Luke Days

Our Boy! The epitome of a pilot!

My  attempt at a weblog (blog?). Hello, my name is Jake. I would like to show you the fun Waylon, myself, and my Dad had at Luke Days 2011. Don't expect me to tweet your face (or something along those lines) because I do not blog or do anything remotely similiar to that in today's information age. The following are pictures compiled from our 19 March 2011 trip to Luke AFB for the biannual public (civilian)  open house and airshow, also known to folks that were born here as Luke Days. Luke AFB was named after Lieutenant Frank Luke, a somewhat notorious and hard edged pilot that shot down both planes and observation balloons in WW1 (observation balloons were very heavily defended by AAA guns so they were very hard targets) (had he lived through the war, he may have very well been the wars' highest scoring American ace.) But I digress, my dad, son and I made our way to Luke as it as known to see the airshow. As some of you may know, my father and I are both pilots and I thought this event would help impart my father's and I love of aviation to our son.

Waylon in the cockpit trainer of an F-16C. Brings tears to my eyes as I have a picture of me in the real cockpit of of a F-16B getting ready to taxi out to the ordnance pits as a young man.  But looking at this picture, I see alot of me in him. Confident, and Ready, again,... the epitome of a pilot.

Waylon was all kinds of excited to get there and when we arrived, my Dad and him went out to look at the aircraft on static display while I found our seats for the show. (The airshow is free, but reserved seating is available for a fee) When I found our seating area I went back and showed them to our seats. (they were great). My Dad wisely wanted to watch the aerial demonstrations and so did I, but Waylon had a different agenda. "Daddy, I need to see the planes!" Dude, there's planes flying above us now! "No, I need to see the planes over there" Okay, make our way back to the static displays. Waylon had a great time. We met a young Lt. who was patiently showing the civvies an F-16C and its' cockpit. Waylon and I climbed up for our turn and our little man turned on the charm. "Is this the seat?" "Do you fight other planes?" and a boatload of other questions. The Lt. was impressed and said to him, "do you want to be a pilot?" Waylon's deadpan response "I am a pilot". Needless to say, I was not going to contradict him. The Lt. then called out to a MSGT. at the cockpit trainer next to the real deal, "Hey Master Sarge, can you get this guy suited up for a picture down below?"...."Sure Lt." Waylon and I went over to the cockpit trainer where the MSGT. pulled out a smaller flight suit and parachute harness and we went over the motions of putting the gear on Waylon. Waylon was stoked and stood proudly for his picture (see above).

Friday Night Fun

Another tradition that I am so proud to be doing with my kids. We starting doing Friday Nights when I was very little, maybe 2nd grade? Then as we all grew up the party nights faded away and it seems the farther away we lived the more of a NEED there is to do these EVERY TIME we are together...Which might I add is NEVER enough TIME.

This Party Night as it is called happened right after St. Patrick's day and so everyone was still very festive from the day before and we all wore green..well most of us did.

There are always so many pictures....OF THE KIDS....but hardly ever any pictures of the rest of us, which makes me SO MAD every time I blog about our get togethers....

How cute is this little girl? This is Ahna and Ryan's girl Olivia. She is one month younger than Toni...but she is almost crawling and says "dada"

Toni does neither yet and looks a huge next to this little sweet pea.

The girls did play well together. Although every time we got them a little too close Olivia seemed very intrigued by all of Toni's hair...or maybe jealous :-) because she would hold on for dear life to poor Toni's hair or bow...They actually look pretty similar in size in this picture.

My favorite picture of the night..My amazing family. How Lucky I am!

As the night went on we continued to again "try" to get these amazing photos we all think we are going to get of these babies and kids together. This is pretty much the ONLY picture I got of the three babies together. Sorry..This is why I am not a professional photographer.

Olivia (7 1/2 months) and Toni (8 1/2 months)

Everyone, including the adults, were getting tired. So the party came to an end so much sooner than it used to only a few short years ago.

