Peace out 2009!

2009 has come and gone! And it has been a year filled with wonderful adventures! From Cally's birth to a first deployment, we have laughed and cried and now we just wait, wait for the deployment to come to an end to start 2010. But in the meantime we continue to have fun and Cally continues to grow and learn new things. We are still in CO, hanging out and spending time with family and this year for New Years we went to an Argentine restaurant for some delicious authentic food and then downtown to watch the fireworks. It was really cold so we didn't stay out long but it was fun nevertheless. Here are a few pics of our night. Happy New Year's everyone! May all your dreams come true in 2010! This is gonna be a good year! I just know it!

"Peace out 2009!!!"

Feliz Navidad

Christmas is finally here and we had a great time celebrating this wonderful holiday! My sis and the rest of her family decided to drive up from Yuma last minute and it was great having them here. Cally had so much fun playing with her cousins and the house was filled with noise and chaos, just the way it should be during this time of year. My mom cooked up an amazing Christmas dinner followed by a delicious apple pie and ice cream. After a family game of Taboo we topped off the night by opening up the Christmas presents (our tradition is to open presents at midnight instead of Christmas morning).

Mother and Daughter

The Family...minus Zane ;o(

My momma, the best cook

Danny, Mikey, Klay, Nick, Katie, and the ghetto snowman

Celebrating Katie's 7th birthday!

This was Cally's first Christmas and it was so fun to watch her open her presents. She especially enjoyed ripping up all the paper, she loves doing that! It was a little bittersweet, however, since Zane was not here to share that moment with us. But even with him not here, I still got to open presents from him! Always so thoughtful! Thanks babe for my awesome gifts!! I love them, and I love you even more!

Cally's gift from Mike and Erin!! Thank you!

My sis stayed for about a week and during that time we got to hang out, catch up, and go out to a few games. Here's some pics of us at the Avalanche Hockey game and the following night at a Nuggets game. Loving those box seats!!!

From Zane

I got these few emails and pictures from Zane recently and wanted to share them on the blog:

"Here are some pictures I took during a run of some MIG 21s and 25s. The first MIG -21 is parked in the palm grove for some reason. The palm trees are in an oasis which is the site of one of Abraham's wells, a biblical site. The other jets are out in the desert in the Iraqi part of the base. I've been passed a few times by Iraqis in vehicles wearing black ski masks and mounted machine guns. I'm not 100% comfortable with it. One of the weird things about these jets is 1; why are they there, and 2; some of the labels and are in Russian and some, if not most are in English (including cockpit gauges). One instrument panel will have both english and russian writing."

"This is me on my first HAC flight after sticking a complete brown out landing on the Jordanian border with 12 troops on board plus my crew. We don't usually have to land on unprepared surfaces but there was a 53 (which we later escorted the dash two home) broke down on the pad so we had to land in the dust."

"Me flying dash 2 with a CH-53 as dash 3 over Bagdhad."

9 Months Old

Another month has come and gone! Month 9 is here and Cally continues growing and learning. She has mastered crawling and pulling herself up and has advanced to walking around while still holding on to a coffee table, chair, or whatever other object will do the job. Her balance is alot better and she has learned to put her hands out in front of her to prevent a face plant and also how to slowly sit back down from a standing position without falling straight back . Her personalty is shining through and we have discovered that she absolutely loves music! Every time there's a song on TV or the radio, she starts to move around while smiling and laughing. She loves to dance and it's so fun to watch her! She is starting to imitate alot more and will attempt to clap her hands or wave when someone does it to her. She roams the house and gets into everything! She has now also discovered the stairs and this has become her new favorite thing to play on. Any chance she gets she will climb them. When I tell her "no" she looks back, smiles and attempts to climb them faster while mischievously laughing. Although super adorable now, I hope it's not a sign of what the future has in store for me...haha. I'm surprised how quickly she's learning things. It's really amazing. But I'm more surprised that she's already 9 months old! She's growing up so fast!

My HAC!!!

Today Zane completed his HAC check ride (flight test) with the CO and passed with flying colors! He is now officially a HAC!!! HAC stands for "Helicopter Aircraft Commander" which means he is now the one who is in control and must make all the decisions while flying. To become a HAC you must complete 500 flight hours as a co-pilot and then go up against the HAC board. In this board he is asked just about every question in the book, not only about how to fly the aircraft but also every little maintenance tid bit, as well as tactical/warlike situational questions. This is a huge accomplishment for him and I couldn't be more proud! Congratulations babe! You never cease to amaze me!