Great and Horrible Week

First things first, I am an initial/instrument qualified A-10c pilot. God really helped me pull it all together and I had a good checkride. I got a downgrade for one thing, but I still got my qualification. On top of that, on Friday, I got to do this!

Air to air refueling is crazy. Imagine all of your life being told not to run into another plane and then the same people telling you to go ahead and run into another plane...only softly. It was capped off by raging around the Mexican boarder at 500 feet. They introduced low altitude operations to us and it is where we will spend the rest of our lives....AND IT WAS AWESOME. Thanks to all for the prayers and support during that very stressful time. I am sure it won't be the last, but now we are on to the next challenge.

So that was the flying part, now of the interesting stuff. It got cold here. Second coldest ever on record and coldest since 1910. People and things here aren't used to the cold, hence the reason why everyone had frozen pipes and the city streets looked like a water park with geysers every 1/2 mile. The city's water department was not exempt and most of Tucson was without water for multiple days. To make matters better, the Southwest Gas Company had a break in a main gas line and we were without gas for a few days. When natural gas powers your heat and hot water heater, the absence of them makes you find a hotel room.

Fortunately, our gas was fixed late Friday night, so our guests (my dad and step mother) didn't have to join us in a hotel room. It has been nice to have them here and they gave us a treat that made all the week's experiences seem ok...they baby sat so Candi and I could have a night out together, without eating in shifts. Ok, so maybe a night out is overstating, but we had two and a half hours to ourselves. Of course, you know how fatherly I am, I kept calling every fifteen minutes to see how the little one was doing.

Candi is doing well and continues to work from home when she can. She has found that she needs someone besides an 11 week old to talk to and since I tell her "be quite so I can study" all the time, she has been relying on the other wives. She really enjoys their company and probably prefers them over me now, since some of them even cook for her/us.

Jarret is doing well and likes the fact that our visitors spoil him. I think the biggest benefit to having a baby was being able to see our family more often. They actually come visit us with JJ around. I think a baby is very similar to a family reunion, except you can say you will be out of town when the weird ones want to see you. Well, I better get back to being a good host and making sure they are getting the vacuuming done.