fall is here again!

You know it's officially fall when the fairs start rolling around. Jeff and I made our way to the Spokane County Interstate Fair last week and had a good time doing normal fair things. We ate some deliciously unhealthy fair food, pet some animals, rode some rides, and topped it all off with what else, an elephant ear. Here's some quick fair photos:

Somehow still hungry after being fed literally all day long

I really liked these chickens all lined up between these two cow pens

I didn't really do this, but totally would have if we had gone earlier in the day. I did it once about 15 years ago and want to try again!

Love a good fair skyline

More exciting though was what I got to do the next day. It was my very first spouse flight! Every once in a while if there's enough money in the budget many squadrons will do a spouse day where we get to take a flight in our husbands' (or wives') aircraft. There was a spouse flight day at Ft. Rucker just a few weeks after we left and then again at Kirtland just a few days after we got there, and the sign up deadline had passed. So I've been anxiously awaiting being able to go up for a while now! The pilots aren't allowed to actually fly their family members (in case of an emergency it's assumed they would put their family's safety in front of all other passengers so they just avoid that situation altogether and don't allow the pilots to fly their own families) and Jeff was in briefings all day so I went by myself. It was still an amazing experience! We flew about 20 miles north of Spokane and followed the Spokane River up to Nine Mile Dam and then turned around and came back.

I went in the morning so it was absolutely freezing-- I had gloves and two jackets on and was still freezing. But it was worth it to leave the doors open. Definitely something I've never experienced before! I could lean out the doors as far as I wanted (I was buckled in but still able to lean out there). The views were breathtaking and I honestly can't wait till my next spouse flight!

I figured it was an appropriate time for a selfie

This what most of the area outside of Spokane looks like, especially to the south

Spokane River

They flew us formation with another helo hence the shots of the other one from the air

More of the river

The FE (flight engineer) took this shot of me with the other bird in the back

See what I mean about being able to just stick my head out the side? This was an incredible opportunity that I absolutely don't take for granted. I did hear that this was the first spouse flight in three years due to limited budget. So I wouldn't be surprised if I don't get to go up again for several years. Fun fact: This flight was four days before Jeff's first flight here at Fairchild so I technically had more hours here than him for a few days :)

As I mentioned before, yesterday Jeff had his first flight here at Fairchild. He loved it. I've never seen him come home so excited about flying! He said it was such a relief to finally be able to fly without being evaluated in some way. One of the highlights of his flight was being able to land on the helipads of two local hospitals in downtown Spokane. This isn't something most USAF Huey pilots get to practice so he was really excited to do that. He also hovered while others trained on being hoisted in and out of a helicopter--something he's never done before but was excited to learn. Near the end of the day I got a text from him to "come outside" but I knew even before he sent the text that he was circling our house! I could hear him coming from a mile away (probably literally!). I was in the middle of painting our bathroom (update on that later) and was up on a ladder when I heard the thup-thup-thup coming. I immediately dropped what I was doing, grabbed my phone and Chipper, and ran outside. In these pictures I quickly snapped he looks so high up but he was only about 350 feet off the ground. I could see them waving and I was waving back and frantically trying to yell to my neighbors who were also unknowingly waving with their kids, "That's my husband!" which was totally futile because there's no way they could hear me over the sound of the helo. But what an introduction to the neighbors behind us!

This one is a bit zoomed in but best shows about how close he really was

The last week has been purely awesome and I don't know how the rest of fall is going to top it. We coming up on a month of living here already and are settling into life in Spokane. We are really starting to enjoy where we are in this season of life. I've gotten to see and catch up with lots of friends I haven't seen in a while (Megan this mention's for you!) and the best part is that it isn't a one-time catch up like we're used to. We get to see our friends whenever we want now! Our house is on the highway that you take to get from Spokane to Moscow and today as I was driving home I had a moment where I thought if anyone had told me 4 years ago that I was driving past my future house every time I came and left Spokane, I wouldn't have seen how that could be in our future. It's surreal being here, but we are really starting to enjoy it!

homeowners

Oops again. It was my full intention to blog more while we were in New Mexico. I definitely kept busy there and let the blog fall aside. And like I said before, I'm really over my laptop. It takes a solid 10 minutes to turn it on. It's been a true test of patience. It's really hard to justify buying a new laptop when you're not in school and not using it 15 hours a day anymore! Anyway, enough excuses. On to what's been going on since April.

