Grandparents

We had a nice visit with Grammy and Grampy!  Still can't go up in that tower behind us, though.  Darn earthquake!

While they were here, they both came down with horrible colds.  Phil's poor mom, though, gathered her energy and managed to sew new rank on all of Phil's uniforms (more on that later).  Thanks, Mom!

The unwrapping!

As is our tradition -- here's the unwapping !

Merry Christmas ! ! !

2012 Christmas Update!

Merry Christmas!

We hope the holidays find you with family and loved ones and the joy of the season.  Our year has been busy but fulfilling.  We are celebrating our second Christmas in Washington D.C. and really love the area and many close friends that are here.  We’ve been fortunate to have had many opportunities to visit and have visitors—including multiple grandparent trips, a gathering of all the kiddos’ cousins, and continued Air Force experiences.  

Claire, 8 years old, still loves school and is a book-a-day reader in the second grade.  She loves Egyptology and learning new techniques for drawing to improve her art skills.  Madeline, 6 years old, is a kindergartener and budding young vocalist—she loves singing.  Her Barbie collection may overrun our home’s fire marshal approved capacity.  They ride the bus together and both participate in Girl Scouts, dance, and cheerleading.  Colin turned 3 years old over the summer and is now a pre-schooler.  He really enjoys the school activities and having his best friend (Sarah!) in class with him.  He’s also proud to have started soccer practices.  Colin enjoys interrupting his big sisters’ games with Hot Wheel™ crashes and unexpected airplane attacks.

After a full and well travelled life, our dog Bailey passed away in February.  It wasn’t long before the family needed another canine companion and Clyde, the beagle, joined our team.  Our parakeets continue to chirp and sing, and the backyard was full of life through the summer:  the kids saw three different nests with eggs and tiny birds.

Katie, the family’s professional chauffeur, has taken up crocheting as an excuse to hang out with adults.  Phil still works at the Pentagon, and will be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in January.  Since the Air Force doesn’t like us to get too comfortable anywhere for too long, Phil will return to fly the C-17 this summer and it looks like we will then be moving to Anchorage, Alaska.  As long as a grizzly doesn’t intercept them, expect a change of address note from “The Last Frontier!”

Merry Christmas from our family to yours, and keep those who may not be together this holiday season in your thoughts.  God Bless and Happy New Year!  

Happy Birthday Girls!

 

Claire's party

When it came time for Claire's birthday party we went to (where else?) the American Girl doll store! Sound familiar? Yeah, our girls kind-of like that place. She invited a few of her friends, her sissy, and her grandma (who was conveniently in town visiting at the time!) and we all had a wonderful time.

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Claire!

Soccer star

The little guy has started sports!  He really likes kicking the soccer ball around the field, but sometimes thinks that practice is "too long."  Wait 'til he tries a full game!

 

Happy Halloween!

 

 

Cleopatra, Ariel, Spiderman and Super-dog ready for trick-or-treat!

Executive Airlift Experience

So Phil's current job involves some sort of paperwork and budgeting for some pretty neat airplanes.  He takes care of what the the Air Force calls the "Operational Support Airlift" and "Executive Airlift" fleet.  These are the pretty blue and white airplanes you often see important government folks riding around on the news.  There's some neat perks to that -- like the special friends and family day at Andrews Air Force Base.  The family got a chance to see the airplanes up close, check out the Vice President's and Secretary of State's cabin and desk, and see what a 'nice' Air Force jet really looks like.  Quite a difference from all of our space-available travel experiences!

On the air-stairs going up to Air Force Two

The kiddos conducting hard government work at the desk in Air Force Two's executive cabin!  The circle with the velcro on the front wall is to hang the Seal of the important passenger (VP, SecState, SecDef, etc.).

Nice seats on a C-37 Gulfstream

They also had a few other aircraft from the base out to visit.  Phil might not be flying, but we keep the aviation experience close!

The crew on-board a KC-135

Magic Kingdom: Take 2

For our last day in the parks we went back to the Magic Kingdom.  This time around we met up with Aunt Becki and Uncle Jim too!

Boy, did we have fun!

See that?  Those are the faces of people having fun.  Except maybe Madeline in the back.  And Grandma Bethie in front.  They might not be having a great time right there.

