Tasty Treats

We're learning to fend for ourselves down here, so this week we had to call home to get the recipe for Jerry's peanut clusters and Jane's green bean casserole. Both have been a hit with our friends here at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, etc. Needless to say, we will be paying closer attention to how our parents prepare meals while we're back in Iowa. Thankfully, we didn't have to attempt the turkey over Thanksgiving this year (our friends did instead). Maybe next year!

We made these last year too but couldn't resist. We both have a weakness for peanut butter...
On a different note, not much in life has made me scream like a little girl. That is, of course, until we moved to Alabama. This darn creature tried to "attack" me 3 times. The third time was the worst -- it did it's fast creepy crawly thing ON MY FOOT. The pretzel is for size comparison.
NOT funny in the slightest bit. I guess that's what I get for bragging about the warm weather. It was warm enough to bring the bugs back out...

Is it December?

No pictures, but just a shout out to everyone in Iowa who is dealing with winter weather. Feel free to laugh at me when I can't stand the cold over Christmas. We are spoiled down here with warm weather. Yesterday while driving I saw the outdoor temperature gage climb from 76 to a whopping 80 degrees. It doesn't quite feel like December here, but I'm not complaining!

Dog Days

Sometimes Matt threatens that I am going to become the "crazy dog lady." I assure him that I'm not, but to be generous and give him some material to use against me, here are some dog updates...

Last weekend we drove a couple hours to Montgomery to check out an agility show. We went when the "expert" dogs were running the course. The event is divided up by the dogs' ability/experience and size. It was fun to see the different dogs go through the course and how different each owner/ handler was. We saw lots of shelties, but a good mix of other breeds as well. Golden retrievers, border collies, poodles, dachshunds, etc. Here is a clip of some impressive training:

To add to Matt's material, here's an excerpt from a recent e-mail sent to my parents:

~~~~
Well, Chaz did it. I’m not sure if he realizes that he finally defeated the dog in the mirror or not. Chaz loves to spaz out running up and down our hallway, yap at the dog in our full length mirror that lives in my closet, and then fly back down the hallway. Today, the laundry basket that usually sits in front of the bottom of the mirror was gone. Chaz must have gotten a good pounce in with that basket out of the way. We heard something fall and saw him scoot out of the room into the hallway. Sure enough, the mirror had fallen and shattered. No more mirror dog…

Little did Chaz know that beating the mirror dog would bring out his worst enemy, the vacuum… :)

~~~~

I've also been reading some puppy books that Matt's mom sent down with us and learning a lot about why Chaz is how he is. We've got a lot of socializing left to do with him to get rid of his "fear-induced aggression." Turns out sitting alone in a small patio area for a month without meeting new dogs and people before going home with your owners does not help a dog develop socially... We have a lot to work on but are enjoying the process!

If that isn't enough, we're adding to the mix. Double Trouble. One of the reasons I'm looking forward to Christmas this year is featured below. Isn't she a cutie? :)

Before putting up the Christmas tree this year, I decided to rearrange our living room. It's made a big difference and the room seems more comfortable / livable, but I'm not sure that Chaz approves. It puts a cramp on his style and doesn't allow him as much creativity on his loops he runs. Below, you can see that I convinced Chaz to try and be friends with the Christmas tree (after growling at it for two days and giving it dirty looks when it caught his eye). Merry Christmas, everyone. We are looking forward to seeing friends and family soon!

What?

We've turned Saturday mornings into pancake mornings and look forward to it each week that we're around. This morning was a fun one, experimenting with the Vita-Mix. I started out with the dry grinding blade to make oat flour from oats, and spelt flour from spelt berries. Next, was almond butter which was "okay." Next, was pancake mix - mmm. Matt especially liked the batter. Finally, we tried out home-made raspberry/blueberry syrup. These were some tasty flapjacks. This blender has some serious power. About halfway through, I decided that we needed to keep some earplugs in the kitchen -- you can seem them in the picture. My mom would be proud...

Our blender finally got here!!

I should probably disclose that I never thought I would get this excited about a blender. But I guess we didn't get just any blender, did we? No no, we got a Vita-Mix. It's the coolest thing since, well, sliced bagels. Maybe that's because it makes bagels...and anything else you can possibly imagine.

Johnni and I spent our Friday night making homemade peanut butter, peanut butter-chocolate milk shakes, and bagels. Who knew a blender could keep us up so late! Tomorrow we have plans for all kinds of foods....

Finally

So, I've been saying for awhile now that someday I would contribute to our blog. Well, today's the day. There is a lot to catch up with, and I'm not quite sure where to start.

