Granddad

My granddad, Rowe Howard, died this morning. He was 88 years old.

Granddad was a Christian, a father, a husband, a grandfather, a WWII veteran, and an Aggie. I know he was proud that Erin and I both went to A&M (even though I was a liberal arts major:) ) He was a really good, honest man who loved God and his family and always wanted to do the right thing. My best memories of him are visiting him and grandmother on the farm at Garner, where they lived for about 30 years. As a child, when I woke up early from excitement on Christmas mornings, granddad would already be awake, eating his oatmeal and drinking his first cup of coffee for the day. We got to spend a lot of time with them growing up, which was a huge blessing in our lives.

I am thankful that granddad passed away fairly quickly and did not suffer very much. I am also thankful that he had my wonderful mom to take care of him and my grandmother over the past couple years when they could no longer fully take care of themselves. I know they were both grateful for that too, and my grandmother still is. Granddad had a lot of people that loved and admired him, and we will miss him a lot.

I know my family would appreciate you keeping us in your prayers during this time.

Travel travails

Oh, me and my word play! As Chad would say, "You really cracked yourself up on that one, didn't you?" To which the answer is a resounding "yes."

Anyway, some of you have asked about my travel problems this weekend. Well, I had to catch a plane on Saturday to go to Lubbock. So my plane was supposed to leave at 1:50 Saturday afternoon and then I would fly to Albuquerque to catch a plane and then get to Lubbock at 5:20. Well, I got to the airport fine on the shuttle (I'll talk about that more later) notoriously early, as I tend to do. So 1:50 rolls around and there's still no plane at the gate. There are about 5 of us who are supposed to do this Phoenix to Albuquerque to Lubbock thing, and they call us to the desk. Never a good thing. We find out then that the plane we are supposed to be on at this very moment has not taken off from Las Vegas yet because of mechanical problems. A blessing in disguise, I suppose. I don't want to be on a plane that is having mechanical problems, because then I would be REALLY late to wherever I was going. Anyway so because we would miss our flight to Lubbock from Albuquerque if we waited for this first plane, they book a later flight for us (over two hours later) from Phoenix to El Paso to Lubbock. So now I will be in Lubbock at 8:30 because my layover is an hour in El Paso. Okay, so I get on the plane and we go to El Paso. We get there, and the five of us who are going to Lubbock walk to that gate. We let out a collective groan when this flight says it is delayed for over an hour! We finally get on the plane, and at 9:30, I get to Lubbock. Meanwhile, I rented a car from Enterprise when I booked my flight. They had a really great deal, but apparently, I chose the only rental car service whose desk closes at the Lubbock Airport at 8:00. Oh no! You say. Don't fret though; being the uber-planner that I am, I called Enterprise while still in the Phoenix airport to let them know the situation, and the nice guy at the desk says that since I'll be late, he can make a reservation for me with Alamo; he checked and it would be only a couple more dollars a day. So he does that and calls me back and says, "I made a reservation for you for Saturday through Monday." This is great, except I need the car until Tuesday. "I'll walk over and fix it," he says. "Okay, call me back if it is going to be a higher rate for Tuesday so I can make the decision," I say. No word, so I figure it's the same. Well, I get to the Alamo counter and it turns out that Tuesday is actually twice the price of the other weekend days, since Monday is still considered the weekend apparently. So the rental car ended up costing me more, but by the time I was finished with my 12 hour traveling day (during which time I could have driven to Lubbock), I was a little too tired to care. Exciting huh? Not really, but hey, you asked!

Speaking of the shuttle...this was an interesting experience. Sometimes on the shuttle to the airport nobody speaks the entire time (as was the case on my way down there) and sometimes you can't get anybody to shut up (the case on the way back, when I really could have used a nap). I got to listen to a radio station that played nothing but muzak, courtesy of the shuttle driver, and I got to overhear 3 people's mp3 players...quickly becoming one of my greatest pet peeves. The worst part though was the sounds I could hear of the couple in the background who were kissing every once in a while. Just plain nasty.

Has everybody else had enough yet? Stories like these, although not the worst thing that can happen to you in the world, make me glad I don't travel for a living. I'm glad I don't have to go anywhere for a while (I don't think).

Smartie

Well, I hate to brag about myself, but I don't mind bragging about Chad. In case you guys didn't know, he is very smart. I thought he was going to post this himself but he hasn't yet so I'm doing the honors. Anyway, on Wednesday Chad took his Flight Paramedic Certification test and passed with flying colors! He said it was the hardest test he had ever taken, but he had been studying for weeks so I'm really glad that he passed the first time...it took a lot out of him! I know most of you are thinking, "Well of COURSE Chad passed!" but I know he was nervous because the tests are so hard, and they have to get a pretty high score to pass (one of the tests requires an 88%). This makes him a Certified Flight Paramedic. Many people do not pass this test on their first try because it is so difficult. I'm proud of you, Chad!

