Twin Kitties

Eric took this picture today of Bingo (left) and Yoda (right). Bingo is the male and Yoda is the female. They get along just fine...most of the time. We got Yoda as a stray when we went to buy our pickup last Aug. She was a scrawny, sickly little thing when we got her but she is a super chunk now. From the top view she looks exactly like she swallowed a root beer barrel. She's an emotional eater or something. You can just tell she's bored because she will make a swipe by the food bowls when's she not actively getting into trouble or annoying us. Bingo, on the other hand, sits and the door screaming to get outside. He loves going outside and just rolling in the dirt. Bingo is definitely more of a lover than a fighter.

Yoda is pretty sassy, though. She will sit in the middle of the room and egg Lily (the dog) on. Lily's a little slow on the uptake so she will bounce around in circles around Yoda barking and growling, but just keeping a safe distance. Yoda will sit there with a real amused/lethal look on her face and when Lily's been dancing around long enough Yoda will reach out quick as a cobra and "THWACK" Lily on the head. You can hear a real hollow thump when she does it. Lily doesn't even know what happened because she just keeps dancing around. Sometimes things get a little violent, but it's the funniest scene ever to see Yoda (and the look on her face is saying "aww, screw it") leaping through the air and latching on to Lily's neck dragging them both to the ground. It's priceless. So much better than TV.

Snow Day!!

Lucky me -- I got a snow day today! It was unexpected actually becuase all the weather was going to the Northern Hills - not Rapid City. I was supposed to get up at 5:15 am to get ready for PT and considered skipping it. Then Eric guilted me into going (which I should be anyway since it's mandatory) so I was all awake and ready to go when I looked out the window in the dark and saw the rain/snow coming down sideways. I decided to take the chance of not going to PT and getting in trouble instead of braving the roads. Because we've learned that looks are deceiving in the Dakotas. If it looks like one thing at our house, then the interstates might be a totally different story. So I went back to bed and then got a call at 0615 that we had a 1000 am start. I was pretty excited for that until we got a call about an hour later saying the base was CLOSED!! So, now I am repeating over and over in my mind "Do NOT waste this day." It seems I always find a way to waste a bonus day off.

We are having a community rummage sale in a few weeks and have been up at my mom and dad's cleaning out old stuff from their crawl space (these pictures just show Day #1 and about half the stuff we have to go through). It's pretty tiring dragging dirty boxes around and fishing through them...but what's more exhausting is taking the trip down memory lane!!! For the first half of the day we only found my brother's old things, which was fun. But then we hit the mother lode with my old stuff and progress halted while I oohed and aahed over all my memories. Eric just stood there rolling his eyes. But it's so hard for me to part with all that stuff. Most of it was from my time in high school and college. Maybe I'm must weird but seeing those things remind of a person I used to be. Not that I don't like me now...but I really loved me then. And that person is gone, hardened by the military life :) (little drama there). But I guess in the end that's what it is -- stuff. The memories surrounding the objects are what's really important. So I decided to take pictures of the things I really want to keep but will end up throwing away. Maybe I'll make a scrapbook. Yeah right. I still need to make a scrapbook from my deployment, trip to Moab w/Keith & Kara, pets, Niece Olivia, Nephew Anthony, our new home, my military stuff..........

Deployment Pictures

For those of you who haven't seen any pictures from my time in Iraq here are a few for your viewing pleasure. I don't want to post too many because I don't want to put anything sensitive out on the web. I'll be making a scrapbook someday and can show you all the details then.This top picture is me standing next to the weapons loaded onto the F-16, which is what my squadron flew. I didn't get a ride while I was over there, but that's ok. I probably would have puked anyway. I was in this squadron for 2 years, so I guess the icing on the cake was to also deploy with them. The pilots' job was to fly around and provide close air support to the Army troops on the ground should they need the AF. They were always taking videos of what they say on the ground and I remember one time after a sortie they came back to the squadron to digitize the tapes (they were 8mm) and they showed me a grainy image of a local Iraqi out in the field squatting to take a poop. Pretty gross and pretty funny. It was some much-needed laughter from that stressful environment.
On the Iraqi election day, 30 Jan, they armed us up so I this is my "hero shot" with my 9mm strapped to my waist. We had only been in country less than a month so I'm still a little dazed and every so slighty terrified.
The rainy season in the deserts of Iraq was the time I was there. We had rains that started at the end of January and didn't dry out until April. It was the most miserable thing ever. This is a picture from the front door of my housing unit. The white things in the top right part of the photo are the bathroom trailers. I had to trek through that every day. Plus, the rest of the base was covered and it was horrible. I never want to see mud again.


This is one of the first alarm reds I endured. An Alarm Red was when something was incoming (mortar, rocket, etc). The very first one I experienced was when I was getting ready for work the first morning I was at base and I heard a tornado siren go off. I froze and whispered to my sleeping roommate (who had been in country for a month or so), "is that an alarm red?" She said "Yeah. But it's a good thing if you can hear the alarm becuase it means you weren't hit." Ooookkkayyy. So that threw me into a tizzy for the next two weeks trying to reconcile that thought in my mind. The scary part is that after a few weeks of Alarm Reds they were common and we didn't get too excited about that. The only one that really freaked me out (to the point of tears and minor hyperventilation) was when I was sitting in my trailer (we shared with one roommate) one night at about 8pm laying on my bed watching "Bridget Jones' Diary 2" whe all of a sudden KABOOM!!!. I jumped off my bed so fast and just hit the floor. Funny, because we never got on the floor for other alarms. It was so close I knew someone had gotten killed. It was about 2 weeks from us going home and I was just sitting on my floor hoping that was the last one of those we had before we left. Amazingly, no one was killed or even hurt. It hit an empty field (which ironically held tents when I first got on base filled with Army personnel. If they were still there someone would have been killed).

Now that I'm writing all this out again it's bringing back some funny stories. Maybe I'll find a few more good ones and post again tomorrow.

Easter Sunday Picture

This is a picture of Eric and I with our neice, Olivia. She is 8 months old today (19th)! She's a real sweetie...and good practice for Eric and I. She was wearing her Easter dress when she came over to my folks' for supper but quickly got out of that and into something a little more comfortable.

Getting setup

Well.....for as much as I wanted to make a blog I have nothing to say. It took me a while to figure out how to post a new entry, but I think I've got it.

I want to post some pictures because those are always so fun to look at on other people's sites (not that I've been to many -- I guess just Kara's, my new blogging role model).

This self-indulgent technology might create a monster out of me. It's like an electronic scrapbook!

I will attempt to post a few pictures from Easter Sunday (yesterday) when we went up to my folks' house. We'll see how it turns out. If it works then I'm hooked!

OK -- It's lightning out pretty bad so I'm shutting down. I couldn't figure the pictures out anyway.

Stay tuned....

First Post!

This is the first blog I have ever done and I have no clue how it's going to turn out. So here goes!