Another great day..

We had a really nice day yesterday. We slept in... then got around and took the kids and went to an outlet mall area. We didn't do a ton of shopping. We looked around and had a nice time looking at things.  Orlando is kind of overwhelming with so many things to do... there is so much here.  It's pretty crazy here...  it just seems like there are a lot of people here that spend a fortune on vacation... hotels, meals, gifts, and then designer clothing at stores that are wow... out of this world expensive... pretty crazy... i don't think that it's anything new... it's probably always been that way around vacation destinations... it just seems all the more overwhelming at times now that i'm going back visiting vacation places as a husband with kids... and not a carefree single...  ha... either that or i'm officially old... ha...

After a few months of asking... we allowed LeAnn to get her ears pierced.  It was exciting... She did a great job... she was so brave...  i'll post a few pictures...

The tears didn't last long... she hasn't complained at all after the first few seconds when she started to cry a bit... she's all fine and very proud of her new earrings now... what a cutie...

well.. tomorrow we are planning on heading to Busch Gardens... so we are going to head to bed early... night night..

Life is good

    We had another great day here on vacation.  We moved to a different hotel as Angie and Todd got on their way back to PA.  The new hotel is in a different area of Orlando.  It is another really nice timeshare.  We spent the day at Downtown Disney, which is a collection of shops that have all kinds of toys and Disney assorted goods.  We ate at T-Rex for lunch.  It is like Rainforest Cafe, but with a Dinosaur theme.  It was a really nice Lunch together.  The kids ate really well.  We looked at a much of different shops and got the kids some little gifts there, then we headed to our hotel to meet up with some new friends.  The new place is also really nice.  We got all of our stuff up to the room and got settled in.  The, we changed and went out to swim n the pool for a few hours.  It was really nice.  Their pool design is really unique.  They have a few swimming pools that are really well designed with slides and gradual descents into the water that are really nice for young kids.  Jacob really had a blast... so did LeAnn and Elijah.  LeAnn has really picked up on swimming in the past few days.  The pool also has a "lazy river" that has a current that pushes you through a large loop to relax.  They have inner tubes that you can float on, or you can just bob along.  We have Jacob swimming in a life preserver these days... but it has really been a lot of fun.  I haven't seen a pool done like this before.  It is really nice.  After the kids wore out... (ok us too.. )  we came up to the room and ate some dinner and watched cartoons.  Oh yeah.. i watched Penn State get beat too...  ha... too bad..  We'll see what tomorrow holds..

Vacationing in Orlando

    Well... we brought the kids to Orlando.. not to do the normal Disney Craziness that is usually associated with a vacation here.. but just to relax and visit with friends and family.  It has been really nice.  Traci's sister, Angie, and her husband, Todd, came down here and allowed us to stay in their timeshare with them for a week with their two little ones, Lillah and Lydia.  It has been a really nice break.   The last time we came to Orlando, it was nice getting to go to the Disney parks, but it wasn't at all a relaxing vacation.  Instead it was chaos... trying to load the car.. get out the door.. and see everything you could possibly squeeze into a day to be sure to get every cent worth of experience out of every day... By the end of the week last time, we were exhausted.. and not feeling very rested as we made the 8 hour drive back to Navarre.  So, as a result, this time, we have taken the complete opposite approach to the vacation.  We have scheduled absolutely nothing.  We had a list of a few things to do in the area, but we don't have a schedule... and you know what... it is great!..  it has been a very relaxing and fun experience just having fun with our kids.. playing in the resort pools... getting out to do some local shopping and looking around as needed... and really enjoying just spending time together... not rushing around on a crazy schedule... wow!... what a difference that makes!.. If you haven't tried it... give it a shot...  it's so nice just being away from the house.. and not feeling the urge to go out and work on something around the house... or somewhere else... just relaxing... it's wonderful... :)

   So... if you're contemplating a vacation as the summer wraps up...  you don't necessarily have to make a huge trip out of it... jut take a nice drive to get away from your place... find a nice hotel... and don't do ... ANYTHING...  read a book.. swim in the pool...  and relax...  what a crazy idea...

Man... this Air Force Life is making me soft.. ha..

