Halloween 2011 — Minimalist Style

01. November 2011 · 1 comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

First of all, let’s show a recovering Dave this evening, happy after a Panera sandwich and chocolate brownie.  My poor guy had to go 36 hours without food.  While that stinks for most people, those who know Dave well can imagine how it must have been for him.  He’s recovering normally (i.e. very sore for the first 48 hours) and we’re looking forward to him coming home tomorrow afternoon.  He reports that he’s been walking around and not feeling the pain he’d had in his legs for the past 2 years!

Because his procedure was moved to Halloween day, the family’s Halloween plans had changed considerably.  We didn’t carve our pumpkin, I didn’t wear any more of my costume this year than the hat at a spouses’ club luncheon 2 weeks ago, and I sadly had to unplug the ghost light timer from our front porch since no one would be home to give out candy.

The picture is supposed to be of the tiered sandwich platter, but you can see me in the background in my purple witch’s hat looking witchy.

After Dave went to the recovery room and we could visit briefly with him, the boys and I enjoyed a short trick or treat trip at Hurlburt Field’s base housing area, thanks to an invitation from Dave’s squadron’s 1st Sergeant.  Katrina had invited a couple of families of deployed over to her place so we could experience a safe, traditional trick-or-treat experience.  Even though it was a short trip, and by the time we started many houses had run out of candy, the boys had a very nice time and ran into a number of their friends — who didn’t live in base housing either.

Enjoy some pictures from Halloween night:

On Sunday Jacob went to a Halloween-themed birthday party.  Jacob has a rubber rat in his hand, who he’s named Scabbers.  He’s with his classmate William, dressed as Link from The Legend of Zelda.  His Mom did a great job with the tunic, hat and shield!
Timmy and one of his classmates he ran into while trick or treating.
The base fire station was out visiting the kids and handing out candy.  The kids love Sparky so much — although the CE Squadron Commander told me that suit is VERY hot and Sparky had to take a lot of breaks in air conditioning 🙂

The kids enjoyed seeing the elaborate decorations.  This house turned their entire — and I mean ENTIRE — front yard into a haunted cemetery!  The boys loved checking it out.

Veteran’s Day Deals for 2011

31. October 2011 · Comments Off on Veteran’s Day Deals for 2011 · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

My military spouse blogger friend at Wife of a Sailor has published a thorough list of military promotions for Veteran’s Day.  This list had circulated among currently-serving servicemembers’ e-mail accounts this past week.

Check out the list here!

You’ll see that many businesses actually offer their promotions year round (such as Anheuser-Busch theme parks, Lowe’s, and Home Depot) and the National Park Service’s Veteran’s Day weekend promotion is for everyone.

Happy Birthday Dear Husband!

09. August 2011 · Comments Off on Happy Birthday Dear Husband! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Who knows what that is on his cake??? Hint: it’s supposed to look like that…

Flashback From 2010: Funny Fireworks!

03. July 2011 · Comments Off on Flashback From 2010: Funny Fireworks! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

This was from a year ago today, but it’s worth reviving for this year, since I laugh so much from the stupid names of some of these products!

This week I’m volunteering at a fireworks stand. For those saying “Wow! How?”, let me explain a little.

The state of Nebraska allows 10 days per year for free-for-all fireworks sales/use. There are some exceptions: none of this is legal in the Omaha city limits, and Lincoln only allows sales for 2 days. So starting on June 25th, you hear the explosions as everyone’s having a good time with their loot. In our neighborhood, it’s only really loud till about 10pm…except for July 4th, I know last summer we were launching till midnight, at least!

From 2009 07 04 July4thBlockParty

In Bellevue, and perhaps in other cities (but I don’t know for sure), local non-profits can pay the licensing fees and sell the fireworks as a fundraiser. I got an e-mail from the Bellevue Soccer Club looking for volunteers to help man their club’s fundraiser fireworks stand up the road from us. My first thought? DISCOUNTS! Even though I was TDY at the beginning of the week, and we’re leaving on vacation at the end of the week, I still thought it’d be a fun thing to do, so I volunteered to do 2 four-hour shifts.

I did my first four-hour shift yesterday and it was fun. Not super crowded, but not bad either. A steady stream of customers.

Anyway, the point of this blog post is to share some of the hilarious names for these fireworks.  These are all multi-shot small mortar shells.  You light it one time and it launches 25 or so shots in succession.

Some are benign. There’s no doubt what this is, right?

From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages

Some are sillier. And we start to lose any sense of what’s in the packaging.

From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages

Some are adrenaline-packed! Forget about a description of what this is.

From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages

And this one made no sense to me whatsoever. Are these even fireworks???

From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages

And here are some others…enjoy!

