an international beacon, at least at first glance. However, after working at the Air Force Base, I can definitely see the international impact the Base has on the area. I always knew there were good sports teams around here, but I never knew they were this good. You may recall the boys won 2 years ago in dramatic fashion again Japan. Now they are trying to win it all again just 2 years later! A lot of talent in the area. I'm curious to see how some of the local high school teams do in the next 3-5 years or so. Should be a lot of good baseball and softball players in the system.

The boy's next game is tomorrow. Let's hope they can continue their run of success!

Favre is back (for now)

Once again, Brett Favre is back in the NFL after signing with the Vikings. Who didn't see this happening? Yea, I think we all knew eventually he'd sign. He didn't want to go through training camp and put the decision off until them. How bad does it suck to be Minnesota QB right now? How more blatantly can the Minnesota front office say "We have zero confidence in you"? I'm personally not looking forward to the minute by minute ESPN reports on his daily life. Seriously, just stop it, we're all numb from the 8,000,000 hours of previous Favre coverage. Times like this I really dislike ESPN, which I personally think has gone down hill in quality of coverage as well as completely selling out to corporate sponsors everywhere, not to mention tons of annoying "sports personalities" or whatever they are calling their anchors now. Anyway, before I get completely off subject and write a 10,000 word essay on why ESPN is annoying, back to Favre.

I think he can still play. I'd wish he'd quit changing his mind so many times. Seriously, I think anyone who can't make up their mind should now be referred to as "Favre-like". Can't decide on where you want to eat after 30 minutes? You just Favre'd that situation. It's endless fun. Anyway, we'll see how he hold up this season. If he's good so too will be the Vikings. I'm sure everyone in Green Bay is hating Favre (again) right now. I think that game should be interesting.

Any thought on Favre being back? Let me here you in the comments

No rest for the weary

As outlined in my previous post, we're pretty busy. Things have continued this past week. Here's a brief (hopefully) round-up of what we have been doing, besides work.

Wednesday Jason came over to play Rockband with us. It was a lot of fun. That was the first time I've played with guitar, drummer, and vocals. Previously, I had only played with 2 of the 3. It's a lot of fun and when someone messes up and you start laughing it makes concentrating much harder. Still, it's a lot of fun and I'm very glad that we bought it. I think Christi likes it much better than she thought she would.

Thursday we went out to eat with my grandparents. Because we've been so busy we haven't been able to see them like we normally do. We went out to eat at Chili's and it was delicious. I love Chili's. Their chips and queso dip and salsa are amazing. We had a great time talking with my grandparents and hope we can see them again soon.

Friday I went with Jason and some other people to see District 9. I thought it was pretty good, not great. I liked not knowing what it was going to be about because I think that made it more interesting. If they had shown more of the movie I think it would have ruined it. The beginning was a little slow, but it picked up pretty quickly. The action was good and it had a solid plot that you could get into. For those concerned with language, it's definitely an R movie. I thought it was well made and I think it leaves room for a sequel that I would definitely see it if they decide continue the series. The movie has some undertones about people being oppressed / controlled as well as put military contractors in a bad light. I'm not sure if that was the intentions of the director, but I can see it being analyzed that way. Overall, I enjoyed the movie and the more I think about it the more I like it. It's sort of ET crossed with Rambo, but it works. You'll either really like it or hate it, in my opinion. I'd give it 3.5/5.

Saturday, Christi and I cleaned out the office so that we can begin to transform it into the nursery. We wouldn't have gotten it done if it wasn't for the help of her parents. Christi's mom was extremely vital to us getting done quickly and helped us out a lot. We'd probably still be cleaning it out if it wasn't for her. Since we don't have a truck, Mr Mike was kind enough to haul a bunch of our old junk to Goodwill for us in his truck. It was a long task but overall it was very good and very helpful. I'm very glad that her parents are ready and willing to help us tackle large tasks such as what we did this weekend. We have a lot more space in there now, the closet can how house Landon's clothes, and we should be able to begin painting soon. We're unsure how we will paint the room at the moment, but I'm pretty certain that we will put up chair rail around the room. Putting up all of that crown molding should come in handy when it comes to quickly putting up the chair railing.

On Sunday, Christi spent a lot of time working on her lesson plans and I played Rockband. Besides some light work around the house (laundry), that is about as productive as we were. A friend of Christi's that she teaches with, Lynne, came over to work on some things with Christi. She ended up staying over for the rest of the day and we went out to eat dinner, watched Big Brother (Christi's must watch show), and played Rockband. Jason also went out to eat with us and all 4 of alternated playing Rockband. As you can see, it's already getting a lot of use. Christi is learning the guitar and I'm getting better at drums and guitar. I can score 95%+ on medium on every song we have so far when playing the guitar. I've tried hard on a few songs with mixed results. I've gotten as high as 85% and done as bad as not making it halfway through. It's a work in progress, but hopefully I'll be able to play most songs on the highest level.

