Places we'd like to travel

I thought I'd make a list of places we've been/ would like to travel to, just for the fun of it. The bold ones are the places we've been already. All others are places we'd like to see someday. Some of these places we've been to, but not together, so we don't count those as having been there already.



Disneyworld (x2)

Disneyland

Orlando (x2)

Florida Keys

Punta Cana

Caribbean Cruise

Brazil

Dominican Republic

New Orleans

Savannah, Georgia

Williamsburg, VA

Washington, DC

New York City

Myrtle Beach

Boston, MA

Cape Cod, Maine

Prince Edward Island

Montreal, Quebec

Niagara Falls

San Diego, CA

Los Angelos, CA

San Fransisco, CA

the Pacific Northwest

Alaskan Cruise

Colorado

Yellowstone National Park

The Grand Tetons

The Grand Canyon

Las Vegas (x2)

The Boundary Waters, WI

Mexico

Hawaii

Australia

New Zealand

Fiji

Rome, Italy

Florence, Italy

Pisa, Italy

Monocco

Cannes, France

Paris, France

Madrid, Spain

Innsbruck, Austria

Vienna, Austria

Prague, Czech Republic

Switzerland

England

Ireland

Scottland

Greece

Japan

China

Iceland

The beaches of Normandy

Budapest, Hungary

Barcelona, Spain

Southern Italy

A mediterranean cruise

Russia

Bordeaux, France

Belgium

Istanbul, Turkey

Bucarest, Romania

Thialand

Vietnam

Bangladesh

Sri Lanka

Madagascar

Cape Town, South Africa

Nova Scotia

Guatamala

Seattle, Washington

Vancouver, BC

Yosemite National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park

Zion National Park

Egypt

Denali National Park

Glacier National Park

Newschwanstein Castle


Hamburg, Germany


Lubeck, Germany


Munich, Germany

The Netherlands

Slovenia

Croatia



I'll keep adding to this as we go along and keep updating this as we visit more places. Should be interesting to see how many places we get to actually see. Feel free to tell us where else would be fun to visit.

Oklahoma is boring.

Again, not too much is going on here. (Surprise, surprise) I found out this week that 3 of my friends are pregnant! Crazy! I've been trying to stay active and lose weight. My swimming lessons are going well - Gail's a great teacher and she says I'm improving. Hopefully she's not just being nice. =) Mark and I are getting a little better at tennis. Sometimes we can actually hit it over a few times before one of us hits it way out of bounds or into the net. Our new racks work well and definitely help. This past weekend we went camping at Canton Lake with a bunch of friends. It was fun and nice to be by the lake, but it was WAYYY to hot to camp. We about roasted in the tent all night. We decided that we're not going to camp again until it actually gets cool at night instead of staying in the high 80's. The weinas were completely worn out afterwards and slept for almost an entire day when we got home.

I've updated our blog some, so if you get these updates by email, check out the actual blog. http://www.adventuresofm-squared.blogspot.com I've added a playlist and a slideshow of pictures. And as always, feel free to leave comments! Thanks to the 2 of you that actually do sometimes! Makes me feel like someone is actually reading this. =)

We got dates!!!

Mark went in to the squadron today and we found out that his IFF dates are Jan 28, 2009 - April ?, 2009 and his start date at Luke (in Arizona) for RTU is May 12, 2009. So this means we'll probably be moving to Phoenix in April of next year! Yay! But this does kind of pose a problem as far as Christmas goes bc I'm already asking for a week off to visit family and friend and go to Cathy's wedding in Sept and Mark's in Dave's wedding in October so that'll be another 3 days off of work. I know there is no way in hell that Charlie is going to give me a week off for Christmas.... So I can either start looking for a job now, or pretty much plan to be jobless for 4 months or so. I don't even know if I'll have a job after I take a week off in September so I guess I'll worry about that when the time comes.

In other news, I rode for the first time in over a year this weekend. I went riding with my friend, Gail, who has a friend here that has 4 very nice horses. It was so great to get back on. I hadn't forgotten much, but MAN, I'm sore today still (and I rode 2 days ago). The horse I was riding required a lot of leg to keep him going and the insides of my thighs are still feeling it. Gail also gave me a swimming lesson, which was fun and helped me a lot and Mark and I bought tennis rackets and balls. We've been playing tennis a couple times a week lately, so we're excited about not having to borrow the crappy ones from base anymore. We'll probably give them a try tonight for the first time!

PS - I've lost 4 lbs!!

mid-July update

So I'm getting worse and worse at keeping up with this thing! Not much exciting really seems to be going on lately.

We're still enjoying our new piano. I ordered 2 Lorie Line (my favorite pianist) books from her website. She just came out with a new one, so I ordered that one and one of her other recent books (as in sheet music books). I think I have all of them now except for 2 or 3. I think I'm going to get an autographed copy of her new book though so I'm pretty excited about it. Mark plays the piano more than I do and he's really good!! He's improved quite a bit and now he sees the reason I wanted a piano instead of a keyboard. It's so funny to walk into our office (where the piano is) and watch my fighter pilot husband play Fur Elise on the piano. He's pretty much the best.