Jeff did get his private pilot's license but we still haven't found time for him to take me up yet. And now that we are in Spokane he has to get checked out at the airport here again before he can take me. So it may be a little while but I'm excited to do that whenever the time finally comes!

Over Memorial Day Weekend we met up with a few friends from Tri-Cities in Las Vegas. We had so much fun on that trip and loved that we were just a day's drive away. Wish we were going to be that close again!

All of us taking a break at the Forum Shops

We saw Blue Man Group--general consensus was not bad but not something we will see twice

The very next weekend I was off to Ireland to be maid of honor in Amanda & Tyler's wedding! We wished Jeff could have gone too but he wasn't allowed to take a week off during training for vacation. We spent a few days in Dublin and took day trips to Wicklow National Park and Kilkenny, and then headed out to the country for their wedding at Roundwood House in Laois. First of all, Ireland is absolutely beautiful. Not to be cliche, but my first thought stepping off the plane was it's so green! I expected that to have been exaggerated in movies and TV. But it's not, at all. It was so green that I couldn't stop looking at it. I could do an entire blog post on that trip alone but I'll just put a few of my favorite photos here.

First night in Dublin, going on about 24 hours without sleep right here! Wish I'd gotten the name of this little pub we ducked into for a quick dinner.

Exploring Glendalough National Park

Glendalough

Kilkenny Castle

Amanda and I failing to pose for a photo in front of Kilkenny Castle

Amanda, Tyler and I at the Guinness Storehouse

Enjoying the complimentary Guinness at the top of the storehouse

Enjoying the peaceful drawing room at Roundwood House in Laois

Wedding day!

So that was the very very condensed version of my week in Ireland. It was a beautiful, wonderful time spent celebrating two dear friends.

The rest of this summer was mainly spent by the pool. Jeff did a lot of hiking and I made sure to see all of the helicopter spouses as often as I could before we all got spread across the country. I love all the ladies that I've been able to meet so far! I'm sure that at each base we are stationed at we will always have at least one friend from this time with us.

Now for the biggest news of all: for 4th of July we booked a last minute trip up to Spokane to house hunt before the big move. We knew that if we wanted to buy we really should get a head start on it unless we wanted to live in a hotel for a few weeks after we got here. We spent two days looking at somewhere around 20 houses. It was a whirlwind but it had to be done. And.... we found one! We placed an offer that weekend and after a few counteroffers from both sides we finally landed our very first house. Homeowners!! We absolutely love it.

Ta da!! This isn't my photo. I haven't taken one yet! Oops. So just imagine green grass right now.

When we came back to Albuquerque Jeff got stuck with just five flights left and then monsoon season hit. Every single night there was a thunderstorm and every single night his flights would get canceled. We started to get nervous that he wouldn't finish in time before we would have to close on the house. We made plans for me to go up to Spokane on my own to close by myself. Then it just all fell into place. He managed to get five flights done in one week which is basically unheard of (in that program). We left Albuquerque on a Sunday and arrived in Spokane on Wednesday after stops in Salt Lake City and Tri-Cities. We were very happy to see our friends Shay and Alex in Salt Lake! Even if it was only for a brief couple of hours. We had our first night in our house just a few days before our 3rd wedding anniversary. Seemed very appropriate for looking back at everything that we've done since then!

