Premiere Night

We got to see a special military base premiere of Transformers 2 last night. It was a free showing, with red carpet and special appearances by some of the stars of the movie.

It wasn't Shia LeBeouf or Megan Fox, but rather the skilled aircrew of the stunt C-17s that dominate the picture!


Two of Altus' own jets and crew helped film the movie last year. We've been anxiously waiting to see how many of their cameos made it into the final film or ended up on the cutting room floor. We have bonafide movie stars in our midst. The showing was punctuated with cheers for the Altus tail-flash and "Look -- there's me" or "That's my hand!" One of the pilots even got a speaking role; thankfully, they kept his face out of the movie otherwise we'd never hear the end of it.

There is a lot of C-17 propaganda and our guys made it look good and helped save the day. As for critical reviewing...this is definitely a summer movie: big explosions, loud soundtrack, and lots of cars, robots, and military action. Katie gives it "Two stars ... for the two C-17s!" Though I don't think she has the appropriate appreciation level for movies based on awesome boyhood toys.

Optimus Prime in the back of the nation's premiere airlifter is pretty cool after all.

37 Weeks

Stick a fork in her. She's done...Katie that is.

The baby is full-term. We still don't have any idea what or when it's coming but we're all pretty much ready. Check out the baby-bump now!

Bountiful Harvest

Our little garden is working a bit better than last year (we added quite a bit more compost this year to try and improve our Oklahoma clay). We actually have tomatoes growing on each of our plants! They're still quite green but are growing nicely, it's good to see our work wasn't all for nothing! We've even harvested some onions early to make nice scallions already.

The girls love any chance to eat something right off the plant and have been sneaking single strawberries as they redden. Last weekend Phil noticed that the green beans and snow peas were actually producing, too. The girls were a bit nervous about beans off the vine, but ended up loving them raw and they devoured the entire first harvest the following day!


The herbs (cilantro, basil, and parsley) smell great while we root around and we can't wait for the peppers and tomatoes to ripen. We planted four watermelon plants for fun and are hoping the cantaloupe can recover from its early season freeze. We're trying to keep the watermelon from taking over the entire garden before we get some other veggies and plant our end of season pumpkins! The girls can't wait for our two softball sized watermelons to finish growing.

Father's Day at the Natural History Museum

Phil and I realized on Saturday that this weekend might be our last opportunity to go to a real city for quite some time. I'll be 37 weeks along next Friday, which is a little far along to make the required 2.5 hour trip to Oklahoma City. We quickly decided to take advantage and go do SOMETHING on Sunday!

We ultimately decided on the Natural History Museum in Norman, OK (just a little south of OKC). As it turns out, the girls think dinosaurs are pretty cool. Maddie got a little freaked out by the big monsters a few times, but overall they both had a great time exploring and checking out the exhibits.



We had enough time at the end of the day for me to make a quick run into Target for a few much-needed items that I can't get online. That was a huge treat for me, since our nearest Target is 104 miles away from our house. Phil spent that part of his Father's Day circling the Target parking lot while the girls took a rest in the van. We made sure he didn't forget he's a daddy this Father's Day! :)

My poor dad, on the other hand, had a pretty rough Father's Day weekend. He was supposed to be enjoying a bachelor's weekend at home while my mom went to a daylily show out of town. Instead he spent the weekend trying to rid their basement of water after a pretty nasty storm. Hopefully they get it all cleaned up quickly, but please keep them in your thoughts and prayers!

Picnic, anyone?

Check out the girls' new picnic table! Their daddy made it for them -- from scratch! Impressive, huh?



It started several weeks ago when we went to a park and Phil noticed a nice kid-sized picnic table. He thoroughly inspected it and muttered something about making one. I thought nothing more about it until he decided last week that he was going to build one for the girls. He found some plans online, made a trip to Lawton for lumber (no cedar in all of Altus!!!), and got to work. It really didn't take him long, probably because he had two little helpers with him, checking his measurements and preforming periodic quality-control checks.







Claire and Maddie LOVE their new table and have insisted on taking all of their snacks and meals on it.

Summer school

Ahhh, summer is here! The time of year when the kids have no responsibilities and we can just play, play, play, and do crafts and fun things together. Right? Well truth be told, I was a bit worried about how I would keep up with the kiddos all day in my very-pregnant state and how I would keep them occupied while trying to care for a newborn this summer. It's already hotter than heck outside and things can quickly get ugly when my girls are stuck indoors.

Luckily for me, there's summer school at Claire's school! It's just twice a week for 2 hours and Maddie can go too, in preparation for preschool next year. I swear I'm not being mean - they don't actually do much "school" there. It's more fun-playtime-with-friends where they sing songs, color, and talk about Jesus. Anyway, Claire and Madeline were excited to start, especially Maddie, who was thrilled that she finally was big enough to go to Sissy's school. Now it's Maddie's school too!

Sea World

We woke up early again on Sunday and got to Sea World when it opened. I wasn't sure how much the girls would be able to do there, since they obviously don't ride roller coasters yet. Turns out the girls LOVED Sea World. They were excited about seeing all of the different water animals - and the Budweiser clydesdales were a big hit too. We managed to catch a sea lion show, a dolphin show, and (of course!) Shamu's show. The girls have been playing "Shamu" ever since we left. Claire is generally Shamu and Maddie is the trainer (because she's smaller) but sometimes they change it up and they're dolphins in a dolphin show. It's pretty funny.

And the obligatory photos:

The World Famous San Diego Zoo

We decided to go to the zoo on Saturday after consulting the weather. It was supposed to be overcast that day and mostly sunny on Sunday - we figured overcast would be good for keeping our pasty selves from getting sunburned while wandering outside at the zoo all day. We woke up bright and early to hit the hotel's breakfast and discovered... RAIN! It wasn't a heavy Midwestern-type rain, but more like the kind of rain we got in Washington. Who goes to San Diego and gets rain??? Anyway, another check of the weather assured us it would clear up by noon, so off we went. We lived in Washington for four years - a little misty drizzle can't stop us!

The weather didn't really clear up, but we had a great time anyway. The zoo is absolutely beautiful and the animals were all out and very active. The bears were playing "tag-you're-it" (according to Maddie - they were chasing around their habitat). The polar bears were wandering about. Maybe it was the weather! Even the snakes were slithering around in their snake house (yuck! But Maddie and Claire had no trouble finding them in their habitat.).



We took a bus tour, saw pretty much all of the animals, visited the petting zoo, caught a sea lion show, rode the air tram THREE times (aka "sky train", according to Claire) and were too tuckered out for dinner so we got pick-up Mexican food. Yummy. It was a really fun day!