What have I learned?

My two week vacation is drawing to a close. I will be calling the quarterdeck tomorrow and checking back in, as well as doing a whole bunch of little errands (base stickers, National University advisor ect...). So what has my two weeks taught me? The stomach flu sucks (in me and in my family), it's cold on top of a mountain at 5 am in phoenix, a 1 month English course is hard work, I can not take a vacation from house work, and finally I take too many pictures. Seriously I do I took something like 500 in the course of two days. What do I take pictures of? Everything, ask anyone who was around me in the last two weeks and they are probably sick of seeing the lens of my camera. I am making a dedicated effort to only shoot things that I would like to remember, family mostly but I get side tracked easily. So here is just a small sampling of my many side tracks. Hope you enjoy them.

New Year 2010

Well we kind of broke from our normal little tradition of kissing under the fireworks out by the bay. The water, reflection, boom booms and all that jazz. We traded in for a small get together with our three lovely nieces, brother, and sister in law out in Phoenix. This was actually in the middle of a 4 day trip to visit, amazing what two years will do to your nieces. They are huge now and so independent. They played tirelessly with our kids and even baby sat for us amazing. We met with Mom and Dave in Phoenix a day or so after they left our house, and Chris got us a pass out onto the flight line where he works. Connor went nuts over the jets and Nick just covered his ears saying it was too loud. We rung in the new year with a small glass of champagne, party poppers and noises makers. There were so many pictures that it was hard to choose which ones to put on here, I am sure over the next few days there will be more photos from the trip. Happy New Year. Enjoy!

Mom and Dave came to visit!

It was a total shock, this was the first time that any of our family has come to visit us. In true family tradition we had no idea they were coming until the night before. So the house was a mess there were no groceries and there was a trail of ants from the bathroom to the dog food. What can you do though! Mom and Dave brought the boy's a great wagon that they all had a blast putting together, Nick even got his little tool set out and was whacking away with his hammer to open the box. We went to the Midway and the Zoo while they were here, and the boys had a blast. Nick bummed around with Dave and Connor palled around with Mom having a great time looking at all the sights. We went to the Zoo for one reason for Dave to see the monkeys and I tried to capture Dave's passion in photo. Time flew while they were here and they seemed to leave all too soon but we were able to see them again a few days later at Chris and Brandi's house. A very nice visit, these photo's were Erica's favorite pick as I was having trouble picking. Enjoy!