That sums up the end of last week. This week we'll be busy doing work around the house and hopefully getting started painting Landon's room (that sounds so cool to say). I'm hoping work will slow down some but it looks like it's going to stay very busy until September at least. Also, Christi her 24 week doctor's appointment tomorrow! I can't believe she's already 24 weeks! Time is moving so fast. Speaking of time moving fast, Christi's 25th birthday is Thursday. She's getting old! haha. I can say that because I'm 1 year younger than her. My birthday isn't that far away either, so I guess I don't have that much room to talk; I'll turn 24 on Sept 10. One interesting fact is that Christi and my birthdays always fall on the same day of the week every year (both on Thursday every year). Pretty cool, right?

That's all for tonight. I have some ideas for posts but I don't have time at the moment. Hopefully during the week I'll be able to do them. Have a great week. As always, keep checking back for more updates to our busy lives.

Busier than usual

Last week was insane. From Tuesday to Friday, the earliest Christi got home was 7:30, and that was Friday. The other days were around 10:30pm. It was rough. She was busy working with the other teachers trying to get plans finalized. There is a bunch of stupid stuff they have to do now that they didn't have to use and all it is doing so far is making them waste time preparing for the upcoming weeks (not to mention not being able to see their families!!!)

I too was busy. Monday afternoon I had a "request for engineering disposition" aka an aircraft part that needed to be repaired. They wanted it done that Monday. I got it at 2:30pm; I get off at 4pm. Normally, these things take at least 2 days to do, depending on the part. I ended up working a few hours of overtime that afternoon, came in early Tuesday and worked very late again. Finally, Wednesday morning I had gotten everything finished for that part. It was extremely stressful. I had people from that group (C-130) calling me constantly wanting to know when it would be done and what they needed to do so they could get started repairing it. I also had my boss and my boss' boss constantly checking for updates as well as giving me their engineering opinions, which I appreciate for sure, but when you also have 4 or 5 other people giving differing opinions and then are told "do what you think is best" it gets tricky, frustrating, and plain confusing.

I was pleased to find out Wednesday that everything went very smoothly with the repair and that it was well planned, so I was happy about that. However, I now had 2 days to finish the original workload that was given to me on Monday that had to be put on hold. So I worked late the rest of the week to get it done but thankfully it was done. Half of my group is out of the office working repairs at other bases so the workload has been higher than normal, but I like it because it makes the day go by faster. It can be stressful, though. I'm also teaching a new engineer in our group all of the things we do so that also takes time and slows down the process because you have to make sure they understand or else you're wasting his time because you're not teaching him anything.

I did manage to go play soccer again on Wednesday. I didn't score this week, but I almost did twice. The goalie made a nice save one time and the other I pushed it wide by a few inches. Oh well, I'm not a goal scorer anyway. The talent on the field was far superior to last week; these were some of the better players that I have ever played with. It was a lot of fun and I was pleased that I was able to hold my own for the most part despite being very rusty still; I did get beat a few times though - it happens with the caliber of the players we had.

Christi has been feeling better. Lately, the main thing is that a lot of her normal foods are giving her terrible indigestion so she's searching for foods that don't hurt so much. We haven't found very many, but fruits seems to work best. Being on her feet at school all day is also making her ankles swell and her feet sore. I try to rub her feet but it only helps so much.

We're still in the process of cleaning the house and preparing for Landon's arrival. We haven't made any progress in the office / soon to be nursery, but when we do I'll post the pictures (eventually.)

Last night I was at Walmart picking up some things and ended up seeing that Rockband 2 was half price, so I finally bought it. I stayed up too late playing last night. It's awesome. I know, I'm like 2 years behind everyone else, but I finally got it. I've played before but only 2 or 3 times and I'm average at best. Hopefully I'll be able to rock out with the best of them soon. Speaking of, I think I'm going to play for a little while. Check back for more updates; this week looks to be a little less stressful.

Old Pictures - Beach Trip

As I was digging through our photos I realized I never posted photos from out trip in June to the beach. We went down to Jesup for our friend Kam's wedding shower and stayed in St Simons for the weekend. Here are some pictures from that trip.

Driving to Jesup






The room



Entertainment Center



Matching stand



Bridge to Jekyll Island



Cool house on the river






Crab on the beach. It was dead.



Shrimp boat in the ocean



The beach on Jekyll. Very nice while we were there. Water was a great and wasn't very crowded.



Drawing on the tables at Mullet Bay. That was me drawing Christi and Landon (we didn't know at the time it was a boy.)



Baby's 1st beach trip



Landon saying he loves his mom!






Enjoying a fantastic shrimp po-boy



Jekyll at night (blurry)



Jekyll harbor at night. Tried using motion setting (in the car) but turned out blurry, yet kind of cool looking too.



Ducks at the condos






Main house



Duck pond






Golf carts are a common mode of transportation. This guy took it a step further. The sign on the seat says "2010 GM (Government Motors) Obama-mobile."



Not as common mode of transportation - Shelby Cobra



4th of May cinnamon roll with icing. Tons of icing.



