Into the Wild

Dustin(the cousin), Andy, Jeff (groom to be/brother) and Nick (brother)

Don't panic, Andrew hasn't left us to go off the grid and find the "meaning of life"....at least not permanently. :) He, his 2 brothers, and their cousin all left on Sunday morning to drive up to Northern Minnesota...Ely to be exact. They are spending this whole week in the Boundary waters that flow between us and Canada....Besides getting to just be manly men out in the wilderness with no cell phones, bathing in lakes, no shaving, fishing from sun up to sun down and NO wives, fiance's or girlfriends with an 8hr+ drive, they are celebrating Jeff's upcoming wedding. Talk about a non-traditional Bachelor party!

They actually headed into the wilderness early Monday morning and planned to reach the Canadian side by Tuesday AM. They will be fishing in different lakes and carrying the canoe's between each spot and then camping out where/when ever, they feel like it. The next time I hear from him will be Saturday, whenever he returns to civilization....probably sunburned, bug bitten, a bit scruffier, and grinning from ear to ear with fishing stories to last until next year. ;)

still my baby

Most days, it feels like Asher is growing up too fast. He is changing so much right before our eyes and like most parents, I just want to freeze time and stop him from getting too big. Thankfully there are still times when I look at him and see my precious baby.

Don't grow up too fast, my son. I am loving everyday with you!

Officially Graduated!

On Saturday, June 12th at about 8pm, Andrew officially graduated from Test Pilot School!!!!!! TPS is quite possibly the hardest year of anyone's Air Force career. Andrew of course rocked it and graduated with a GPA above a 3.9. (Such a smarty pants!)

Andrew and his classmates literally got to watch the days, hours, minutes and seconds tick away until graduation. He was so pumped when he came into TPS Saturday morning and saw the 000 under days!

Talk about a "different" venue....A formal ceremony in a F-35 hangar! We definitely didn't need to worry about not having enough space for everyone!

From L to R - Andrew's Uncle Mark and Aunt Diane, Step-dad Barry, and his mom Sharon and us. Andrew picked out my dress at BCBG, way back in December, but I wasn't sure I wanted to spend money on a new dress (seriously, I wasn't!) In the end, he got it for me as a 30th birthday present and I loved it! The picture above makes it look blueish, but it was a vivid purple. It was a lot of fun to wear such a beautiful dress that my husband picked out all by himself! (he is smart and has good taste, how lucky am I?!?! :)

Us with our good friends Laci and Doc (real name: Andy). Doc and Coach are known as the twins, because they look a lot alike at first glance, are the same height, same first name and were the same major at the Academy and MIT, just 4 years apart! Laci and I "competed" for most extroverted among the wives all year. (totally kidding, but we are both pretty extroverted.) Doc and Laci are our friends who just got a bike like ours. We are looking forward to the next 3 years riding around here with them.

The proud Mom with her ever, overachieving, awesome, 1st born son! I can't even imagine standing in her shoes in about 25+ years with what Asher could possibly do in his life. Wild to think about!

A nice welcoming present left on our table from our new squadron. We enjoyed this about 5 nights later while camping on the beach :)

Our mascot was the angry Bee, to play off being the 09B class. Laci designed the wine glasses and every student, spouse and guest got to take one home. Not a bad take home favor :)

Diploma 1 - this one goes on the wall, next to his Academy one.

Diploma 2. This is Andrew's fourth diploma since high school. We are guessing we might have 2 more to go before he retires from the Air Force. My man loves school!

Us with Colonel (ret) Condit. The Col. kindly flew in from Co. Springs to be our guest. We always enjoy our time with him as he has a sharp mind and wit! :) He has been a wonderful mentor to Andrew since his Academy days.

This funny picture gives a small clue about the craziness of all us wives....Lots of us, with lots of different, wonderfully strong personalities! :) I feel truly blessed to have walked this path with them as they all were awesome women!

The TPS 09B spouses (and 1 fiancee) We were the colorful bunch! 9 of the spouses are moving to FL and MD. (L to R, John, Rebecca, Julia, Amanda, Janet, Jessica, Theresa, Meagan, Julie, Laci, Deb, Ashley, Lisa, Sarah, Kellie, Yoko, me, Sarah and Dave)

I wish you all the best of luck ladies and gentlemen! I am sure we will meet up again!

This has definitely been the best year of our lives (so far) that we NEVER want to do again!

Red Carpet Day

Saturday, June 12th was Red Carpet and Graduation day. Red Carpet is a very cool thing that is for friends and family who are in town for graduation later that day. It entails presentations, simulators, bus tours, up close views of different planes and a complete tour of the TPS building. First thing in the morning there is a brief overview of what TPS really entails....i.e. they want everyone to know how hard TPS really is, so everyone can be even more impressed with their beloved son or daughter who is graduating:)

Hamming it up during the long presentation

A happy family cause we are DONE with TPS!!!

Our senior class decided to give their children "diploma's", as TPS is really hard on the families and they wanted to honor the kids. Our classmate, Dave and his wife, Theresa took that idea one step further and created an entire slide show presentation for each of the kid's major accomplishments! It was absolutely incredible. Since the Daddies had worked on something called the Test Management Project all year, they came up with 4 TMP's that covered all the kids. Asher fell under the Have Step TMP. He and 3 other buddies all learned to walk this year. It had everyone laughing and clapping as each child's name was read off. (the other TMP's were Have Birth, Have Bladder, Have Wheels..pretty creative couple!)

