Garden Start

I got my outside garden started today. I planted seeds for cherry tomatoes and snow peas. They'll need to stay inside for awhile but it's fun to get something planted. Later on we'll buy some strawberry plants. Inside I'm hoping to get at least one aerogarden started today. We're still arranging furniture in the house and haven't figured out where we want them but I think it's time to pick a place and get them growing.

Fourth Friday

Well today was fantastic. I made a friend in church last sunday and we had decided to go on a photo excursion today. She came to pick me up and we headed downtown to have some fun taking photos. When we got there she dressed up a little and posed next to a nice antique store. I went to snap a picture and my camera didn't work. What?!? I just charged the battery. Oh wait, the battery is sitting at home next to the charger. Good job. My friend at least had her nice Nikon DSLR so I set that up and went to take a picture. Still didn't work. She came over to check out the camera and her SD card was missing. We definitely get along well. She had an extra card in her purse. We took a few pictures but ended up walking through some great antique stores. On the way out one of the ladies told us that the city has an event called Fourth Friday. Apparently every fourth Friday the downtown shops stay open late, street vendors set up in the middle of the street and musician, artists and dancers demonstrate their arts.

When I got home I told Lance about the little festival and we decided to go. Before we left I tried a recipe called Chicken Satay from allrecipes.com. You basically marinade chicken overnight in a peanut sauce and grill it on the BBQ. Lance was a great sport and even pulled out a zucchini and bell pepper to make kabobs with the chicken. Very tasty.

Fourth Friday was a little better than I expected, not that I was expecting much. I can't say that it compares to some of the street markets back home in Cali, but there were some fun performers like the Karate group, break dancers and my personal favorite some belly dancers. I took Lance to see the antique stores from this morning, we both had a great time. It's not very late here, especially for a Friday night but I'm tired. Hope everyone is doing well!

p.s. I didn't have any pictures on my camera from this morning and we didn't take our camera to the street fair so no pictures from today. Just fun memories.

Special Ops Museum

We found the Airborne and Special Ops Museum today. Lance let me demonstrate how to jump from an airplane although I didn't yell out my counting like I was suppose to. It's quite an impressive museum and best of all it's free, although we did donate to help support the operations. We also drove around the area to see if there was anything special, nope there's nothing. Ok, there may be a few things to do around here but I've never seen a town that looks so shut down and boarded up. I grabbed a magazine that lists all the activities for the city and we already have a few things on our to see list.



Lance taught me everything I know about jumping out of fake planes



Getting ready to jump. Lance defending the museum hallway.

Just a Short 6 Mile Stroll Through the Park

We went to a state park yesterday to take a break from our house and enjoy the 70+ weather. I haven't been impressed the area surrounding Fort Bragg, beautification is not high on the priority list around here. We decided to try and find a prettier area and I think we succeeded. A friend of Lance's is staying with us and came along for the adventure. I was thinking a nice mile walk down to the river, a little picnic and a nice stroll back. Well the guys decided to go for the longest trail which was 3 miles each way. At least there weren't any major hills. I'm definitely a little sore today, but the walk was worth it. The trees are all in winter mode with most of the leaves gone, but I can see how the park will really green up in the spring. The first half of our walk the trail followed a small creek, very relaxing. We can to a tiny cascade in the river and ate our sandwiches before walking back through the trees. We'll have to go back and explore some of the shorter trails in the park, especially when spring gets here.

In the evening Lance's friend decided to grill dinner for us. A few invites later and we had a house full of friends that moved down here around the same time as us. Nice to move to a new area and get to keep some friends.

Here's a few pictures from our walk.

Air Park

We meandered on our way home from church and walked around the air park near our house. This is a C-130, Lance jumps out of these planes. Then we drove by the runway and saw a group of soldiers practicing their jump before take off. Crazy, I have no desire to do that. We've been watching the planes fly around from our house, it's pretty amazing to watch them. I love our house but we have a long way to go to get everything in it's place. Other than the kitchen we haven't unpacked much yet, which means the house is covered in boxes. Boo boxes. I'd rather go walk around looking at airplanes.

Outdoor cooking

My 1st gas grill.

Tour

Yay for internet! Now we just need to find our router so we don't have to be tethered to a wall. I'm sure it's in one of these boxes around here. In the meantime here's a video tour of our house before we covered everything with boxes and paper. We have some friends from Lance's training that moved here the same time. They're getting a house in the next neighborhood over, just a 10 minute walk. It's nice to have someone to hang out with. Since Lance has had the car all week I haven't really explored anything in the area. I've just been unpacking and setting up paperwork. Hopefully this weekend we'll get out and see some of the town.

We got our stuff in record time, now it's the "where did the pack that" game.

Tight fit.

All fit into one pontiac vibe. the pic doesn't do it full justice. OBTW. we made it here safe and .. sound?

Kayley loves Uncle Lonnie! We had a great day. Lance and I went to mass with Uncle Lonnie and Aunt Joan. I've never been before and it was a great experience to gain a little understanding for other's beliefs. Afterwards they took us to golden corall for breakfast to meet their friends. We definitely like them. In the afternoon we attended our churchand then went back to Uncle Lonnie's for a wonderfully lazy afternoon. We're watching the superbowl now and Kayley is thoroughly enjoying everyone's lap.

Long lost uncle

Made it to Uncle Lonnie's last night, he and his wife are awesome! So glad we could visit for the weekend. We're going to go exploring a little bit today and tomorrow. Very nice to have good family in the area. Even Kayley is having a fun time exploring their house. Plus they have internet. And my phone posts started working again, if you hadn't noticed.

On the Road

The cat loves being shoved in the car. maybe not.

Empty House

Empty house, goodbye.

Goodbye house!

Kayley and I are just sitting in an empty house waiting for Lance to come back with the weigh tickets. In about 2 hours we'll be on the road to a new home. We can't check in until Monday though, so we'll stay with Uncle Lonnie tonight and then figure out the rest of the weekend. I've never actually met my Great Uncle Lonnie, but he and his wife have been really nice on the phone, so we're looking forward to meeting them. Blog updates from my phone haven't been posting, so this may be the last blog entry for a week or so. Hopefully not, but we'll see.

I still can't believe we're moving, I'm not excited about leaving all our friends but I'm ready to start exploring a new area. I already have a list of places I want to see and some things I want to do. Lance and I have had a great time exploring around here, I think we packed in a lot of adventures. As soon as we're in our new home I'll have to make a book from my blog of all the fun things we got to do this year, it's been quite a year!