What's new? Well, some of you know that I wouldn't call myself a strong swimmer. I started taking adult swimming classes this month to get myself in the water and brush up on what I should have been practicing since my dad first taught me how to swim. I never look forward to going to my lessons, but it's conveniently on post, and they are super cheap. I leave each time feeling a lot more comfortable in the water -- tonight was the first time that I can remember going off an actual diving board. It wasn't too bad, but I did feel like a pancake getting flipped a few times. Tonight, I was procrastinating and decided to take pictures while I should have been heading down the road...
You'll see some pictures soon when Matt posts, but we had a great time in Charleston, South Carolina with Ben and Chelsa this weekend. It was so fun and relaxing to get to hang out with good friends. I have a much better appreciation for photography after this weekend! It was fun to watch and listen to Chelsa and Matt with their cameras. There were a lot of great places to take pictures, and we had fun during our "photo shoots." We just got back last night, but Chelsa already has some posted. Her work is amazing, and she was so great at posing us and having fun with it.

http://chelsaschaeferphoto.blogspot.com/

We got to see a lot of beautiful places. We spent some time downtown Charleston -- mostly walking around and eating. Sunday we went to a southern plantation. We had planned to watch a reenactment one of the Civil War battles (this one only occurs once a year). We missed it by about an hour but still got to see everyone dressed up from it. My friend, Amy, (also lives at Fort Rucker) and I have decided that we will have to go see a battle sometime while we are here in Alabama. Monday the four of us visited Cypress Gardens which was really peaceful. We got to go on a self-guided tour. Ben steered, Chelsa photographed, Matt helped paddle when he felt like it and took pictures the rest of the time, and I posed as our narrator. That night we spent time around the fondue pot - yum!

On the way back, Matt and I decided to spend a little time in Savannah. We found an awesome local pizza place downtown, and took Chaz for a walk along the water. I'm no photographer, but decided to snap a few of Matt in action:
We got a late start to the actual drive home. This picture explains itself...

It's a long weekend

One of the great things about flight school, and I guess the Army in general, is the abundance of long weekends. Because of Veteran's Day this weekend is a 4-day weekend for most people. For some of us, it's actually a 5+ day weekend.

Most of the time when we have long weekends we have the option of "buying out" of formations on each side of the weekend. It's $5 for both -- the 1100 formation leading into the weekend and then PT coming out of the weekend -- and the money goes to the graduation formal for the outgoing class. As it is I don't have to go to PT on Friday mornings and with the buyout I didn't have to go to my 1100 formation. I also get to miss Wednesday's PT. This means that yesterday after my 1100 formation it was officially the weekend for me; it's a weekend that lasts until next Wednesday at 1100.

Before you start wondering what all your tax dollars are going to I should point out that I have to march in a Peanut Festival parade tomorrow morning for a couple of hours. Yes, I've come to flight school to learn how to fly helicopters only to find myself marching in a peanut parade.

We're leaving shortly after the parade for South Carolina for the weekend....we can't wait to see Ben and Chelsa! It should be a great weekend.


Chaz looks for his ball.....

Too good not to post

Chaz learned a new trick yesterday...he's a clever little sheep dog.

Hurry up and wait

I think it's finally time that I get back to blogging on a regular basis. The past two months have flown by and I have a lot of things I've been wanting to write about.

SERE school was....let's just say it was excellent training...to complete. It's not something I want to do again, but not something I would want to go to war without. I gained an awful lot of respect for John McCain and all past POWs for what they've gone through.

One thing I wrestled with throughout the course was the existence of this blog. I also fought with my Facebook account, and if I had one it would have been a MySpace account as well. There is a lot of information on these websites -- information that I probably wouldn't want to fall into the wrong hands. Not that any of it is all that sensitive in nature, but it's information that other people don't need to know. I finally came to the conclusion that my Facebook account would get deleted and the blog would stay with moderate censorship. What I mean by that is that we're going to try to keep our last name off the site, as well as anything that might identify us from an outside search. Let us know if you see something that might be a little too specific (full names, addresses, social security numbers, bank account numbers...).

On with the good stuff. SERE ended on a Sunday, and I had most of the week to recover. I had a temporary limited duty profile which got me out of PT for that week. All I had to do was go to a 5 minute formation each day. Most of what I did besides that was eat and hang out with Johnni (and Chaz!) -- it was great to be home.

My parents came down that Thursday evening and spent the weekend with us. My dad and I played a good bit of golf to include our first Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course. The four of us went golfing together on that Sunday before my parents took off the next day. I had a couple of days of PT and formation (PT is at 0615 for an hour and formation is at 1100 for about 5 minutes) before starting Dunker training on Wednesday.