   

Smile

Well, it has been a bit since I’ve written, so I’ll jot something down.  Life is going pretty well here.  Traci and I have been doing very well.  The weather is warming up and our garden is growing very well and the beach weather is here.  

    We’ve been working for the past week on laying tile in a large portion of our house.  We replaced the linoleum peal and stick tile floor that was in the kitchen with ceramic.  While we were at it, we did the hallway to our bedroom, laundry room, and the kids’ school room too.  We did the grout last night.  We are working on putting back all of the baseboard now and putting things back where they belong.  Overall, it was approximately 900 square feet of tile, so not a small job.  I did have some help from some close friends here though.  Friends are great.

    Traci went away to Orlando last weekend for a homeschool convention.  She really enjoyed it.  There were a bunch of different speakers there that gave her plenty of options to choose what kind of material she wanted to hear more about.  She enjoyed the break, and I enjoyed the time with the kids.  We worked together on the floor and spent time together.  It was great.  I guess I don’t realize how much my relationship with the kids is different than the closeness that Traci enjoys by being close with the kids each day.  While she was gone for 4 days, it was nice to get to spend all of that time with the kids.  I’ll admit that it is a challenge to lay flooring with three little ones running around, but this weekend made me realize all the more how much i love being a Dad and cherish the family that I have.  I’m so thankful for God for all that He has given to me and this opportunity to spend more time together with my family... Enjoying them. 

Birthday...

 

             So, I had a birthday.. Yesterday I turned 33 years old.  The last ten years seem to have been such a blur with my time in the Army…  especially the past 6 years with the time away.  My birthday came at the end of a long week.  I took one of my Master’s classes last week on US Foreign Policy between WWI and WWII.  It was a very interesting course. When I signed up for the class, I didn’t really think it was going to be so great, but I have been really surprised and pleased with all of the courses I have taken so far through OU.  So, after a long week of history with a lot of reading, Traci surprised me with a Party on Sunday afternoon.

                I was on my way home after taking my final exam on Sunday morning when I called Traci to see if she would mind if I would pick up some burgers and rolls to have a little cookout at the house in the afternoon, then head to the beach.  She said that would be a great idea, but little did I know that she had already invited about 100 people to the house to do just the same thing.  I got to the house and a few friends were there after church getting ready to cook out.  As I unloaded the truck and went inside, more and more families showed up at the house… and Traci had me..  It was a really nice day together.  The weather has been great lately here. It was in the lower 80’s yesterday as we cooked out and played in the backyard with the kids.  It was really a nice time together with everyone.  It’s crazy I guess… a real change in thinking as I get older I guess…  I don’t think I would have been as pleased or had as nice of a time if I had a similar party at 23, as I did at 33…  It was just so nice being outside with friends and watching all of our kids play… no need for anything too crazy… but wow… it was a really nice time.  Traci really surprised me.  

                A friend of ours at church was talking to me as I was realizing how many people were showing up at the house.  He said that Traci had invited almost the whole church to the house when he asked Traci if I really liked large crowds of people.  He said that Traci told him, “Well, no, but he bought me a mill and a super mixer for bread making for my birthday, and I don’t really enjoy that; so, this is payback.”  Ha..  she’s a trip…  It was a really nice day though. 

The Backyard Farm

Well, well, well…   It has been a while since I have written.. so let me catch you up on things… 

Traci and I are doing well.  The winter here in Florida was mild compared to Colorado or Pennsylvania, but according to Floridian standards it was too cold here.  A lot of the more tropical plants down here were killed over the winter, but now it is warming up and looking beautiful down here.  Traci and I have been putting a lot of time into working around our house.  We really enjoy living here and the setting of our house.  I have thought about it often over the years, but I really think I would enjoy being a farmer.  We have a pretty good sized raised bed garden out back.  Last summer I dug a long trench and put in another sprinkler station to water a garden we put in.  We have been composting quite a bit and I think we finally have a pretty good system working now that turns our compost into usable soil in about 4 weeks now.  