From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages
From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages
From 2010 07 10 Fireworks Packages

Happy Belated Father’s Day!

20. June 2011 · Comments Off on Happy Belated Father’s Day! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , ,

Happy Belated Father’s Day to any of my Dad readers!  We were happy to get to spend time with Dave’s Dad early in the day at Dave’s family reunion in Pennsylvania, then we drove down to my parents’ house in West Virginia in time for dinner with my Dad.

Earlier in the week GeekMom solicited the writers for some posts for Father’s Day. I was encouraged to write one about Dave’s model railroading and the project he’d been doing with Jacob.  It was shown over at GeekMom on Father’s Day!

With Dave’s recent N-Scale Magazine article (on the shelves right now!) and this week’s talk at the N-Scale Convention in Hershey, PA, it was appropriate to show off a little about him!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #42

27. May 2011 · 2 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

This week’s Friday Fill-In!  Enjoy!  And Happy Memorial Day!  Take a moment and think about what a great country we live in and how many have given their lives for the rights Americans have.

1. Do you think civilians, in general, understand the meaning of Memorial Day?

Most civilians do their best to take time to remember our nation’s servicemembers.  Something my husband and I have noticed, though, is that most Americans don’t understand the histories of Memorial Day and Veterans Day. 

Memorial Day goes all the way back to the mid-1860s, when two American Army general officers declared a “Decoration Day” for May 30th of every year, a date to decorate the fallen Civil War soldiers’ graves.  A date chosen because it wasn’t already commemorating a Civil War battle.  Memorial Day is exactly that…a day to honor the memories of those who’d served before us.

On the other hand, Veterans Day (Psst!  No apostrophe!) was first proclaimed as “Armistice Day” by Woodrow Wilson in November 1919 to commemorate the signing of the Armistice ending World War I.  In the 1950s the name of the holiday was changed to Veterans Day and was redesignated to honor all servicemembers, dead and alive.

2. What are your plans for the Memorial Day Weekend?

We’re having a few friends over for a barbecue.

We were hoping to have a new Intex pool set up by this weekend, but after some dialogue with our landlord, we decided that it was too much trouble and too risky a liability for a rental house.  But that’s for another blog post.  For now, feel free to browse this ad if you’d like to buy our never-assembled above-ground pool kit.

3. What skill/talent do you wish you had? submitted by The 3 Turners

I wish I could play piano.  I can play violin, but that’s it.  Treble clef, that’s it.  My oldest son’s piano recital is tomorrow night and we couldn’t be more proud of him!  I’m insanely jealous at the skill he has to play both treble and bass clefs together.  Have his right hand playing one thing, his left hand playing something else…maybe one day I’ll actually take lessons…

4. Which came first: the chicken or the egg? submitted by I Married Into The Army

Who the heck knows?

From a Book of Genesis perspective, the answer would be “chicken”.

Similarly, from an evolutionary perspective, you could consider two species breeding and coming up with a new breed — the chicken — born from the resultant egg…in that case, the egg would be first.

5. What is the best thing about your post (base)? The worst? submitted by Randomly, Robyn

The best thing about Hurlburt Field, Florida, is the warrior ethos here that is unlike anything Dave and I had ever experienced on an Air Force base. It reminds us of the two Army bases we were assigned to years ago: Fort Polk, Louisiana and Yongsan Army Garrison, Seoul, Korea (Check out the cool weather feed on the Yongsan homepage, brought to you by the 17th Operational Weather Squadron).

The worst thing?  The commute between our house and said base.  We have ONE east-west highway that connects our town with the base…and if there’s an accident on that road, you can forget about getting to the base anytime soon….

Mother’s Day 2011…Or "What Your Kids Really Think About You"

09. May 2011 · Comments Off on Mother’s Day 2011…Or "What Your Kids Really Think About You" · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Hopefully the Moms reading this had a nice Mother’s Day.  I enjoyed a nice day with my boys.  I’ve cracked the code for happy kids: a trip to the beach!  They were happy, I was happy watching (and catching a few waves with a Boogie Board!), all was well with the world.

The boys each brought home really cute Mother’s Day gifts from school on Friday.  I’m such a sucker for handprint art from my kids!

Timmy asked me to turn his Mother’s Day card to me into a Handprint Identification Panel for his room. So that only he could enter/exit, and not his brother. Okay, why not?  What else was I going to do with a Mother’s Day gift from my son?

That’s my handprint on the right, so I could access Timmy’s room to empty his trashcans and take care of his laundry.  Otherwise he would have been on his own for those chores 🙂

Each boy also brought home these question and answer sheets. They filled in the blanks answering questions about Mom.

I won’t show the whole thing — since it has things like my age and my favorite colors. You guys don’t need to know all that.  But here’s a sliver of each boys’ assignment, which is a glimpse into what they think about me.

