March Update

A slow start

The students are all back in school, but we’re off to a bit of a slow start. The first part of the semester was meant to finish up some of the training that the weather didn’t allow us to do before winter. This included tail wheel training for several students, a few flights at night, and some flying in the airplane with retractable landing gear.

We started flying the tail wheel airplane, a two seat Decathlon, but after a few days of feeling pretty bad by the last flight I put a Carbon Monoxide detector in the plane. Turns out it was bringing quite a bit of Carbon Monoxide into the cabin. Usually this would be caused by a problem in the heating system, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. The mechanics are trying to make sure the engine compartment and cabin are properly sealed off, hopefully it will be ready to go on Monday

The weather is still a bit of a factor so we haven’t been able to get too many night flights done. Cold night temperatures and cloudy/rainy/foggy weather don’t make for great flying conditions for a small airplane. We have had a few nights with scattered high clouds so we take advantage of those.

Moody bought a used C-182 RG for retractable landing gear training, but it needed a new engine installed before we started training students in it (they got a good price for it since the engine had so many hours on it). That work should be done soon and hopefully by the end of next week we’ll be flying it.

In the mean time we’re working with the student’s on their commercial pilot ground school. There’s a lot of information to be learned for their check ride later this semester. They are also involved in the maintenance projects in the hangar, I’ve been turning a wrench a bit too!

My first loop!

Last week Moody hosted a two day flying safety seminar. One of the speakers was Clarke McNease from APS Emergency Maneuver Training in Phoenix. He taught for about 4 hours on “upset recovery”, which is essentially how to control the airplane in unusual situations. I was able to do 2 flights with him to put some of his techniques into practice. We would turn the airplane upside down and descending toward the ground and I would roll it upright and climb back away from the ground (we were really high up and never got anywhere near the ground). We also did some aerobatics to learn what the airplane can do and be more confident in it. It was a lot of fun and a great learning opportunity! Moody is considering bringing some of the training into the curriculum and if they do I’m hoping I can be part of that and spend more time with Clarke to be able to teach the material myself.

March 11th - Celebrating 8

"Where there is love there is a light that cannot be described,
a circle that cannot be broken,
a joy that cannot be surpassed.
For where there is love
there is God"

Wow! Thank you Lord for the eight years of my life spent with this amazing man. It is hard to believe the journey we have been on in those eight short years!

Jas and I were trying to remember where we spent our eight anniversaries....

1. A weekend at my aunts' beautiful cabin in Christopher Creek. We even were surprised with snow.

2. We were somewhere in Baker City, OR in the first stage of training, but we can't quite remember what we did for our special day!

3. Mirielle came a month before our our 3rd anniversary. We splurged and went to Houstons in Scottsdale, (my mouth is watering just thinking about it) and left Mirielle with Grandma and Grandpa. I remember that I couldn't find any clothes that fit to wear out for a special night.

4. We had arrived in the Philippines the month before. I think that we went out to the one special restaurant in town?? Not really quite sure.

5. I had been as sick as a dog and in the beginning of my pregnancy with Kellan. Our friends brought over Chow King (fairly mediocre Filipino Chinese food) since I was actually having a day that I could get out of bed. We realized during the middle of dinner that it was our anniversary.

6. We spent our special 6th anniversary with our friends the Barkmans on a 6+ hour van ride to our flight base on the northern island for a field safety seminar. We did have the special treat of stopping at McDonalds for lunch (and yes, it was a special treat to be able to go to McDonalds).

7. We have absolutely no recollection of what we did last year for our anniversary. Everything from last spring is a bluuurrrrrrr.

8. This year we probably wont forget because we had an unresolved discussion from the night before...... Need I say more??

As you can tell, we're really big on romance. HaHa!! I'm thinking that we need to start saving up our pennies for our 10th anniversary. I think that doing something special would be well deserved!

Poor Baby

Poor Kellan has had a rough winter. It seems like every time I turn around the kid is sick. He came down with the stomach flu 5 times in just over 6 weeks and seems like his is always battling a cold. A few weeks ago, I noticed a red spot on his stomach in the morning. By the afternoon, his knees were all swollen and hot. And by the next morning, he looked like this. He was covered head to toe with hives for almost a week. Made me want to cry just looking at him!

Way Behind!

Well, I certainly am behind on my blogging. December up until now has been a blur. You can catch up on our Christmas on my blog. I thought I would do a bit of a photo update for what has been going on for the last few months.

Christmas fun




















We were in Salt Lake to bring in the New Year with Jason's family. It was fun to all be together again. The kids got to go sledding with the boys while the girls went shopping. Aren't those mountains amazing?
















We headed out of Salt Lake the week after New Years and were hoping to make it through our old stomping grounds of Baker City, but between our car needing some work and the amount of snow heading through the Northwest, we decided to head straight home.

We were home just over a week before we all headed out on a trip to Portland. Jason attended a large missions conference in the area as a NTMA rep. We tried to include a little bit of family fun and headed out a day early to take the kids to the zoo. It happened to be cold enough that day that it was snowing right about the time we got around to the elephant exhibit. Go figure! The good news was that we had the zoo almost to ourselves. We had a great time seeing friends while we were there too.



















The end of January brought an INSANE amount of snow. The schools closed down for a whole week for the first time in 20 years, there was a state of emergency declared for eastern Washington, and I was stuck in the house and didn't drive for over a week. AGH! Cabin fever!!
The city was so unprepared for the amounts of snow that it took 4 days of heavy snow before the city got around to plowing our street. Jason had to take my car to work because he couldn't get out of our neighborhood without all wheel drive. The snow in our street was up to my knees. What an initiation to winter!



























We had an awesome sledding hill out of snow in our front yard.















The good news about all of the snow was that Jason celebrated his 34th birthday on the slopes in lieu of a present.




















We had 2 weeks to recuperate before Grandma Arizona came for Mirielle's birthday. We now have a big 5 year old in our house!