We watched a film called Food Inc.  [http://www.foodincmovie.com/ ]  I don’t know if you have seen it or not, but it is a great film.  It will change the way you look at food and the whole food industry.  I feel that the way this industry has completely changed the way it does business is what is at the heart of much of the economic change we have seen in this country.  It really strikes a cord with me to explain much of the heartache we see in the small farms from the area where I grew up.  So, if you get a minute, check it out.    Here is the trailer for the movie if it peaks your interest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKYyD14d_0

As a result of reading a lot and seeing that film, Traci and I have made efforts to eat healthier for us and for our children.  We started by baking our own bread.  We also got chickens a few months ago.  We got them as day old chicks, but now they are almost full grown.  There are a lot of great sites and books out there to learn a lot about chickens.  Here are a few:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/

http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html

http://www.chickentractor.org/

        After reading a lot, we got our chicks.  I was thinking that they were going to be a lot of work, but they really aren’t too bad.  I think they are even less work than a dog.  We ordered 10 hens of 5 different types (2 each).  We got Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orphingtons, Vermont Reds, Barred Rocks, and Americaunas.  I ordered 10, but they sent us 20 chicks to be sure to keep our 10 warm.  They said the other 10 would be roosters and dipped each of their heads in a green dye so we could clearly identify them.  We got them from Ideal Poultry [ http://www.ideal-poultry.com/ ] in Texas and had no issues with them at all.  They sent them to us in the mail.  There are a lot of small portable coop designs on wheels these days that people move around their yard to eat grass and fertilize their yard.  We decided that we wanted to have a larger coop with a few more birds, so we built a larger coop.  My Dad did a lot of the building while I was at work when they were here visiting us.  It is a 7’x5’ coop, and we made a pretty big fenced in area for them to get out.  We put an ad on Craigslist to get rid of the roosters.  Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a noisy rooster to have eggs.  So, we sent them on their way 3 hours after posting the ad on Craigslist.  The hens are much more quiet.  We are having fun with them.  Chickens are a great compost asset.  They peck at and shred just about anything you put in their pen.  We put some yard debris in there and they shred it down into small pieces in no time at all.  They also dig up and turn over the soil like a rototiller would in a few weeks.  I built a large feeder out of a 6 gallon bucket, a toilet flange, and some PVC pipe that holds about 50 lbs of food.  We also have a 5 gallon watering can for them.  Those things make it pretty easy to take care of the chickens.  50 lbs of feed will last almost a month right now.  I fill up the water can about once a week.  The coop has a wire floor, so cleaning it out once a week is pretty easy.  Like I said, it is pretty easy to take care of them.  The kids love it.  They are always out playing around with the chickens.  They are pretty friendly animals.  I think they are very social and enjoy being around people and each other.  We get them out to run around the yard when we are working outside.  They don’t ever run off too far and always come back to the coop at night.  Like I said, they are pretty easy to take care of and we are having a lot of fun with them.  If you have any thoughts about getting chickens, give it a shot.  Hens are quieter to have around your house than a dog.  I’ll let you know how the eggs are as they start laying in a few weeks.

        I really enjoy the time around the house these days.  We put our chickens in during the night to give them some shelter to protect them from possible predators.  They go in the house on their own now.  We let them out each morning to start the day.  It sounds funny, but it is something to look forward to each day now: drinking a cup of coffee and walking out to let the chickens out in the beautiful weather we have been having… it is great.  Life is good.

        I can’t say enough about how much we really enjoy our new church here in Navarre.  Traci and I have had more time to be involved in different ministries there, far more than the time we had during previous assignments where I was far too busy.  We are really enjoying it.  We have taken the time to help out with teaching a Sunday school class to 3-5th graders.  We are also helping out on several different construction projects at the church and with different members of our church.  I really enjoy doing the work.  I enjoy figuring out the materials and piecing everything together.  It is rewarding to see the final results after a lot of thought and planning goes into that kind of work.  It is surprising to me more and more how some folks don’t have much of a background in understanding how things work or how to fix things.  When I was a kid.. and still now, that was just a part of life.  I was always curious to understand how things work and applying the concepts we learned in school to practical experience (i.e. Leverage, electricity, etc.).  That is just how things made sense to me.  It is foreign to me to meet people that completely separate book knowledge from practical living.  I guess I am just wired differently.  All of that aside, I have really enjoyed working to help people in different ways.

Life is Good

    Well, it has been a few months since I have written.  We’ve been keeping busy.. and time just keeps flying by.