An excerpt from Jacob’s assignment.  The first question and answer absolutely melted my heart.  The second one…well…I guess it’s a sign that perhaps I need to get off the grid a little more often.

From Timmy’s assignment.  If you can’t quite decipher it, it reads “She likes to clean and shop.”  I guess I’m glad Timmy thinks I like to clean.  Not sure I want him thinking I don’t like cleaning…even though I don’t care for cleaning that much.  A necessary evil.

The other questions and answers were all very nice.  Jacob’s answer certainly has me assessing the laptop fused to my lap, and whether it’s time to back off a little.  I think so.

So if you see less of me online, this is probably why…

Mother’s Day…Geek Style!

07. May 2011 · Comments Off on Mother’s Day…Geek Style! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!  Yes a little early, but I have a fun-filled weekend planned so I don’t know when I’ll write again.

Dave did really well this Mother’s Day!

Okay, so he booked his annual trip to visit his model railroading/railfanning friends in Maryland and Pennsylvania for this weekend.  And that’s where he is as I type this.  But that was seriously unintentional — the group he hangs out with belongs to the Conrail Historical Society, and they planned this annual BBQ/membership meeting for the 1st full weekend of May.  That’s usually when it is.  But this year, since Mother’s Day is on the 2nd Sunday of May…and the 1st Sunday of May was not the first “full” weekend of May…well…my head hurts just thinking about it.

As we usually do as a military family, when real life gets in the way of a particular holiday, we just choose to celebrate on a different day, so we went out to a nice family dinner last weekend.

But a package arrived yesterday from Thinkgeek.com.  I didn’t expect anything other than the dinner out…I ask for the same thing every year: a nice day with the family.

Is it what I think it is???

At first I thought, “no”, since the package was heavier than what I thought it was.  After all, I hadn’t indicated to Dave that I wanted ANYTHING from ThinkGeek.  But he somehow knew.

I didn’t know he even realized that there’s a GeekMom.com t-shirt!  I’d planned to just get myself one eventually.  But he knew, and he got me one!  Perfect gift, perfect size!

What was the heavier-than-a-tshirt item in the box?  It was this:

Does Dave know me or does Dave know me???  I’m so excited to get this book, Cooking for Geeks by Jeff Potter.  This book was featured on GeekMom last December (complete with a giveaway for a free copy) and I’d been interested in getting it for several months.

And before anyone asked, YES, I have the Alton Brown books!

Happy Pi Day!*

15. March 2011 · Comments Off on Happy Pi Day!* · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

*I meant to post this earlier in the day, but some online training took up my evening, so I realize it’s no longer Pi Day on the east coast now…sorry!

Happy Pi Day everyone!

Dave let me take this great pic of him over the weekend, sporting his favorite t-shirt!

A closeup shows the digits.

Dave asked for the shirt after seeing an episode of the CBS drama Numb3rs.

He received it for Father’s Day in 2006 while he was working on his PhD, and he wore it at least weekly.

Note the close up detail.  Pardon my poor focus, it was hard to zoom in on the detail without the camera flash:

After we moved to Offutt AFB in Nebraska in 2008, the shirt was worn much less: Dave had to go back to wearing his uniforms daily.  He still breaks out the shirt occasionally, and he’ll definitely wear it after work on Pi Day!

Want your own Pi Shirt?  Order one from ThinkGeek.com!

Sin in a Tin. Or: OH MY!

16. February 2011 · Comments Off on Sin in a Tin. Or: OH MY! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

Hopefully everyone had an enjoyable Valentine’s Day?

I did — Dave sent me on a scavenger hunt around the house finding one clue after another. The clues were tied into some pretty cryptic things about our marriage, such as “When we were stationed in Louisiana we learned to put this on all our food” and there was the next clue taped to the bottom of my can of Tony Chachere’s seasoning!

Ultimately it led me to my old college backpack with a pair of pretty sapphire earrings inside.

I was NOT so creative with Dave this year. I did take a suggestion from a fellow-chocoholic friend, Lisa C., and found something called Guthrie’s “Sin in a Tin” at our local Publix grocery store. I was drawn to it because it’s locally made, and we’re all about the local fare!

The cool 19th Century-styled tin is recyclable!

It’s marketed as a “chocolate pate”, but you could imagine it as a giant chocolate truffle! It’s sold frozen, but if you bring it to room temperature, you could spread it.

Spread it on what? I don’t know — on what do you spread chocolate? A cracker? A chocolate cookie?

Oh wait, read the directions for suggestions!

It’s made right here in Pensacola!

We simply sliced it and made it dessert for Dave, Timmy and me for two days. Yum!

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