Good Job

We got another call yesterday! Things are slowly picking up for us despite the bad weather (we flew in light to moderate drizzle yesterday) We transported a very cute little baby. So here are some more pics of me at work...hope these aren't boring all of you.

Me and Janelle






So tiny







Kristi our lead pilot







Probably doing something SUPER important

The irony has not escaped me...

...that schools in Texas (even southeast Texas, elevation 1/2 inch) were closed last week, some for days, because of snow, ice, and other abnormal winter conditions. Was it cold here? Yes, in the single digits. Did WE get snow days? No...we are called the "high desert" for a reason, and the precip passed us by. But we ARE high, and they keep saying there's a good chance of snow in the "higher elevations," "high country," etc. on the news. I looked at the weather, and for this week we have three days of a 60% chance of snow.

If any of you know me well, you know I love a snow day just as much as any of my students. Chad and I have interesting reactions to the snow: when it snows, I don't go to work, and I am happy. When it snows or is icy and he goes to work, they can't do anything, and he is not happy. Well, Chad works two days this week, and both of these days it is supposed to snow...so I guess we will be keeping our fingers crossed for different reasons.

Please don't remind me of Murphy's Law and the fact that if I really want it to snow badly enough, it won't. Also, please don't remind me that I used to refer to Murphy's Law as Newton's Law, which is in fact something entirely different and actually scientific. This mix-up is proof positive that teenagers do NOT know everything.

One more thing...two blog entries in one day dictates that there will probably not be much blog activity later in the week, so I don't want you guys to get disappointed at the lack of random thoughts.

Happy birthday to Emily, Bonnie, and Matt B., who all had birthdays in the past 7 days. That's it for now!

Our weekend

Random weekend happenings...

We went to Jerome (a little artsy ghost tourist town) to go to a place called the Haunted Hamburger on Saturday. Best onion rings we've ever had. Worth the drive. We went to the antique stores in Prescott and Chad bought a cast-iron skillet...he'd been looking for a good one for a long time. Still in search of one with the corn molds for cornbread. Went to church on Sunday. Had roasted chicken with cheesy potatoes for dinner. Back story about the chicken...every time they are having one of those really good deals on whole chickens at the grocery store I buy one. This one was a little over two dollars...for an entire chicken! As Josh would say, AWESOME! Anyway, I roasted it all day in the crock pot, then we're cleaning up and Chad says "let's dissect the heart, it'll make good pictures for the blog." Well, I got out what I thought was the heart and also the liver. We dissected the liver first and let me take this time to say if you eat chicken livers you are gross, and that is not up for discussion. Then we dissected what we thought was the heart but it turned out not to be. Thus, no pictures of dissecting chicken parts on the blog. I know you are all disappointed. I was hoping to receive "Return to Oz" from Netflix on Saturday but I guess it's coming today. Remember that creepy movie from the '80s? Yeah, they don't really have it at any video stores. I can't wait to relive the creepiness.

That's all for random weekend happenings. Chad is meeting with his prof at school today because he is the TA for his last class that he has to take at the college. He is teaching a class in Cottonwood this afternoon to some firefighters, I think. That's it for now.

More work Pics

We woke up last Sunday moring to a surprise snow storm that came through. The bigger surprise was that we got launched for a call (we got cancelled enroute though)

This is all the snow we kicked up when we took off.

The artichoke: a mystery wrapped in an enigma

Last night, for the first time in my life, I cooked an artichoke. I have to say that I figured it would be very good because I love artichoke hearts on pizza and in salads and whatnot, but I had never had a whole artichoke and I must say I was a little nervous about cooking one myself. So last night, I got out my three favorite cookbooks and read in each of them how to cook an artichoke. They all said something different, so like any good cook would do, I combined all three instructions just to make sure I covered all my bases. So I washed and trimmed the leaves and cut down the stem and top leaves like it told me to do, and away I went. Let me just say the cooking was the easy part. Once I got it out of the pot, I set it in between Chad and me to share (this was not the only thing we were eating for dinner!). Chad at first looked at it and said he would not try it, but I finally coaxed him enough and he said it was good. I have never been so confused as to what part of a vegetable I should and shouldn't eat. I know you are supposed to scrape the meat off the bottom of the leaves with your teeth, but I think I did something wrong because there wasn't much meat to scrape. Then, after all the leaves were gone I took out the stringy stuff (the choke, apparently?) and what was left was the heart, I think. I couldn't quite figure out the whole thing, but I think I will be trying this again because I liked it. So, is there anybody out there who reads my blog and is good at preparing artichokes that can tell me how to eat it? Until I figure out a different system, I guess I'll just be buying the already prepared hearts in the jar.