My mom got me my tickets home for September today. I'm pretty excited about going home and seeing all my old friends, but I'm also pretty nervous about leaving Mark and my weinas at home. I think Mark and my relationship is a little different than most people since we both live so far away from both our families. When we move to new places, we only have each other and usually don't know another soul in our new place. So we get so used to it being us and always having each other around that it's hard to be apart. His 3 weeks of survival training was tough for us, but I had my weina babies to keep me company. But I'm excited to go home too. It'll be great to see my friends, some of who I haven't seen since my wedding (2 years ago) or more, and I'm really looking forward to riding bikes (Harley's) with my dad and playing my piano at home. I have to remember to pack all my sheet music.

It was kind of a trick getting a week off of work, especially with the big ordeal with me getting the month off to go to Europe. My immediate boss, Natalie, had said that she wanted to wait to present the idea to the big boss, Charlie, until closer to the time, but I told her I couldn't wait too long bc I had to get plane tickets and car rentals. So after asked her about it for 3 days, she decided that she'd just okay it and we'd worry about what Charlie thought about it later.... So that means that when he finds out (probably sometime in September) that he could very easily decide he just doesn't need me to work there any more and I'll be out of a job. I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get there and pray for the best in the meantime.

Other than that, not too much has been happening. It's been hot here lately - usually 95+, but at least it hasn't been as windy. I don't mind the sun and heat, but the wind gets old really quick.

Pools and pianos

Mark had off today because it was considered a family day for the Air Force - at least those in his squadron. He spent the morning studying and playing our piano and I spent the morning at work. I worked until around noon and then we went out with 2 of my co-workers, one of which is leaving at the end of the week. Mark asked me if I wanted to stop at the piano store with him on the way home. (Not sure why he even asked - of course I did!) We've been talking about getting a digital piano for a few months now. We have a keyboard - a pretty nice keyboard at that. But, it is a keyboard. And if you play the piano (and I have since I was 5 years old and Mark has since about 5th grade), you know there's a BIG difference between a keyboard and a piano. They feel different to play, they sound different, the action (movement of the keys) is WAAYYY different. So we went to "look" at a piano store in town, for the 2nd time. First time we came out empty-handed. Second time, we did. Mark and I bought a Roland digital piano, and, to put it mildly, it's awesome. It both feels and sounds like a piano (instead of a keyboard), but it's smaller than a traditional piano (as in, I can pick it up by myself even though it has 88 normal sized keys) and you never have to tune it. Both of those are HUGE pluses for the military lifestyle. Eventually I'll get my Kawai baby grand piano that is waiting patiently for me at my parents house, but right now our lifestyle doesn't promote having a huge piano to haul all over the country/ world. This was quite the splurge for us, but we both feel we'll put it to good use, and it'll bring us (and hopefully our kids someday) many hours of pleasure.

We were at the pool today after putting our piano together. We actually got there a little before 5pm, which was a first for us. For those of you non-military people, every day at 5pm they play "Retreat" followed by the National Anthem on base. If you're driving, everyone stops. If you're walking, everyone stops at faces the flag at attention. I knew this happened, but for some reason, I wasn't expecting it to be the same at the pool. However, it did. We were in the pool swimming laps (or I was at the side trying to catch my breath anyway) and "Retreat" started to play. Everyone at the pool - military members, spouses, even little kids (as in like 4-5 year olds) all stopped and stood at attention, facing the flag. Even those of us in the pool did it. It was just a neat experience and made me proud to be an American.

4th of July

Not too much exciting has been going on here lately. I'm still working at Hammer Williams part-time, with no word of when that will be ending. They've been giving me quite a bit to do, so hopefully they see that I'm somewhat useful.

Still no word on Mark's training. We're not really expecting to hear anything anytime soon anyway. Mark was going to try to start on his master's but decided against it bc he doesn't want to get stuck in the position of finishing IFF, moving and being in RTU all while working on his masters.

My friend Jessica taught me how to use my sewing machine some. We made a pair of pajama pants together and then I made 2-3 dog bandana's and I'm working on my first skirt. I really like sewing, but it's still really challenging for me I don't understand everything on the patterns yet. But I'm getting there. Hopefully this skirt will turn out somewhat.

My parents are here for the 4th of July, with their 2 cats and Golden, Maddy. I haven't seen Maddy in 3 years - she used to be my dog. It's weird to see her again. And it's really funny to see her with our weinas.

This is Maddy, the one on the right side is Zekie, and the first one is Elsie.

Here's a pic of Ollie's Wylie Coyote impression. He had 2 bug bites on his nose. Poor guy! =)

And just for good measure, here's one of Mark and me when we got back from our big trip to Europe.