Dunker, flight school slang for HOST - Helicopter Overwater Survival Training, was a two day course that taught me how to get out of a helicopter if it goes down in water. It was efficient, to-the-point training that I enjoyed -- it was also my first SCUBA experience. This led into a 4 day weekend. Johnni and I got to spend some great time together that weekend...and if I remember right, there was a lot of football watched and a few walks through the neighborhood. Pretty relaxing.

Coming off the 4-day I had to start my next course which would last 3 weeks. BOLC IIIa is a 3 week introduction to being an aviation officer. The only problem about starting it after the 4 day, which had been predeced by 2 days of dunker, was that I never got the word. Apparently the course started at 0645...but for me it started at 1100 (big thanks to Ryne K. or I probably wouldn't have even gotten there that early). Good stuff...but I was told I didn't miss out on much. Since I had already gone through BOLC III for Medical Service (my branch), about half of the course was old stuff. We did have several tests during the course, including a vehicle ID test. Ever wonder what the difference is between a Russian T-72 tank and a T-80? I haven't either, but now I know.

In between weeks 2 and 3 of BOLC IIIa I took a motorcycle safety course on post. It's a 2.5 day course that's required for any service member to ride a motorcycle (and it's free -- bikes included!). It was a pretty good course, and now I'm qualified to ride my new 1981 Honda CB650 that I bought from Aaron R. as he left flight school. I've been riding that around post for the last few days and it's been good to be back on a motorcycle.

BOLC III finished last Friday, and now I'm on hold for the start of "actual flight school." I've heard anything from 2 to 4 months wait to start, so I'll be on hold for that whole time. Being on hold means it's back to PT and formation every day. Thankfully I'm not paid by the hour! Of course I say that now....

That's the play-by-play of the last two months to catch everyone up. Now for some of the "color" commentary....

-Joe and Leslie are having a baby! We're sooo excited for them and can't wait to have a niece or nephew. They're going to be awesome parents, and "little TR" is going to be a cute one! We're really excited to see them at Christmas/New Years.

-Deb and Craig couldn't live without a Sheltie after Chaz left (he went to Iowa with Johnni while I was in SERE)...so in came Mac. Now Chaz has an uncle. We're excited to see him in a couple months.






-Chaz has become a rascal. He's smart and a great dog, but he can be pretty mischievous at times. He got neutered last week, but is back to his normal self by now.

-Matt got a motorcycle.


-Johnni was thrown head-first into running stubsinhand.com -- and she did great! Things are finally winding down a bit there for the year.

-We found out that the post library rents movies for free...we like movies...and free is good

-We got DishNetwork. I can finally watch Monday Night Football again, and we get to watch John and Kate plus 8 together. It wasn't long before we realized that it is easy to watch too much TV if we aren't careful.

-We made a slight modification to our family room. And if you were wondering, Johnni did make it all the way up...

And, any blog post wouldn't be complete without a good action shot of Chaz.

Labor Day Weekend

Johnni and I got to spend the whole weekend together because my SERE date got switched to next Sunday, the 7th. It was great to spend 4 days straight together (Gotta love the 4-day passes in the Army).

Saturday night we got to hang out with some new friends of ours -- James and Amy -- that we met at church last week. We went bowling at Rucker lanes....good stuff. Sunday we finally got a chance to go to the shooting range together so that Johnni could get more familiar with handguns. We've been wanting to do that for a while now...

To top the weekend off I went back to work today....for 24 minutes. I was then released for the day to finish my in-processing (which I completed a week ago). So far I'm really enjoying "Flight School."

Now we have a short week together before Johnni heads back to Iowa and then this weekend I head off for training. A pic from the range...

New SERE dates....and more of Chaz

It didn't take long for Chaz to be my favorite thing to blog about....he's getting more personality every single day that we have him.

To justify posting more videos of him playing, I thought I'd write that my SERE school start date has changed to 7 September. That means I get a 4 day pass this weekend...which is awesome. Now to the interesting stuff....him playing with his favorite toys: 2 worn out old socks.

Chaz starts to play

He's getting a lot more comfortable around us, which makes him even more fun to have. Here's a video of him playing with my foot.

And when we were finished....

Chaz!

Meet Chaz...He's the Sheltie puppy we drove down to Florida to pick up today. He's about 16 weeks old and was the pick of the litter by someone else -- but he didn't work out for them. As you can probably tell, he's already a fun guy to have around.

Johnni and I spent the morning and first part of the afternoon bringing him back home, and have spent the time since playing with him and trying to start on housebreaking him. For those who haven't housebroken a puppy, it mostly consists of us playing with him until he finds the right spot on the carpet to pee...then we scare him half to death when we tell him "NO!" and pick him up to take him outside...finally we clean up and start the cycle over again. I guess we'll have to take him out more often. These dogs are supposed to be smart, so hopefully he picks it up pretty quickly.