We ate lunch with Winnie the Pooh and his friends.

And we snuck into a soft opening of the new Fantasyland!  Woohoo!!!  We got to go into Belle's cottage, and certain members of our party acted in a little play with her.  Check out these budding thespians:

Claire as Maurice (Belle's daddy)

Madeline as Chip the teacup

And Uncle Jim as a knight!

We sure had a great time.  It's such a blessing to 1) be able to meet up with everyone in Florida; 2) have everyone in such great health (and ready to tackle all of the rides with the kids!); and 3) have a family that actually enjoys going on vacation together. My mom rode roller coasters (!!!), Claire and Paw-paw rode Space Mountain (though one of them may have regretted that decision), all of the grandparents happily grabbed kids for riding partners and let Phil and me ride together. I'm so, SO glad that we were able to have this wonderful vacation together!  Where to next, everybody?

Animal Kingdom

Here's the whole team at Disney's Animal Kingdom.  Don't we look great?  And DRY?  This is before we rode the Kali River Rapids and all got soaked.  Well, I didn't get soaked, but then they all decided we should ride it AGAIN and my luck didn't hold so well that time around.  Even Colin was big enough to ride the Rapids, though he thought the waterfall was "too 'carry". 

Magic Kingdom

We packed LOTS of fun into this day.  First thing: the little girls and I headed to Downtown Disney for a visit to the Bippidi Boppidi Boutique so they could get made up like princesses by fairy godmothers-in-training.

Finished product: two princesses!

Then we caught up with the rest of the gang in the Magic Kingdom park.  Our family of 5 hit the castle for lunch with the princesses, while the grandparents had some adult time.  

 

And then we were all back together again to enjoy the park.  I think we did just about everything there was to do.  We rode the carousel:

And we rode Dumbo:

Colin was happy to ride the train (a real steam engine!):

And of course, we posed for a few more pics with the castle:

After riding almost every ride there at least once, we found a great spot to watch the fireworks.  It looked to us like Tinkerbell's job is one of the most dangerous -- watch out for those rockets, Tink!

EPCOT

EPCOT is my favorite park at Disney World.  But it rained on us a lot there.  A lot.  We rode the Maelstrom ride in Norway several times over, hoping the rain would pass.  Then we shopped in Norway's gift shop, but the rain still didn't let up.

Eventually we had to pull out our ponchos and get wet. 


We never did get a good shot of our whole group in front of Spaceship Earth, but we did take some shots of our little groups in between rain storms:

The evening was a little nicer.  We stayed late and watched the fireworks show from La Hacienda Mexican restaurant.  We were all pretty tuckered out, but we had to rally because the next day was going to be big day at Magic Kingdom!

Grand Floridian

Our next day at Disney we had a little free time, so we went to the Grand Floridian to eat with Cinderella, the step-mother, step-sisters and Prince Charming.  Great food, fun characters, handsome prince, what more could you want?  And the step-mother even flirted with Paw-paw.  We don't have any photographic evidence that, but I think it made his day!

Hollywood Studios

Our first day we headed straight to Hollywood Studios to check off Colin's big bucket-list item: see Lightning McQueen.  But before we got to Lightning we decided to ride the Tower of Terror.

Pro-tip: don't take wimpy little girls on the Tower of Terror for their first ride at Disney.  I didn't think we'd be able to get them on ANYTHING after that!  They were thoroughly terrorized.

The men/boy went to go see the Star Wars ride and while they were gone we women-folk were recognized as VIP movie stars!  Yep, as we walked up to The Great Movie Ride the attendants got very excited and apologized for not being prepared for us, shook our hands and told us how excited they were to meet us.  Then they got on their radios, announced they had VIPS coming in, took us around the whole queue of people, put us directly in front of the line and put us on the very next car -- in the front row -- all the while gushing about how wonderful it was to meet us!  Claire and Madeline thought it was so funny that they were mistaken for movie stars.  Disney World cast members really gave us a magical experience!

We ate some fabulous food, Colin saw Lightning McQueen, we saw the Beauty and the Beast musical and we watched the Fantasmic fireworks and light show.  Definitely lots of fun for our first day in the parks.