Presenting, Dave’s first-ever BACON EXPLOSION! It was very good, but this log serves 24 people.
Dave’s squadron in Florida has an annual tradition: BACONFEST! One day, everyone shares their favorite bacon recipes.
In 2011 Dave made bacon cream cheese roll ups, and I can’t remember what he did in 2012, if he did anything at all.
While it was tempting to make another beer-bacon cheesecake, this year Dave proclaimed, “I’M MAKING A BACON EXPLOSION!”.
Day 4: Raton, NM to Colorado Springs, CO
Hi honey, we’re home!
This is a short drive day. We timed things so that we could easily arrive during the work day so we could visit the realty office and pick up our keys.
Very little to talk about for this short 2 1/2 hour drive. The trip up I-25 northward from Raton is pretty tricky. With the trailer, it was a lot of effort for the truck to wind its way through the mountain passes.
We picked up our keys from the realtor and then had a nice outdoor lunch in downtown Colorado Springs. We ate at a place called La Creperie, which had outdoor seating and welcomed pets. Howie sat at our feet and people-watched. He dog-watched too, since there were so many dogs.
Our view for most of Day 3’s drive.
Day 3: Oklahoma City, OK (1200′ elevation) to Raton, NM (6680′ elevation)
This was not quite as long a drive as the previous day, but it was the least interesting day of driving. It was westward across western Oklahoma on I-40, then we turned northwestward in Amarillo taking U.S. highways (instead of interstates) towards Raton.
Before we hit the road, though, we took a few minutes to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial, which is a park at the site of the former Alfred Murrah Federal Building. The memorial is very beautiful and very well done. We visited at about 8am on a Sunday, so it was nearly empty. It’s sunk into the basement of the former federal building, and evidence of the bombed building can still be seen. More »
Day 2: Opelousas, LA to Oklahoma City, OK
This was the longest driving day, about 8-and-some-change hours worth of driving, along with 2 more hours worth of numerous stops and traffic/construction issues in Dallas.
Dave slept 9 hours Friday night. He asked that nothing wake him up — neither alarm clock nor my noise — so I let him sleep.
…and sleep….
Day 1 = Navarre, FL to Opelousas, LA
Being that this is our 3rd move since I started this blog 5 1/2 years ago, I will attempt to write a diary of sorts of our 4 day not-quite-although-it-feels-like-it cross-country drive between the Florida Panhandle and Colorado Springs.
Day 1 for us was supposed to be a “short” drive. In a good-old-fashioned military change of command, the outgoing commander says a farewell/thank you speech, ceremoniously gives up his guidon to the new commander, and then beats feet out of the area.
Dave had been saying for the past several weeks, “You’ll have to pry the guidon out of my cold, dead hands!”. He was joking…but you wouldn’t know if from this picture, would you? Photo: Michael Bruenning.
For those who might not have realized, my husband’s new Air Force job will be as a faculty member in the Physics Department at the Air Force Academy.
On our house hunting trip to Colorado, it took us about 48 hours to choose our house and enter a contract. That was our goal. The rest of our time in the area was spent fulfilling assorted appointments, and we had a couple hours here and there to kill between appointments. In addition, both Dave and I had meetings on the Air Force Academy campus. Dave met with his new department, and I met with someone about trying to get a Reserve job.
The weather was beautiful, so we took some time to see the Visitors Center and hike the trail to the chapel and see the cadet area.
The kids were 4 months and 2 years old the last time they had to do this. In 2005 Jacob’s favorite house was the one with the toys in the living room for him to play with. We didn’t choose this pictured house, it was way overpriced.
Since I started my blog in late 2007, the house-hunting experience for our family had been pretty basic: Dave would fly out to the next destination and choose a rental home for the family. I’d stay with the kids.
For Dave, it was a whirlwind trip, but he could complete everything in as little as 48 hours…not just securing a new house, but also getting the boys registered for school.