Cold and dry

Well, it's cold here (it's been in the single digits most nights for the past few days), but it's dry. I heard on the news last night from our weatherman that Texas is getting "hammered" with weather. I am trusting that my family in Texas is staying inside and avoiding the icy roads.

Also, I had some technical difficulties when adding Erin's new blog link to my page, and now it appears to me that all my links are at the bottom of the page and I don't know how to fix it. Blogger is more difficult because when you are editing your template you actually have to type amongst the HTML code and I am never sure if I'm going to do it right or not. It's been 5 years since I've done anything with HTML code. Maybe I'll just change templates and start over again.

Chad has a busy week. He worked yesterday, is in Phoenix today for a class to study for the flight paramedic exam (will the tests ever be over for us?), Thursday and Friday he will be teaching a class for Wizard a few hours away, and Saturday he works again. All this while working on his senior project...what a busy guy!

That's it from here. I know it's pretty boring stuff so don't feel like you have to comment.

You ask, I deliver

So, there have been more murmurings about not enough posts and I was trying to think of interesting things to post about that I wouldn't mind the whole world reading. Here are a couple of other pictures we took on Christmas. I thought maybe someone would be interested in my new dishes. I love the colors and get excited about which color plate I am going to pick to eat on. Lame, I know. I loved my dragonfly dishes but they did not like being used so much. The bottom bowl is purple in case you can't tell. My screen is kind of weird so it looks black to me. The other picture is me with my new sewing machine. I'll let you know when I learn how to use it and actually sew something. I've got a "how to" book on its way to me. The last picture is of the new coat Chad gave me. It came in handy on our backpacking trip. Somehow I didn't get any pictures of Chad with presents, only video. And I can't do any of that fancy video uploading nor would it be very interesting.

bouldering

look at her go!!!! she's like a spider!!!

Backpacking

Keeping up

I guess I am now the person in charge of keeping up with the blog since Lesley is too lazy. Just kidding. It is our 3 year anniversary today. Lesley is working and I am starting to get sleepy since I was woken up at 4:00 for a call and haven't had a chance to sleep since. Any who......here are some pics, cause I know that reading blogs is boring. Some are from San Diego, our backpacking trip, and then others are random. Enjoy.

We're back

Well, it's been a while. You'll notice there are no pictures in this post. That is because I left the camera & cable in the car and I am too lazy to go get it, and it is too cold. So you'll see pictures later. Here's an update of what we have been doing the past couple weeks. Chad worked 48 hours Monday and Tuesday of last week, and Wednesday we went on a 16 mile backpacking trip in the Juniper Mesa Wilderness. The weather was perfect during the day--sunny and in the 30s. You may think this is cold weather, but it was actually nice when we were huffing and puffing and the sun was shining on us. The really cold part was when we camped on top of the mesa at night and it got down to 11 degrees. The water in our Nalgene bottles was freezing as the wind was blowing. We snuggled in our warm sleeping bags in our tent, and I wore the new down jacket Chad got me for Christmas. Then, it was too hot. Hard to strike a happy medium! But, better to be warm and be able to get cooler than not to be able to warm up at all. The backpacking trip was fun except for the blister I got on each foot...the one on my right foot was actually on the bottom of my heel. I didn't even know you could get blisters on the bottom of your heel. Well, if you haven't gotten one of those, you haven't lived.

We got back from our trip and spent a restful few days at home. Chad worked Christmas Eve and came home Christmas morning. I had made breakfast, so we ate and then opened presents. Chad got a ton of DVDs and CDs and some gear, and I got a brand new sewing machine, dishes, CDs, cookware, and the jacket I mentioned earlier. We lounged around Christmas Day and took all our boxes & wrapping to the recycling bin (I couldn't believe how many boxes just the two of us accumulated for Christmas alone), and got ready for our next trip. The 26th we drove to Vegas to spend a couple days with Emily, Joey, Riley and Josey. It was a lot of fun to hang out with them, and our nieces are just adorable. Then Thursday we drove to San Diego to see the Aggies play in the Holiday Bowl, and we won't talk about that game. It was fun anyway, and we got to see the Aggie band play twice. As usual, the Aggies won at halftime even though we didn't win the game. Being there made me excited to go to even more A&M games when we get back to Texas.