And that pretty much leads us up to now! It's been a fun couple of months. We loved Albuquerque but by the end we were ready to be done and get up to Spokane. I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally have a place to settle down in after 3 years of knowing everywhere we'd live was temporary. It was such a fun adventure but it can really be exhausting. I have to keep reminding myself that we will have to do it all over again in another 3 years. Of course, I don't mind though. I love traveling, seeing new places and getting to know all of the quirks and ins and outs of new locations. I especially love meeting new people (never thought I would say those words) and always having friends in far-flung reaches of the world, even though it means I can't see them as often as I'd like. I love this life and all the constant change that it brings with it. But for now, it feels so great to call this place home.

update

Oops... where have we been?? I've had a slight blogging absence for a couple months. In January, Jeff left for SERE school (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) for a month and I planned on getting a lot of work done on the blog during that time. Well... that just didn't happen. While he was gone, I spent most of the month trying to stay active with Chipper and doing what I could to get ready for our upcoming PCS. Also my computer lately has been moving at the speed of snail and I really haven't had the patience to sit down and deal with it. But I'm back today with a little update from the last couple months!

Chipper going for a swim at Lake Tholocco

Stuck my hand out the sunroof so it's very crooked, but managed to catch this Blackhawk come in for a landing at Lowe Field on Fort Rucker.

February was our last month in Alabama and we spent it mostly relaxed. We celebrated a Seahawk Super Bowl win with some friends from Washington who lived down there with us. Chipper turned 2 (finally!!). We had a low key Valentine's Day at home with a bottle of wine and the Olympics (if you know me, you know when it comes to the Olympics I go hard-- can't miss a day). And how could I forget that we survived the Southern Snow Storm of 2014! I'm sure you heard about the people in Atlanta and Birmingham being stranded in their cars and spending the night on the freeway, at school, in the ditch, at the office... It wasn't that bad in Enterprise but it was definitely an eye opening experience. The roads were dry as a bone and yet the grocery stores were cleaned out. Walmart was only letting people in for a couple hours a day and you could only buy food. I was thankful for an Alaskan background that week, let me tell you.

Chipper on his 2nd birthday, practically flying through the dog park

Notice the dry roads.

The bread aisle was CLEANED. OUT. for the 2-day storm.

Then at the end of February we made a quick trip up to Chicago for Melissa & Jon's wedding. I mean quick-- we left from Atlanta on Saturday morning and returned Sunday afternoon. We really crammed a lot into that one day span though! We got some local eats, partied with some friends we hadn't seen in a while at the wedding and reception, went downtown and saw the Magnificent Mile, the Cloud Gate sculpture, and Lake Michigan (which was half frozen over--I guess that doesn't happen very often, thanks polar vortex!), and then booked it back to the airport.

Myself with the bride. We were (and still are!) so happy for them but sad to see them move to Japan! Hope to see you guys at the next duty station!

Loved this view! I love a big city.

So then we came home and it was crunch time to get ready for our PCS. Since we are TDY en route (read: we are just stopping in Albuquerque on our way to our actual duty station) we only got reimbursed for bringing 600 lbs of stuff (for reference, our 2 bedroom place was a total of about 6,000 lbs). Everything else has to sit in storage in Alabama while we are here and then will be shipped to Spokane when we get there. So we really couldn't bring much besides clothes, kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, that kind of thing. We rented furniture when we got here so we didn't have to bring anything with us, and we still went over our limit by about 150 lbs. Oopsie. But the PCS went well and we arrived safely in Albuquerque after stopping in Little Rock and Oklahoma City. 

Saying good bye to our living room stuff for a few months! It's going to feel like Christmas when we get to Spokane.

We said goodbye to our home in Enterprise and hit the road!

He lived in the backseat for 3 days

And enchanting it is ;)

So far we absolutely love Albuquerque. I don't know if it's just because it's the biggest city we've lived in in 3 years or if it's because the scenery isn't bad to look at either! There seems to be a never ending list of things we want to do while here (hiking, going up the tram to the top of Sandia Peak, checking out Santa Fe, going to the hot springs, going to Carlsbad Caverns.. I could go on) and we are working on tackling that every weekend. Jeff's been hiking a lot on the weekends and I've been taking Chipper on the trails in our "backyard" during the weekdays. He's also been working on getting checked out at the airport here so that we can rent a plane and he can take me up for the first time EVER! Expect a blog post on that when it happens!