More of the different

My schedule has been the same, with PT in the morning and 1100 accountability formation. The rest of my day, though, has been spent doing in-processing. This included medical paperwork, getting shots, filing for travel reimbursement, etc. It's actually been a pretty busy week!

Johnni and I have been looking around a bit for a puppy...and we're going to see one this weekend! He lives down in Florida right now (gulf coast, not the part that's been hit with 26" of rain in the last day or week?). He's a little older than we were first looking at, but he sounds like he might be a great fit for us.

Finally, it looks like I'll be leaving the digital world for a few weeks on 31 August. I get to attend SERE-C School starting that Sunday, until 21 September. The Army tries to keep most of the information from SERE away from public knowledge so I don't know that much about it, but the basic premise is that it's a school to train me on how to survive if I go down behind enemy lines. I've heard several people say that unless I like eating bugs, I can expect to go at least 5 days without food. Some also say it's the best Army school they've ever been to. I'm definitely looking forward to getting it finished, but it will be a long time without getting to speak to or see Johnni!

Some pictures from the last week:

Matt cutting his annual pineapple for his birthday last week

Walking in from our carport

As you leave the kitchen you enter our living room, dining room, movie room, and everything else room.

No, this is not a gym locker room...it is our bathroom.

Where all of the hard work gets done.

Our bedroom, looking in from the door

The half-locker room attached to our bedroom

And finally, a picture of my beautiful wife cooking us dinner the other night...

Schedule and more down in Alabama

Hey everyone....Mollie gave me the idea to keep a record of what my schedule is like down here in LA (Lower Alabama). I've been meaning to get this posted all week, but we finally got internet yesterday and I'm getting caught up on a few things. I'll go day by day, for effect.

Monday:
Johnni and I woke up at 3:30am to drive the last 3 hours to Fort Rucker. Why did we wake up at 3:30 am? Well, as it would turn out we are still in Central time zone down here. That's great, except that the whole drive we thought we were changing time zones and would be in Eastern by the end of it. Nope, instead we ended up waking up at 3:30 instead of 4:30. Why 4:30 then? Well, because we thought we were 5 hours from Ft. Rucker...but really we were only 3. I blame Jack (the GPS).

We drove around post looking for where I was supposed to report in. I finally signed in around 11 and went to a few different buildings filling out paperwork. We had an appointment at 3pm to get our housing, and we ended up choosing a 3BR over a 4BR. Pics will come once we get things settled...

After choosing a house I was off for the day, so we grabbed our camping chairs and spent the evening in our empty duplex. Here's a pic of our new pet:


This is a picture of a female Banana Spider taken from Dave's (friend) iPhone. The spider is about the size of the palm of my hand. It's the biggest spider I've ever seen, and is still hanging around to keep us company. One of the benefits of living on post is the free pest control....I think it's pretty obvious that this job went to the lowest bidder...

Tuesday:
I had a swim test at 0700. I got to the gym and put on the required flight suit, vest, helmet, and boots and proceeded down to the pool deck. The 8 of us there were then informed that there was too much chlorine in the pool and we couldn't do the test that morning. We all changed out of the gear and I went home until my 1100 formation. The 1100 formation was short (as in, I was dismissed at 1110) which gave me some time to eat lunch before taking the actual swim test at 1300. I passed and was told my "Dunker" school dates would be after JOPD which I can only guess stands for Junior Officer Professional Development that starts on 26 August. After the swim test (1350) I was done for the day. I went back to our place to help Johnni unpack our stuff (which thankfully came the day after we moved in, despite our expectations to get it in 2 weeks).

Wednesday:
I had PT at 0615, but since it was raining we had a "Zonk" which means everyone breaks out of formation and goes home. I got home from my 1100 formation around 1125 and had the rest of the day....

Thursday:
My first actual PT session at 0615. I was smoked, so I went home and showered and slept until my 1100 formation. I then laid in bed/slept from 1130 until around 3 or 4 i think? I had a headache from all this hard work down here I guess...

Friday:
PT at 0615, but it was a game day. I played ultimate frisbee until 0700 when I was released. Final formation of the week at 1100 where we got a safety brief. I actually stayed around to ask how I can get a Ranger School slot, so I was tied down all the way until 1150 yesterday. I spent the afternoon waiting for the Time Warner guy to hook up our cable and getting ready to have a few friends over to grill.

That's my first week down here at flight school. It looks like that will be my schedule until the 26th or so and during all holds while I wait on courses. Some people are bored....I am loving it because I get to spend so much time with Johnni. It sounds like free time will disappear once the flying starts...stay tuned for more updates and pics of Alabama.

Our new blog!

Johnni and I decided to start up a blog....Hopefully we update it/post to it much more often than we do to our website.

Check back for updates!