And so now, I am in my classroom, planning what I will teach my students over the next 20 weeks. Looking at a new year is always exciting, especially this year for us and all the unknowns it holds right now. In the next few months we will know where we are moving, what our jobs will be, etc. Sometimes the thought of moving and getting new jobs is scary and daunting, but these next few months for me I think will be very exciting. Keep us in your prayers as we look at making some pretty big decisions...and look for pictures in the next few days.

New Pics

Here are some new pics of me at work. After 3 weeks of our base being back open we had only done 2 calls.....until yesterday. Yesterday the crew did two calls and today we have done one so far. The holidays are always a little less than happy for some, which makes them busy for people like me. Anyways, enjoy and be safe on the roads this holiday season.



P.S. No comments allowed about how funny I look in my hemet.


About to take off















Our pilot Bob flying us over some Indian ruins on the way back home from PHX.






























Me in the air betwee PHX and Prescott

Oh the weather outside is...

Snowing, kind of. As I sit here writing this post there are a good number of flurries outside, but they are mostly tiny little snowballs (think Dippin Dots, the ice cream of the "future") that really just roll off everything and don't stick. The weather is supposed to get a little worse tonight. We were going to go backpacking tomorrow but Chad is working instead so we will leave on Wednesday, for two days only. We both decided that 2 days is plenty in the cold weather. Tonight is supposed to get to 16 degrees...brrrr. Okay, the snow has turned into fat flakes now. My favorite.

Anyway, not much new here. I did get tickets to the holiday bowl where the Aggies will play the Golden Bears, which as far as I can tell do not really exist in wildlife. I have never heard of a golden bear. So it's the matchup of the two mythical mascots. Anyhow, they are ranked #21 and #20 respectively, so they are pretty well matched. It should be a good game. So this week we're backpacking, next week we'll be in Vegas and San Diego, and then we'll be back home to start work again. :( That's about it from here. I knew I hadn't posted in a while so here it is. By the way, look for some pictures from our trips in the next couple weeks.

the Element: off-road

Here are some pictures from the weekend before last. There is this historical Stagecoach stop that is about 20 miles from Prescott down windng mountain dirt roads. I have been wanting to check this place out ever since i say it on a Forest Service map right after we moved here. Anywho, we set out in the Element and had quite the adventure. Using only a less-than-detailed forest service map and a giant orange box of a car, we set off in search of Palace Station. we ended up a a few roads that, although they weren't labeled 4X4 only, they should have been. One was barely wide enough for Ele (our car, and niece i suppose) to fit through. The area was gorgeous. Its like having Blue Haven in your backyard. Well, we mad a wrong turn and ended up a mile frm the top of one of the major mountains in the area that has a fie look-out tower at the top. I bet you can't do that in texas (arkansas maybe). we decided that we didn't have any pressing matters at hand so we hiked up to the top. Afterwards, we realized where our wrong turn had been and we began our journey back towards Palace station. Shawn called my wife (as he often does) as we were leaving the top, which surprised me at the fact that we got such great reception. When we finally arrived we were greeted by a sign that basically said: Palace Station. Look at a distance but do not trespass. People live here. Please respect their privacy. After driving all day on these horrible raods we couldn't even explore. It was a cool trip anyway

That was one sharp curve. I'm glad I got insurance on the rental car.

The beautiful Lesley at the top of Mt. Union.

Finally

Here are the pictures we promised, although you probably don't care about them now.

This is Lesley when she was a pateint for a nightime scenario with the Wilderness Emergency Care class I was teaching this semester. She was ejected from a bus that rolled over on mountainous terrain. She landed on a stick which implaed her back and gave her a severly collapsed lung. She also had copious amounts of cold, wet blood on her back, and laid in only a t-shirt and jeans in 25 degree weather. Then my students took FOREVER to find her. I finally had to lead them to her (I was supposed to be in the van crash, but i was uninjured, lucky for them)

A close up of her wound.

YUCK!!!!!!

My wonderful students doing a great patient assessment on Lesley. (They have no idea that their patient is the teacher's wife at this point.)

Trying to get Lesley, who is now truly shivering, into a sleeping bag.

They are so serious!!

Test

The Aggies are playing in the holiday bowl. If anyone knows how I can get decently priced tickets please let me know!

Help

Okay, So I am actually ready to post pictures, but all of the buttons are missing above this window...in other words there is no button to click to upload pictures. Any help would be appreciated.