He does this all day every day. He just longs to go roam those mountains!

Riding the tram up to Sandia Peak

Dinner at High Finance, the restaurant at the top of Sandia Peak

Albuquerque from the top

We caught one last day of snow before spring officially started-- yep, it snows in the desert

The view for my hikes with Chipper

We went offroading and had to stop for a pic with the New Mexico desert behind us

Really comforting to see a little truck graveyard off the edge of the cliff. This was maybe 100 feet down.

It's not all dry and sandy desert though. Spring is in bloom here in Albuquerque!

And last but not least, I think my favorite thing we have done since living here is... trade in my car!! My trusty ol Pontiac was starting to need a lot of little things done to keep up with it (new brakes, tire rod ends, new tires, windows would sometimes get stuck all the way down, the list goes on). We decided rather than putting a couple grand into those fixes that it was just time for an upgrade. So we found this fun little thing with low mileage and I LOVE it! It's a 2010 Acura TSX. I love driving it. I think once we get to Spokane I will miss having autostart in the long winters but maybe we will have a garage I can park it in. We will see. But for now I'm enjoying having a new (to me) car! Side note: it still smells like a new car in there... every time I get in I'm like ahhhhh! *cue hallelujah chorus*

So that's it! I'll try to pick up blogging more often so we don't have monster posts like these in the future! We have lots to do while here and that means lots to share with family and friends. I know people are wondering what the heck we have been up to! Hope everyone had a great Easter Sunday yesterday! We went to church and then were lucky enough to have friends invite us over for a delicious ham dinner. When you're in the military, you spend lots of holidays with your second family. :) Thanks for catching up, see you all soon!

Military OneSource

I was very excited to open my email this morning and discover that my blog post was featured on Military OneSource's Blog Brigade! If you've never visited Military OneSource check it out. It's a great resource for military families. And then be sure to hop over and check out my guest post!

happy new year!

Happy New Year everyone! Hope everyone has been having a great 2014 already. Jeff and I wrapped up 2013 back in Washington. We didn't tell any of his friends (except one to help us organize a surprise) so I couldn't mention it online anywhere. Jeff and our good friend Melissa set up a Christmas party -- on a Sunday night -- and we were supposed to come knock on the door and Melissa was going to have her husband Nick open the door, thinking it was the pizza man. That didn't happen. Not sure where the mix-up happened but we basically just walked in the front door without knocking! The look on everyone's faces was priceless. I wish I had my camera out when we walked in to capture that moment. Never done anything like that before but it was totally worth it! And surprisingly there was a huge turn out even for it being a Sunday night. Way to go Melissa!

We had a great time with family and friends up there. It didn't exactly snow while we were there but everything was completely frozen and covered in frost. It was foggy and beautiful every day. When you hate snow like I do, you'll take fog and frozen trees over two feet of snow any day.

No snow? Perfectly fine with that

The morning we left for our trip we woke up with a flat tire on my car. YAY! No time to deal with it though because we had to get to the airport. So we took the truck instead and I came home and had to deal with it on my own... Because dealing with a flat tire by yourself is probably some sort of rite of passage for a military spouse. Jeff was in mandatory briefings all day and couldn't help me deal with it. And now he is already back in WA again for the month of January for some additional training. We've had so much fun traveling and spending time together since his graduation but now I am ready to just sit and relax for while. I'm sick again for the third time since Thanksgiving (really unusual for me!) so I'm taking the next couple days to try and sleep it off. I've already eaten an embarrassing amount of grilled cheese and tomato soup since being home. But hey no one has to know...

One final thing that I realized a few days ago- we are down to two months away from moving to Albuquerque! This is the time before a PCS where everything starts to feel like it needs done right now and I feel like I'm falling behind on getting the house ready, but in reality nothing can be done at all yet. Trying not to stress out over it too much, as I'm sure it will be here before we know it. Anyway that's all for now. Back to my tissue box and cup of tea I go...

Working on trying to take more photos of ourselves on vacation... got another 2 whole pics this time!