Trip to WA and a Birthday

 We started out our trip to Washington with a layover in Denver. This is what we were staring at for 5 Hours.

 But we made it on our planned flight, by some miracle. It's a good thing too because if we hadn't I would have had two little girls in tears as the plane pulled away without us. BUT it didn't so we were ready to party! We celebrated Bre's 6th birthday and at her request we had a Tea Party.

 Between my mom, my sister and I we were able to get all the food done. The cake pops, while cute and tasty looking, are really a paint huffers dream. Here's the story and a lesson to anyone wanting to make cake pops.

My sister has a cake pop pan so that made it fairly easy except they kind of looked like balloons. Anyway, so we melted candy melts and started dipping. But the candy melts cooled and hardened quickly, the cake balls were falling off the sticks and sticking in the candy, it was dripping so the candy decorations were falling off...lets just say it was a lot harder then I would have thought. But 49 cake pops later they were done. This would have been fine but we needed something to stick the cake pops in to keep them upright. My sister had (what I am sure was a great idea in her head) an idea to spray paint some foam blocks. I won't get into all the mess ups I made completing that task. I'll leave it with my mom ended up with a green sparkly rock and I had green hands. Like I said, we needed these to keep the cake pops in so we didn't have a lot of time to let the block sit. We put them in the block and them in the frig to keep them from melting. The next morning the taste test reveled that the cake pops were more like "paint" pops. While they were in the frig they soaked up the fumes from the spray painted blocks. The adults graciously let the children have as many as they wanted. We figured the only thing wrong was that they tasted strange and no brain damage would be caused. The research is still out on that. So the moral of the story is, "Don't let Nicole use spray paint when it involves children's birthday parties or food".

 A few of the victims of the "paint" pop experiment. No, they hadn't had any up tot his point.

From left to right: Sophia, Piper, Austin, Breanne, Kaitlyn

 I'm  pretty sure everyone had fun, including the Birthday Girl.

 And I can't miss a photo opportunity when my dad wears a tie. This was his "Tea Party" best.

 He found an accessory at the party.

 Cousins, Aunts and Uncle

From left to right: Chase, Sophia, Benjamin, Heidi, Piper, Marina,

Austin, Breanne, Kaitlyn

My Birthday Girl 6 years ago.

I can't believe how time has gone by. I know everyone says that but I don't think you really listen to the people who tell you that until you experience it for yourself. She's lost 2 teeth, reading short books by herself, helping make meals, growing tall, skinny and beautiful. She only wants to do good and be obedient (even though she forgets sometimes). She has a strong testimony and her faith is so sure. She's a light to our family. I really hope these next 6 years slow down a bit.



Another Place to Call Home

 So that there's the place. I think what grabbed me about this place is all the grass out front. LOVE grass! It's been so long since we've been somewhere so green...and with trees! I love my hot weather but it does tend to kill off anything remotely beautiful. I also really like that we have a large patio (for apartment living, anyways). The dog has a place to go out without me taking her for a walk every time she needs to go and the girls have a place to play. There is one drawback. It's all dirt, as you can see in the picture. We've been getting quite a bit of rain lately (I know, I know, it's probably not that much compared to else where) and it's making things a little muddy. I need ideas on what to do. Keep in mind that this is an apartment, I don't want to put a lot of money into it but I want to get a lot out of it. I can have everything, right? ;) Anyway, comments and suggestions are required for everyone who reads this (I'll know who you are and if you don't. Okay, not really, but please!) The place is small, 2beds 1bath, but other then that it's been quiet and the people have been REALLY welcoming. We had about 20 people helping us move all of our stuff in, that we didn't know, in the pouring down rain. Since then we've been invited to dinners, play dates and been visited by a number of people. Some bearing gifts in the form of food! Moving on to more exciting things then jelly bellies and banana bread...
Cameron FINALLY had his first flight! He flew all over CA hitting San Fran, Santa Barbara and spent the night in Eureka. Today he's flying all the way up to Medford, OR and staying the night in Montery, CA. He called me at 1AM last night and told me all about it. I was so excited for him. He's having so much fun and it's so very apparent that this is what he was meant to do. It would be a crime to keep him out of a plane. His first landing he said that he "slapped it one the runway" but the second one was much better and today it was "text book". He's also very modest, did I mention that? ;) He'll fly again tomorrow and be home by midnight tomorrow night. This is all so exciting It felt like we would never get to this point. Waiting for him to have enough hours, trying to find the right company to apply to, trying to get that company to hire him...phew! After almost 3 years we're here. I think some people felt like it was just talk when we said that one day he'd be an airline pilot (don't worry we did too sometimes) but it's happened. It's funny when you finally get to a major goal in life. All the struggles you face getting there seems like they're set backs but once you're there...you can see the whole picture. That those things weren't set backs you just needed the experience so you were ready. We are soooo ready!

This is the Final Countdown

About 2 weeks to go and then, yup, you guessed it, we're moving! To Fresno, CA. Cameron's training is almost at an end. It's been stressful, that was to be expected, but it's gone really well. He spent 3 LONG weeks in Salt Lake City where all he did was go to ground school and study ALL DAY LONG. He ended the 3 weeks with a test that he passed with a 94%. He got to come home for about a week, and seeing that this was the longest break he was going to have for a while, we decided that we needed to head to Fresno and figure out living arrangements. Cameron flew in on a Tuesday night, we stayed the night in Vegas and flew out to Fresno the next morning. The plane we flew on was actually the plane he will be flying, so that was fun to see exactly what it will be like.
We spent 2 nights there and was able to find a place that we think will work. It's in Clovis which is a neighboring town but still only 15 minutes away from the airport. From what we saw we really like it. We found a great park with a bike trail and a botanical gardens. I'm really excited to be in civilization again. Anything we want to do here is an hour and a half away...in Vegas. Anyway, Cameron headed back out to Fresno for 4 days of training and then on to Long Beach for another week of training in a full motion simulator. Never been in one, but according to Cam their pretty cool. I guess I'll take his word for it. He is suppose to be done on the 15th of March, but after that he has what's called IOE where he actually goes on flights and build 25-40 hours in the aircraft. It should only take a couple flights to build that then he gets to FINALLY be on reserve for who knows how long. Phew! While Cameron is busy studying the girls and I are home packing. It looks like we'll be getting the truck and loading up on the 17th and taking off the next day. It's still undecided whether Cameron is going to be able to make it back to help us move but my wonderful parents have offered to come down. Thank you!
Hopefully, this will be it for awhile. It's definitely not the last move we'll make. As far as we know right now, we don't want to spend the rest of our lives in Fresno, but probably for the next 3-5 years. We'll see. Hardly anything goes as we plan but we've learned pretty well to roll with the punches.

We'll keep ya'll updated but until then, keep your eyes on the sky and maybe you'll see one of these "little guys" and it just may be Cam in the First Officers seat ;)