I once again said my good byes and really lost it this time. I do wish that Ahna and her family were so much closer than Oregon. We had so much fun growing up together and I know our kids would have been great friends just like us. Like Ahna and I said , this phase with the kiddos won't last long, but for right now it makes me miss her SO much~

Until the next Friday Night Party Night......

Green Day 2011~Aka St. Patrick's Day

Well this year's Green Day was a little better than last year.  We had the same plan, but just added to it and had a little more fun, and you can bet next year will be even more exciting as Toni begins to enjoy this fun tradition we have started.

Waylon and I started off a little early this year and made our cupcakes early, so that we could share them with many others. :-) Waylon decorated these cupcakes and was so proud.  He put colorful sprinkles on them because he loves "colorful" (as he states it) and for the rainbow fun with St. Patrick's Day.

Then while we were waiting for our friends what better way to pass the time but "try" to take pictures.  Thank goodness my kiddos are actually super cute in real life, you would never know it if you only saw "my" pictures of them...a couple of goofballs!

This year we planned a scavenger hunt for the boys!  This was SO FUN for them and they did so great. I had hidden shamrocks around the house with a picture of a room in the house on each one, along with 3 green coins for each of them.  The boys took turns finding the shamrocks in each of the rooms and collecting their coins.

Then the last shamrock lead to OUTSIDE where the final Treasure was hidden in a green

Leprechaun pot! They unwrapped it to find their surprise for the day.

Green Shamrock Trucks...So cool! These were special Edition Hot Wheel cars for St. Patrick's Day. The boys loved them and as usual Amy and I try desperately to get such amazing photos of the boys together and this is what we get.

After more play time it was time for our "green Lunch." We did this last year and it was a huge hit so we did it again this year. We put a variety of green fruits and veggies in cup cake tins and then the boys chose what they wanted to eat. Of course all of it was green.  We had grapes, broccoli, M&M's, pasta, jello, celery and of course Green Milk.

Then we decorated cupcakes~left from the day before. Jason and Waylon loved this idea.  Jackson (in the background) Wanted to perform for the boys instead of decorating his cupcake. He brought out Waylon's microphone and sang as the boys decorated. Too cute!

Some more fun and cute pictures. Jason's Leprechaun hat! I love it!

Then of course there was Toni..not too involved this year but she watched a lot.Her favorite part of the day was the necklaces. She loved the sparkle of them and the noise they made as she shook them around. This kept her busy for a while. She also enjoyed all the time with Amy~who gave her lots of lovin' on our green day.

What a great tradition...I love how we add a little more every year and gets a little more exciting. Waylon talks about green day all year, and always asks me why the other colors don't have a day too..?

Can't wait to see how Toni grows into this fun with us.

Costa Rica

The view from the back of the house. Needless to say this is where most of our time was spent in this house.

 After a lot of planning (mostly on my mother-in-law (Pam's) part) and organizing kiddos with our family and two great friends, who took great care of our kids while we were gone. (Thank you, Mom, Dad and Laura, Courtney and John, and Zach and Maria) We made it to beautiful Costa Rica! We stayed in a gorgeous home at the Flamingo Beach area in the Gaunacanaste area of the country. We spent the first day doing absolutely nothing which is what we all needed. We all sat outside for the day and napped on and off throughout the entire day and had a few beverages of course too.

Colette zip lining!

  The second day we had a very busy and adventurous day.  We did a Canopy Tour about two hours away from the house we are staying at in a place called Rincon De La Vieja National Park.  There we did an amazing tour all in one day (I think when all was said and done there were 8-9 things we did on that one tour!)...We had our driver (Jonas-who was our guide the first two days and also participated in the entire day tour with us too) picked us up at 6:30 AM and then drove us there.

    Once we got there we got hooked up an went zip lining through the canopy of the rainforest.  There were 10 different platforms that we went across and one of the last ones was so cool because the trees above were full of Howler monkeys.  As we each took a turn going across the zip line the guides would bounce our zip lines up and down and the more we made noise the more those monkeys would "Howl." It sounded more like LARGE dogs barking but it was so cool to see and hear. Not the best video but you get the idea of how loud they were and you see my father-in-law (Larry) coming in on the zip line and then Jake next. The monkeys were jumping in the trees but there was only about maybe 5 of them.

