My name is Patricia, but in the blogging world I became known as "Major Mom" thanks to a friend in the Air Force Reserves. As soon as he had said it, the David Bowie song "Space Oddity" went through my mind.
I am a mother and wife first - an Air Force wife, that is. My husband proudly serves in the Air Force as a weather officer.
I also continue to serve my country as a Major in the Air Force Reserves.
It's a wonderful double-life I lead.
It was a very difficult decision for me -- I had our second son in early 2005 just before the 10-year-point in my career. It was already tough having to turn my oldest son over to a child care center every duty day -- 50 hours per week. So in spring 2005 I took advantage of a Reserves job opening for which I was qualified in Norfolk, Virginia -- my hometown!
It's truly wonderful getting to see my sons grow up, and be able to help out at their school, on their sports teams (I've coached soccer before) and as a Cub Scout den leader. I'm not sure I'd have had time for that if I had remained on active duty.
We currently live in Navarre, Florida, while my wonderful husband is assigned to Hurlburt Field, Florida.
We've also lived in the following locations since we graduated from Penn State University in 1995:
Fort Polk, Louisiana, 1995-1998
Yongsan Army Installation, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 1998-2000
Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, 2000-2002
Patrick AFB, Florida, 2002-2005
Raleigh, North Carolina (Dave was assigned to North Carolina State University), 2005-2008
Offutt AFB, Nebraska, 2008-2010
Hurlburt Field, Florida, 2010-present
I started this blog in December 2007, thanks to suggestions from friends. We're in our third home since I started the blog.
I used to send out captioned photo albums -- from AOL Pictures to Shutterfly albums to Picasaweb albums. Instead of flooding everyone with photos, now I can use this blog to send out the highlights.
I'll talk about anything on here -- usually I'm talking about the kids, but I'll also delve into the local scene wherever we're living, and you'll also see some great posts about the two military moves (PCS: Permanent Changes of Station) we've had. Sometimes I talk about utter nonsense, such as finding a product called "Piggies in Pancakes" in a grocery store in South Carolina.
In my spare time I write for the parenting blog GeekMom.com, I serve on the board of the Hurlburt Spouses' Club, and I'm a Cub Scout den leader. I also enjoy running and playing the violin.
This beautiful new facility opened in Spring 2012. It’s not completely full, there’s plenty of room to populate with more exhibits.
I’ve been remiss. 2 1/2 weeks since my last post. Things have been getting progressively busier in the Vollmer house as our boys have started their baseball practice with their new baseball program: Academy Little League.
The boys were out of school on Valentine’s Day, so we took the day and cashed in on part of the Christmas gift from my dear sister’s family: tickets to the History Colorado Center in downtown Denver. As I’ve written for the GeekMom blog, I love state history museums, and I’ve dragged our sons to the history museum for every state we’ve lived in since they were born.
Our winners! We’re so proud of our boys this year. Not only did they do most of the work (really!), their cars performed very well, earning first place trophies for each of their age groups.
Last month the boys participated in their Cub Scout pack’s Pinewood Derby. I thought I had written about our sons’ Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies before, but I guess I hadn’t. This is Jacob’s 5th year competing, and Timmy’s 3rd. And our third Cub Scout pack experience with it.
Because this is a much smaller pack than we had in Florida, the entire event was completed in less than two hours. It was nice to see the boys pay attention to the entire event…unlike in Florida where the event was around 4 hours long.
I’m going to discuss the cars our sons chose to make, and then discuss the event itself. I guess I’ll be spilling some trade secrets and monetary investments we made in the boys’ cars, but I don’t think what we did was too unreasonable.
We’ve had our SodaStream just under a year and we like it a lot. We’ve had to replace the CO2 cartridge three times in that year, meaning we’ve made nearly 200 liters of soda with us. We’ve tried the SodaStream-brand syrups, we’ve made our own syrups, and we’ve tried the Mio-type concentrated flavor syrups. The latter option has been the most convenient for us, and that’s what we tend to do most often.
With that background, I had applied in January through the House Party social service to try out some Soda Stream flavors and talk it up through social media.
The SodaStream pack arrived in mid-January. You can see what I had received in the photo above. The sampler box of syrups, two 1L bottles, a recipe that mixes flavors, and several coupons to give to friends. I was surprised to see that most of the flavors in the pack weren’t necessarily new. In fact, we had tried the Country Time and Kool-Aid flavors in the past. Read on for my impressions of the Chatterbox.
Making the right school decision in Colorado Springs can make you lose your mind.
Earlier in January, Timmy came home from school and asked if he could apply to the “School in the Woods.”
I hadn’t really heard of “School in the Woods” (I saw a girl at the boys’ school wearing a “School in the Woods” hoodie every day and that’s it), so I had to interrogate Timmy a little more about what it was.
“It’s a school for 4th graders and you spend all your time outside studying nature.”
The snow, the views, and the lack of crowds makes Ski Cooper (not Copper) a local favorite!
Our family took two day trips over two consecutive weekends to Ski Cooper, a small resort just north of Leadville, Colorado. The lift tickets are very inexpensive, there were never lift lines, and we took advantage of the boys getting to take two full days of lessons through the resort’s “Panda Patrol” program.
I have to make clear here — such as what I put in the title — that we did not go to Copper Mountain, which is often what Google hands back to you when you Google anything like “skiing cooper” or something like that. Copper is a much bigger, more vacation-resort-type of ski area, but is only about 20 miles north of Cooper. That’s not where we went.
Sports Authority Field is open daily (on non-game days) for tours.
After our surprisingly-short trip to the Denver Downtown Aquarium, we ended up with a free afternoon. My friend Paige suggested we call over to Sports Authority Field at Mile High and grab reservations for the stadium tour. Luckily we got the last spots for the tour! After a nice lunch nearby, we got to the stadium with enough time to view the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame before our 1pm tour.
The Denver Broncos is an immensely popular NFL team, having a long presence in the area, so getting tickets to Broncos home games is very difficult. In fact, Broncos home games have been sold out since their 1970 season! There’s a good chance this is the only way we’ll get to see the stadium. I doubt we’ll make it to a game.
I’d never been to an aquarium with REAL LIVE MERMAIDS before; those little girls were mesmerized!
During the kids’ winter break we took a day trip up to Denver for a little sightseeing. First, we stopped at the Downtown Aquarium.
I will say up front that if you find it a little strange that there’s an aquarium over 1000 miles from the nearest major body of water, you aren’t alone. My friend and I were certainly curious about what kind of aquatic life we might find.
My husband and I made a radical change to our diets this new year. We are attempting a Gluten-Free lifestyle. We aren’t allergic to gluten, but we are trying to see if some lingering ailments subside: joint discomfort, congestion, and (for Dave) IT band problems. I’ve not had arthritis in my hands or knees for the past week (a problem I’ve had in cold climates for many years) so I think we might be on to something.
The images you see in this post are snapshots from around my family room and kitchen on Tuesday, January 7, 2014. Those piles have since moved around and spread out some. Today my sons went back to school after 19 days off for the holiday break. That is by far the longest grade school break … Read more
As of December 24th, Dave and I have been in Colorado for six months! The time has seemed to fly by so far, mainly because we’ve been busy: Dave with his physics classes at USAFA, and me with juggling contractors for the basement finish job. As you’ve been reading, we’re really getting out there and getting to know Colorado and we look forward to many more outings.
