Monterey Getaway

Two weekends ago, we decided we needed out of the AV for a day or two -- if just to escape from life.

We left on Thursday evening and drove up to Monterey where we stayed until Sunday afternoon. We didn't really do much while we were there other than hang out with Michelle and Sam, and work around the property a little.

On Saturday afternoon / evening we took a fun little trip down to go Tidepooling at Point Lobos State Reserve just south of Monterey. We wandered around the tidepools:



Saw some interesting critters:




And then went out to China Cove to watch the sunset:



Not a bad way to spend a Saturday.

We only wish we could get up there more often..

Edward's Air Show

In Mid-October, Chad was invited as a 'special guest', due to his 'civic leader' status, to the General's Tent at the Edward's AFB Air Show.

We got there fairly early in the morning, had special parking with no line, were driven right down the Flight Line to our VIP tent and then were treated with free snacks / drinks / lunch throughout the day.

We explored all the planes on display, including the SR-71, F-22 & F-35 (the latter two are the planes I help build at Lockheed) along with the 747 that carries the space shuttles (we actually got to climb up and around in that one -- it's HUGE!!).

SR-71:


F-22:


F-35:


Shuttle Carrier:



We made it back to our seats just in time for the aerial demonstrations to start. The very first one was a double sonic boom from two F-16's who had two very special passengers -- General Chuck Yeager and General Joe Engle. (For those of you who are scratching your head wondering who those people are -- they are both famous test pilots. General Yeager was the first pilot to break the sound barrier and General Engle was one of the original X-15 Test Pilots and a former Space Shuttle Pilot). Once their flight was complete, they landed right in front of us on the runway and came in to hang out with us in the Tent. How cool is that? Chad shook Chuck Yeager's hand got his picture taken with Gen Engle.

Gen Chuck Yeager (He's the guy in the flight suit on the left):


Gen Joe Engle & Chad:


After their flight, there were a lot more demonstrations from a bunch of planes I'll never remember the names of.. it's all alphabet / number soup to me, but I know there were A-10's (Warthogs), F-16's, a bunch of bombers and some WWII-era planes. They were all quite impressive and, aside from the insane heat (thank goodness we had that tent we could hide under if need be!), it was a great day.

Since we had the little boys (Chad's nephew's) with us, we didn't stay for the entire day, but we definitely enjoyed the time we spent there -- we all agreed that there was no better way to see an air show!! It's rough getting spoiled like that..

Cake Decorating

I, apparently, didn't have enough other things to do, so I signed up for a Cake Decorating class at Joann's during the month of October.

It's been something I've wanted to do for a while, so I decided I'd probably have more time before the baby was born and went for it.

I had no idea how much work it was going to be!! Just baking / stacking / icing one cake a week took pretty much every free minute I had -- much less the 2 hours / week we were in class. However, it was a lot of fun and I did learn a lot. My cakes weren't the most impressive, but I thought I'd share them with ya'll anyway..

Enjoy! :-)

Grand Canyon (Only 2 months late!)

I know, I know, it's been forever. However, I'm really going to try and get this thing updated this week.. so look for LOTS of posts between now and Saturday (hopefully!)..

After our 4 day stint in Sedona, we headed up to the Grand Canyon for one evening. It was amazing and breathtaking as always:



We enjoyed the day staring at the canyon and then had an amazing dinner at one of the restaurants there on the South Rim. On our way out of dinner, we looked up and to our amazement, there were elk standing less than 15 feet away! Freaked us out a bit! We sat there and watched them for a while and they just seemed content to chomp away on the grass and didn't notice any of us humans milling around. So I braved a picture or two:





Then we heard a rustling behind us and we looked around and saw an entire raccoon family foraging for food in the garbage can..





It was like we were right in the middle of Animal Planet or something!! Then as we turned back around we saw a shadow moving behind the elk and then race across the parking lot. It looked almost the size of a cougar or jaguar, but we never really got a good look at it.. so it could have been anything. Crazy evening at the canyon.

We headed out the next day and made our way home via a quick visit to Kingman to see Grandma and Grandpa.

All in all, it was a fun trip and definitely a well-needed vacation.