   Then we did hanging bridges which was a backtrack of the zip line tour which was great to learn about plants and animals in the rainforest.  After that, we went on a water slide that was long and through the forest too.  A little to crazy for me, one time was plenty.  You got jetted out by freezing cold water and then tossed around in a concrete slide with a tube and was dumped out into a cold pool of water.  It was more fun to watch everyone come out at the end of the ride into that pool was where I got some laughs.  Then from here we had a buffet lunch which was really good.  They had a variety of food and some wonderful fish called Corvina which is also Sea Bass.

The clan horse back riding.  The horses stayed close together in the beginning. Mine wanted to be the leader and was a bit of a stinker too

    For the second half of our day we rode horses for a while down a trail that led to a waterfall. We did a small hike to the waterfall and back and then rode the horses to a mud bath location.

 At the mud bath we got down to this beautiful area where we got into our suits and went into a sauna for about 5 minutes to open our pores, then from here we went and covered ourselves in volcanic mud and let the sun dry us off. (these would have been some great pics had we had our cameras with us here-So funny!) Then once the mud was dried we took freezing cold showers to close our pores back up and remove the mud.  Then, the best part were the geothermal pools.  There were several pools that we went in. The first was 98 degrees and then another was 106  and then others, but they were great and so relaxing!  The day was almost over, we took a tractor ride back to our van and then were driven back to the house.

   Not only was this a full day but we did not have to drive out there and back. Our tour guide Jonas was great, very nice, and informative of all the questions we asked him about Costa Rica.

One of the sunsets at Flamigo Beach. Not AZ sunsets but sure pretty

     We did some exploring the next few days to other beaches and little towns, but still managed to keep things very low key.  On Wednesday we took out WaveRunners for  a few hours and rode them around, again with more guides but this was also fun.  We left and rode around the coast line and even went by the house we were staying in.  Then we stopped at a beach with the Waverunners and had some drinks and pineapple. So good!  We then took the WaveRunners for a long ride back to were we had started.  I enjoyed this, this was my first time on the Jetski type boat and it was pretty mild, thank goodness, if we had gone too fast I might not have enjoyed it as much. (these pictures are on water cameras so they can not be posted right now )

 This trip was very nice and relaxing.  I enjoyed all the laughs, great meals we had, and fun memories with my family.  I did miss the kids, but spending an entire week with Jake made up for it.  I can not even begin to express what a great tradition these trips are with our family.  Each trip has it's own special memories with it, and they are all very special to us. There are so many pictures from this trip it is really hard to share just a few and there are more great pictures from the rest of the group that went along as well. Jake and I would like thank Pam amd Larry for making this wonderful vacation possible! Thank you both so much and we love you!

The group before we left. Travis, Heather, Klaus, Kelly, Larry, Pam, Colette and Jake

Toni is 8 months old

Other than her tongue doing something odd here, This is her 8 month shot.  I LOVE the dress it was given to her by my mom aka "Gammie" and fit her and her theme perfectly.  Her bedroom and theme in her room is all flip flops and she was born on July 1st so perfect.  Now she can finally fit the outfit.  This one has been hanging in her room as part of the decor for quite some time.

This month has not been super eventful as far as milestones for her.  She has learned to shake her head Back and forth like she is saying No No...and she flaps her arms up and down with a super serious look on her face to communicate with you...but nothing really big has happened compared to last month.

We were able to be outside in a few days of amazing weather this month.  She loves to be where the action is aka her BROTHER.  We were outside enjoying the 75-78 degree weather this day.

Here is her cute morning face.  Such a happy and smiley girl she is!

Another shot of her in the super cute dress...

I am not sure what they are doing, but they are related. What a bunch of goofballs they look like they might be trying the THRILLER dance or something? This was the only shot I got of the two of them for the monthly shots. Guess these pics are not going to last to much longer are they.