Good fences are good neighbors……

Unless you actually have a good neighbor, then you need a gate!!!



More later…..

Letter from Nicholas

Hey y’all, I’m sorry that it’s been so long since any of you have heard from me. Things have been really crazy here and I haven’t had a lot of free time or internet to spend said time sitting in front of. I just wanted to drop all of you a line and let you know how I’m doing and that I’m thinking of you. Afghanistan is pretty different this time than last time. Living in the desert again is taking some getting used to. The temperature here isn’t that bad yet, but the wind and the dust is awful. We’re in the middle of the “120 Days of Wind” which is pretty self-explanatory. We all pretty much walk around feeling like a bunch of sugar cookies all day long. It’s kind of a drag flying here in the flat sandy part of the country after getting to fly through the mountains last time, but it’s a good learning experience for all the junior pilots who’ve never done it. Helicopters have a lot of power management issues here and flying at night is pretty dangerous, but we’re trying to watch out for them and keep them safe. Our living conditions here aren’t bad at all. We have hardened buildings to live in and showers that are reliable this time around, which is a Godsend. The food here is pretty good; it’s handled by a different contractor, a European corporation, so we’re at least getting to try new stuff. They have a dessert here called Dubai Jalal, which is basically little balls of cupcake or pancake batter or something that they pour corn syrup over that I can make myself sick off of. It’s nice being at a major installation instead of out in the middle of nowhere for a change. My job now is very different than it’s ever been; I’ve only flown a few missions so far and spend a lot of long days walking the flightline, fixing the issues that other pilots bring back, doing a lot of test flights here at the airfield, and generally making sure that my guys always have safe, reliable aircraft that will get them home at the end of the day. It’s by no means an easier job than the one I’ve had the last two trips here, but it keeps me very busy and makes the time pass quickly. My O.C.D. kicks in a lot of the time, just because I’ve had a few bad experiences with aircraft in the past and I take quality helicopters very seriously. It’s nice to not be constantly surrounded by all the drama and quips that surround the “line pilot” community. Crew chiefs and sheet metal workers and engine guys are a lot easier going than pilots and there are a lot fewer egos to have to deal with. I hope you’re all doing well. I haven’t heard anything to the contrary and the old “no news is good news” adage usually proves true. I hope the weather there is nice and you all had a happy Easter. I look forward to making it home from this last deployment and getting started on a more stable life, hopefully with more time to come home and visit. I know Heather is looking forward to it as well. I get bombarded on a daily basis by people trying to convince me to reconsider and continue this career, and I suppose I should take it as a compliment, but I think they just don’t understand that I’m ready for something new and so is Heather. I’ll try to write again soon. I apologize again that it’s been so long since I wrote to any of you, but time and internet bandwidth is at a premium here. Looking forward to seeing you all again. Be safe. Love, Nicholas

I received this picture from the FRG (Family Readiness Group) today. I don’t know who’s flying but it’s unlikely that it’s Nicholas because he’s only been on a couple of missions. Still, it’s a great picture and wanted to pass it on.

A Nicholas Update

I’ve been trying to get the boy on here and update you himself but considering his crazy long hours he really has not had the chance to do it. I usually only talk to him 15 or 20 minutes a day then he needs to get to bed and rest up for another long day of working in the sun. He normally heads to work around 6ish (from what I’ve gathered) but it can be as early as 4am and most nights he doesn’t make it back to his room until almost 10pm. Needless to say he’s exhausted. They’ve had a number of aircraft issues and it’s taking long hours to get everything under control. He told me today that they have 2 aircraft that are just being problem children and no matter what they do they keep finding new issues! He hopes they will finally be finished by the end of the week and he and Mike (his other MTP) will be able to take a little bit of a break. He has not had a moment off since he left on March 16th. He’s worn out. On the positive side though he says that this deployment so far still sucks much less than the other 2 so woot for that!!! The food is really good and he’s making an effort to get to the chow halls for meals and he gets a hot shower every night. Vast improvement right there over his last trip over!!!

I’ve had a couple of people ask me about care packages and right now he doesn’t need anything. I’ve been asking him and he said it’s nice not living in a crap hole because if he needs it he can run to the PX and grab it right then. If he tells me anything he needs I will put it out there. With his days being so long he just doesn’t have time to do anything else right now. I’m sure he would love to take the time to read or watch a movie but it’s just not happening at the moment.