    I am really enjoying the benefits of having a more laid back job these days.  It has been great to have the flexibility to do whatever I want to do.  I have learned a lot through this job and will continue to learn through my stay here.  On the other hand, this job is far more laid back than any other job I have had in my military career though.  After the schedule we have been keeping over the past few years, we are really enjoying the time together.

    I started taking classes for my Master’s Degree in International Relations.  I have been really enjoying the classes.  The Air Force has a different take on education than I ever felt like I had time for in the Army.  I’m doing a program through OU.  They have professor fly here once a month to teach us a class.  We do the class in 7 days.  We have class Monday-Friday 6:00-9:00pm, 8:00am-4:00pm on Saturday, and take our final 8:00am-12:00pm on Sunday.  I have been really enjoying getting back into the books and reading.  It seemed like school was such torture while I was in College.  Now, for the first time in a long time, I have the time to read.  I also bought a Kindle from Amazon.  I don’t know if you have seen one of them, but they are ebook readers made by Amazon.  They have come down in price quite a bit.  When they first came out they were about $400.  I bought mine for $250.  It has saved me a considerable amount of money on college texts books, so it should pay for itself by the time I am done with my classes.  I do enjoy the Kindle.  It is pretty easy to read and carry a variety of books wherever you go.  It will hold up to 1500, but I only keep about 10 on there.  It also has a text to speech function, so on my way to and from work, it will read to me in the car.  That is pretty slick... and makes it easy to get through a lot of material.  What can I say, I’m hooked.

    We had a nice time with a few visitors over the past few months.  My parents were here in October.  Traci’s parents were here in November.  We had a couple from 3-29FA stop on their way through on their way to FT Benning for a new duty station- the Estanols.  I’m sure we’ll get some more visitors here as it warms up in the spring.

    We had the good fortune to stumble upon a great deal on a hotel in Orlando in early December.  We took the kids and went to Orlando for a week.  We had a great time.  We went to Sea World for a day and spent the rest of the week at Disney.  It was a lot of fun.  The kids had a blast... and so did we.  It was nice to see that Disney really offers a great savings to military personnel.  We received a considerable discount on hotels and park admission.  It was really a very nice vacation.

    Over Christmas, we stayed right here in Navarre.  This was the first Christmas we have had together in three years, so it was great just enjoying time together.  Traci and I had fun looking for toys for the kids.  We got a baby sitter for a night and took a trip to Toys r’us.  It was so fun seeing how excited the kids were.  

    Traci and I have been keeping really active in our church.  We attend Live Oak Church in Navarre.  We really enjoy it there.  As I think I mentioned before, we are teaching a Sunday School Class.  I have been enjoying doing some odds and ends around the church too.  We are currently in an older building.  They just broke ground on a new building last week though.  

    Let’s see...  Politics... I don’t think I want to talk about anything there... 

    Afghanistan-...  I don’t know what to say about that...  I have some friends there right now.. and I know that they are getting hammered... just getting hit by terrorists.. just out there killing US and Coalition Soldiers to cause absolute chaos..  the first class I took was on US Foreign Policy in the Vietnam War.  It was a great course.  I got to read a lot of great books on Vietnam that I had not previously read.  In class we were engaged in discussions drawing parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan... at the time I didn’t... and I still don’t want to see the similarities.. but I have been really drawn to reading more and more of the accounts that are out there.. and I can’t help but see similarities...  I don’t know that those similarities change anything for me... I’m still a Soldier... I’ll still defend the Constitution of the US from all enemies foreign and domestic and execute the orders of the President of the US and the Orders of the Officers appointed over me...  

    Again, I just feel so drawn to read... and to have a better understanding of things...  looking back on things....  i just think it’s always unexpected to see how our lives go...  as we are on this journey...  

    I do know that I love my wife and kids so much.  I am so thankful for all that they have put up with from my chosen profession over the past few years.  I am so thankful to God for giving them to me.  Traci is so patient through all of this.  She is home-schooling Elijah and LeAnn these days.  We sat down and came up with our education plan for the year with different focus areas and activities for each week.  Things have been going really well.  Traci’s a great teacher, so patient with the kids and their unique learning styles.

    Well, I think I’ll let you go.

Take care,

Steve