Cinnamon roll was so good it deserved 2 pictures

Hope you enjoyed the ridiculously late pictures. Better late than never, right? We had a great time at the beach and are thinking of taking another trip soon for our birthdays (Aug 20 and Sep 10) but we are not sure yet. I'll post some more pictures later in the week. This is enough for today. Have a great rest of the weekend!

Chicago

Long overdo pictures from Chicago. These pictures were taken from a disposable camera because I didn't want to risk losing or breaking our good camera. These are only about half of the pictures I took; the other ones didn't turn out for some reason. I was disappointed because they were all the pictures I took at night and the city was really nice.

Sears Tower (now Willi Tower)



Me in front of Sears Tower



Look closely at the top of the tower. See those 3 boxes sticking out from the side of the building? Those are the skydecks that are glass and allow you to see the street below your feet from 103 stories high.



The original Uno's pizza where we ate






NBC Tower






River that runs through Chicago. That is the new Trump Plaza on the right. Very pretty area of town.









Michigan Avenue



Chicago Tribune offices (building with the clock)



See the ferris wheel? That's Navy Pier. Too bad all of my pictures of the pier are gone



Cool fountain that shot across the canal



Another shot of the fountain. I was surprised at the amount of river and ocean front there was in the city.

That's all of the pictures that I have. Unfortunately some of the best ones didn't turn out for some reason. The winding wheel on the camera seemed to quit working but it appeared to be still taking pictures; apparently that wasn't the case. I had a good time in the city and I hope to be able to go back there again sometime soon.

Busy Week

It's been a pretty busy week for both Christi and I. Christi has been working in her classroom most of the week (except Thursday and Friday, for reasons I outlined in the previous post.) This has worn her out and she's been pretty sleepy when she gets home. I'm curious to see how the next few months will treat her. Obviously being pregnant makes you tired and having to deal with 20-24 5 and 6 year olds all day does as well. That combined is sure to make her tired this year. I've been trying to let her rest and do most of the things around the house. It's a lot of work. You really don't know how much you depend on someone until they are unable to be there for you. I'm not complaining about the extra work around the house at all. Just stating that she does way more than I realized until I had to do it myself, and I'm very appreciative of everything she does for me and Landon.


I finally finished my Aircraft Battle Damage Repair (ABDR) class on Friday. We had a final that started at 8 am and I finished at 2:30pm without taking a lunch break; it was tough. I should have finished earlier but I was trying to take my time so as not to make any stupid mistakes. About halfway through I caught a mistake I made so I went back and had to recalculate many different things that the mistake affected. Of course, it affected a lot of things and that took up a decent amount of time. I then tried to hurry up and ended up making a few more mistakes calculate simple things like the second moment of area of L beams and other basic shapes. We also had to make detailed drawings of our repairs. Anyone who has watched me draw knows I'm a perfectionist who works slowly so having to hurry up in this area was a bit unnerving. Overall I think I did pretty well on the test. I don't think I made a 100 like I did on the mid-term (much easier) but I feel like I did well enough to earn an A.


That class kept me busy but I was also able to squeeze in some other things this week. Wednesday I played in a pick-up soccer game with some people who work on base with me. They have been trying to get me to play for a little while now and I finally decided to go. There are several fields at a sports complex not far from base. Every Wednesday and Sunday they have pick-up games with a large turnout. They also have league games on the weekends. Tuesday night I bought some new shin guards because I couldn't find me old ones. It has been about 2, maybe 3 years since I played organized soccer so I was very nervous. I thought I played pretty well considering the large layoff, but it wasn't nearly as good as I'm used to playing. I made some bad touches and some bad passes but overall I think it went alright. I did score 3 goals and came close to scoring another one. We didn't keep score, though, and we were playing on smaller fields than normal so it wasn't like I was Ronaldo or anything. I had a good time and realized how out of soccer shape I was. I plan on trying to go play at least once a week, but we'll see how that turns out.


Later Wednesday night, Jason's best friend from college who now lives in Virginia was in town for a few days. I went over to his house after playing soccer and played poker with them for a few hours. I had a good time although I didn't get many good hands until later in the game. I did manage to get a straight flush which was pretty cool. I can't remember the last time I got one of those. While I was playing Christi was at her mom's house working on some projects for her classroom. She has been putting in a lot of work in her room and it is going to look really good.


Thursday we went out to eat with Jody, Jessica, and Kaden for dinner. They came over to our place and hung out for a little while before we went. Kaden is much bigger and was very happy and laughing a lot while we were at our place, but once we got to Cheddar's he decided he wanted more attention and became a bit fussy. He finally fell asleep but Jody and Jessica didn't really get to eat their dinner. I guess that is a sign of things to come for us. Despite Kaden being a little fussy, we had a great time hanging out with them.


Well, it's time for me to wrap this post up. Stay tuned for more posts. On Christi's visit 2 weeks ago we got a DVD of Landon's 20 week sonogram. If you want me to post it let me know. It's hard to tell what is going on because Landon didn't want to cooperate this week, but it is still cool to see him.