So far the days are flying by for both of us. I can’t believe it’s already a day shy of him being gone a month. I know time will go even quicker when I’m in GA working with mama. I realize that we’ve both become quite jaded with the whole deployment thing. I miss him and he misses me but for the most part it’s business as usual for both of us. This is our “normal”. I’ve also realized that I rely heavily on the timeline of deployments and TDY’s to judge when events happened in our lives.  I catch myself saying “after Iraq”, “before the first Afghanistan deployment”, before this deployment”, and “while he was at Rucker” often. I can’t wait for the day that we don’t have to plan our lives around deployments. Ahhh a new normal. It will be fabulous.

And he’s going to hate me for this…… I think he needs more sunscreen. lol (and yes, that’s his room)

And the boy doing what he does best.

Way back in November I went to visit my great friend Mary in Savannah, we went to the Christmas in the South show where I found an awesome booth selling pictures that look like letters. You know the ones that you can spell stuff out with them and they look so cool!! I’ve been wanting something like that for the house for a while so I bought our last name. Once I got home and started thinking I realized we have a really long last name that has an odd number of letters. Not too many frames out there like that that don’t cost a fortune. And then I put it off and figured I’d worry about it after Christmas. Um so now it’s April which is definitely after Christmas and I got the itch to work on something. This seemed like the perfect project to start on. I recently saw a blog post about distressing wood with a different color underneath so it would show through and thought that was so cool looking. When I thought about colors I decided to pull from the curtains on the other side of the room and bring a little bit of brightness to the whole room.

I already showed you my teaser picture so no need to show that again. Here is the frame built. You know it’s hard for me to take pictures of stuff in the process of building because I usually need both hands and when the boy is home he’s the one building and I have plenty of time for the picture taking. Oh and I had already started painting the primed wood with my green paint. I can’t tell you what color it is because I bought the sample bottles at Home Depot and all it has is the color number on top. I’m sure it has some fancy name but we’ll just call it green.

Side note… see that coffee mug with the pink band on it, BEST CUP EVER!!!! I bought it at Bed Bath and Beyond and it was less than $10 and I’ve used it almost every day. I know it’s a coffee mug but I don’t drink coffee so I use it for my water, it keeps ice in it for hours. Love. It. And it will be perfect for drives home because I usually have issues with dog hair in my cups. Can’t imagine why that happens.

This was my base color that I wanted to show through when I distressed the top color. I chose Antique white for the top coat.

And distressed around the edges. I thought the green would show brighter than it did but I’m still happy with it. I think next time I’ll used a different kind of paint.

And the finished product. Since I don’t want my whole name on the internets I blocked out half the letters but I wanted you to at least see some of them I figured that would be ok.

Closer up

I’m really happy with how it turned out. Using the Kreg Jig to put in pocket holes in the back of the frame was excellent! I wish we had known about this when working on our other projects!!! I’m planning to build dinning room chairs to match the table and I think using that jib will make the job much easier and cleaner because of less holes to fill on the outside of the chairs. Now I need to put hangars on the back of the frame and get it on the wall. I worked really hard this morning to get it finished so I could show it to the boy when he got online.

 

Aunt Elaine, you should recognize my next project since you gave it to me! I decided to refinish that rocking chair you gave us when we got married. I started sanding it down yesterday and after I cut grass I’m going to get to work on it. I’ll save those pictures for tomorrow!

 

Oh and remember, if you click on the pictures it will make them bigger!

I'm working on a new project and I'm super excited about it!!! I am about half way finished and hope to have it completely done by tomorrow afternoon. It's been fun spending time in the garage and making saw dust. Sure do miss my wood working partner though, things are much easier with 2 sets of hands. We are both hoping that when we make the transition to civilian life we'll be able to have a house with a wood working shop so all our big projects. I think the boy will want an area to work on his wood burning projects also. It's a shame that he's been so busy this deployment he hasn't had a chance to burn anything yet. Maybe over the next few months things will calm down and he'll have more free time to work on his beautiful projects.

Since I don't want to post all the pictures I've taken so far until the project is done I'll leave you with this one teaser.

Well I haven't updated in a few days because there really isn't anything exciting going on around here! I guess that's a good thing, I'm not a fan of too much excitement! With Nicholas that usually means something crazy happened at work to stress me out. :) I think you can understand why I prefer things to stay boring!

 

So I’ll show you some cute pictures of the girls! I think she was tired of the flash. I could be wrong though.

She wanted attention. This is what she does to get it. Sometimes I think she’s trying to kill me.

I made this bread for Easter. It turned out so pretty!! And tasted awesome!

  The tulips I planted bloomed!

Kiowa in her natural state, laying on the pillows in the bed.

And supervising while I did yard work in the front. Also making sure that anyone that walked by knew she could see them.

And that’s what’s going on around here. Doesn’t it look like fun!!