Us with Col. Luallan, the Commander of TPS...Asher was being slightly opinionated about standing to receive his diploma ;)

We borrowed a kid's size flight suit and put all of Andrew's real patches it on it for the little ceremony. Asher looked SO cute!!! Of course, I don't have any good pictures of it here (since he was exerting his own will - how is he old enough to do that!?!?) but we took some at home that I will post later

Checking out the static displays. They opened up a whole hangar filled with over 5 different planes that you could go right up to and even sit in some of them! It was awesome and Asher was in 7th heaven!

Hi Mom! I'm having a great time up here!

Considering Asher has been on something like 15 different flights at only 17 months old and just hopped right into the above pilot's seat without help, I think I might have a future flyer on my hands! Look at his happy face!

Cousin Maggie getting a turn at the controls of the c-12

Again, such a happy face!!!

This time Asher was in the cockpit of a T-38. It was a "real" plane(as opposed to the sometime static displays that are just shells of planes) and was used regularly this past year by our instructor friend Max

Uncle Mark trying his hand at a simulator....He kept asking where the tiller was....Ever the boater, not the flyer! :)

Barry, Andrew's step-dad, did pretty well. I think he actually got a direct hit on at least 1 "enemy" plane!

Push the red button? Ok, I can do that!!!

5 giant TV screens to look at and buttons to push, what could be better?!?!? All in all, it was an awesome morning enjoyed by everyone! And a few hours later the day was topped off with a great graduation ceremony...more on that to follow.

Flying High

The day before Andrew's graduation from Test Pilot School, I got a chance to go glider flying with one of his instructor's. They had had a spouse's day where most of my fellow wives went glider flying, but I was at my brother's graduation in VA. Randomly, they decided to offer another chance to go flying to any spouses or family in town for graduation. That was great for us, since it would have cost about $150 if I tried to do it on my own!

Getting settled into the tiny seat. Talk about weird to climb into a plane and pull the canopy over yourself!

Asher got to sit with me for a few minutes before we took off. He loved it!

The tow plane took us up to 7,000 ft before we detached from it.

If it wasn't for this tiny air hole I definitely would have puked!

I got the "honor" of detaching us from the tow plane.... I will admit I was a bit nervous to pull the cord, knowing we didn't have our own engine or radio communications.

So thankful for this sign! Pre-Asher my stomach could handle more, but now it is a lot more sensitive to motion, which always surprises me. No idea why my stomach permanently changed, but it has!

Looking out over Tehachapi, CA. It was a beautiful day for gliding and though I felt a little air sick, it was an awesome experience. Surprising myself though, I realized I liked sky-diving better then glider flying! We will see what Asher prefers when he gets old enough to try them both out....(only if he wants to:)

Daddy's Graduation Present

On Wednesday of last week, we drove into LA to pick up Andrew's new toy.....A Yamaha Roadstar Silverado. We bought it from our good friends Sarah and Todd who live near my parents in VA. It had been Todd's baby and he had loaded it with custom chrome and all sorts of sweet additions....Much to Andrew's joy! :)

Ready to go Daddy!

The desert is the perfect place to have a bike and since Andrew has never owned a bike, it made perfect sense to get the biggest bike Yamaha makes, right?!?! (Can you sense the teasing in my words ;) Although it truly is their biggest bike, the real reason we picked this one, is because this is what Andrew's Dad rode before he passed away. Andrew has many awesome memories of riding with his Dad on this model bike.

This is great! I like my seat Daddy!

It will be a few years before Asher and Andrew can start riding together, but until then Asher is content to pretend! Actually, I think he will prefer pretending for a long time to come, as the pipes are so loud when Andrew starts the bike, that Asher immediately starts crying.

Helping Daddy put the bike in the trailer to take it home...Andrew's permit doesn't allow him to ride on main highways yet.

I can't wait for weekend "date" bike rides! Some of our closest friends on base, got almost the same bike a few weeks before us, so we are looking forward to going cruising with them someday soon.

Happy Camper

We hiked to this beautiful ridge top that looked over the Kern Valley. It was the first time Andrew had gotten to go hiking with Asher! I definitely didn't mind sharing the "load" :)

Look at that sweet, dirty face! He loves sitting in chairs like a big person these days!

Between eating the dirt straight up and eating food coated in dirt, I think he ate his weight in dirt in about 24hrs! Just what every mother loves for her child to do ;)

"Helping" Daddy make breakfast...ie, playing in the dirt with the measuring cups! :) Andrew was a super star and made coffee, eggs and biscuits with sausage gravy! YUM!

Our "luxury" tent. A couple years ago my Dad got us this super awesome tent as a gift, since we were doing a lot of camping. As you can see it fit Asher's pack & play and our sleeping bag. What you can't tell is that we were sleeping on a queen size aero bed in a double sleeping bag! Yup, it was awesome:) Oh, the joys of car camping!!!

We took Asher camping for his first time over Memorial Day weekend. Some of our friends from TPS were going for 2 nights, but we decided for the first time out we would just go for 1 night. We had an awesome time and Asher did great! He slept from 7pm to 5:30am and then came into bed with us to snuggle for a while before heading out with Daddy for some morning playtime in the dirt! We had so much fun together we had decided to go camping again, the week after Andrew's graduation!