This next assignment to Colorado Springs would be for a longer tour than the past two, so we elected to buy a house this time.
It was a tough decision, but we decided to bring the whole family on this particular househunting trip. We found a gap in the boys’ baseball schedule in early May that would allow us to take a long weekend and fly the family to Colorado; we would all shop for the next house together.
We were in contact with a realtor that a local friend here recommended, and she worked with us for several weeks in advance to hone our preferences and she has a list of ten houses waiting for us to view by the first weekend of May.
One of the houses went into contract right away so that left 9 houses to view. It was a very long day, and my head was swimming by the end. Ironically, we chose the one house that didn’t have an already-finished basement. The lower price made it appealing and we could apply some of the cost savings to finishing it ourselves to our liking.
The kids were great sports about it. They were exhausted by the end (the high elevation not helping things) but had many inputs.
It was a delicate balance of size, price, layout, schools and distance to our work locations. We chose a lovely house in the northeast part of Colorado Springs, centrally located. The boys can walk to their elementary schools, but will be bused or driven to middle and high school. But even the middle and high schools are closer than the kids are from their current schools.
We can’t wait to make our new house a “home” in the coming weeks.
Happy Birthday Howie!
I’m over a month late, but better late than never!
Happy 13th birthday to our dear Howie. He’s still going strong, ironically, his latest medical ailment was an infected hot spot on his tail, of all things (that’s for another post).
I was in the middle of Operation EAT WHAT WE HAVE, so I made a butter cake from scratch and used homemade frosting and some of the tubed blue icing to write the words. I didn’t have much blue icing left. Feel free to compare my cake with Harry Potter’s:
My cake…
…versus Hagrid’s cake for Harry!
It’s tradition.
Whenever I fly to Nebraska for my Air Force Reserve duties**, I tend to rotate among the three airlines that fly between my local airports here and Omaha: Delta, American and United.
**Once we get to Colorado, flying to my Air Force duties will no longer be my only option. I’m very excited about this.
On my last trip to Nebraska in late April, I flew American Airlines and had a three-hour layover in Dallas-Fort Worth. As it turned out, my connecting gate was across the hall from the airport’s USO.
Typically, my layovers are VERY tight…less than an hour. Also, in an airport as big as DFW, to be so close to the USO was pure luck.
For those unfamiliar, USO lounges are set up in many airports mainly for the servicemembers on official travel. However, family members and retirees are free to use the facilities. In Dallas, the USO lounge would put many airlines’ VIP lounges to shame! A computer lab, kids’ play area, snack bar (you’re allowed up to three snacks/beverages free of charge), and a HUGE theater area with comfy seating.
I had been to this particular USO before, but since my last visit (2009, I believe), it had nearly doubled in size.
This time around, I met a family who was awaiting their connecting flight after having flown 10 hours from Germany. The kids were so tired, they were just plain silly! I also met several uniformed soldiers coming home from Afghanistan for their two-week R&R trip. I also met a very young female Air Force officer assigned to Holloman AFB, NM, I asked how she liked it and I’d never seen someone so happy to be in New Mexico. Good for her 🙂
There’s a luggage area that’s conveniently covered with carpeting. Why? So you can attach your velcro patches to the walls. I had no unit patches (my uniform doesn’t use velcro patches), but I had my name tape on my backpack…which is what I left behind.
The cubbies on the left easily accommodated the carry on bags we all had.
I know it was silly, but I did start a garden here this spring. In part because we did a Cub Scout den project that involved planting seedlings. I ended up with several leftovers and I just stuck them in my garden plot.
Enjoy some pictures of the modest little harvest I might have had if it weren’t for all the bugs and birds that helped themselves first.
I planted the garden in late March. By May it was looking fantastic! Too bad the birds thought so too.
I let the birdseed grow some:
Sunflowers!
Crookneck squash. Timmy was very interested in how squash grew…too bad he doesn’t like squash.
I have quite a few tomatoes, and I’m sad about having to walk away from them all in a couple weeks.
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