Christmas, Christmas Time is Here!!

The last month has been filled with one Christmas/Holiday event after another. We started out with the Civil Engineering Squadron Holiday party on the 12th. The event included centerpieces designed by each shop, good food, door prizes and lots of silly games. The officers’ table centerpiece was a set of K’nex-themed carnival rides including a working Farris Wheel. Our friend Jordon even won the paper, rock scissors contest (and about $100 cash). The Holiday party was followed up with a Squadron bowling day on the 17th. Our team won a cool trophy for the highest overall score. Even our friend Pat’s girlfriend Laura got in on the fun too. She had been on the island for about 4 hours before she was recruited to our team! The next day brought the Kid’s Breakfast with Santa. All of us with no kids were recruited to help with crafts and games. Chris helped the kids make ornaments, and I helped them frost gingerbread cookies. Santa (our friend Rob) rode in on the fire truck and handed out presents to all the kids in attendance. We had Christmas with the immediate Larsen family that night via the magic of Skype. It was almost like being in the same room as everyone in South Dakota, except we missed out on the prime rib dinner and yummy dessert that Matthew and Jessica made.

In between events, we took advantage of some beautiful weather and explored the areas along the ocean near base. We also went to Angra one night to check out the light display put on in the downtown area. The lights really make the city sparkle!

Christmas Eve was spent taking the dogs for a walk along the ocean as it was in the mid-70’s! Ha, ha to all of you who were buried under snow and cold! We went to church and then opened gifts from each other and a couple odds and ends from family. I got a new lens for my camera and Chris got surfing lessons at a little town about an hour north of Lisbon. Guess that means I’ll be planning another vacation soon!

Christmas Day started out with brunch at our house for several of our friends. We had big pancakes (crepes), egg bake, caramel rolls, and fruit salad. It was way too much food, but it was still fantastic. After a short nap, we headed over to our friends Steve and Jill’s house. Jill’s family was here from Colorado, and her mom and grandma cooked us a wonderful Christmas dinner!

We rounded out the Christmas season by Skyping in to the Schriever family Christmas gathering at my Aunt Beth’s house. It was a little more difficult with 15 people on their end, but it still worked out well. We got to see and talk to everyone, and we got to watch everyone open their gifts. Chris was a little jealous because they were going sledding, but when I reminded him that it was 3 degrees there, he was less upset.

We may decide to send out Christmas (or, really at this point, Valentine’s Day) Cards sometime soon. For some reason, that task just didn’t get done this year. Oh well, there are worse things! As usual, check out the new pictures in the pictures tab.  Until next time… stay warm!

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year...

Thanksgiving marks the start of one of my favorite months (okay, so it’s really like a month and a half) of the year! This year is turning out to be no different! Here are a few of the things that make this the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…

Thanksgiving Dinner: We enjoyed hosting our first “grown-up” Thanksgiving Dinner. I cooked a turkey (another first), mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. The turkey was AMAZING… not sure how I’m going to live up to Chris’ future expectations of my turkey cooking skills now. Our friends brought sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and chocolate pecan pie, plus lots more. We ate, played Wii games, watched football, and ate some more. It was a great day!

Christmas Decorations: Chris and I spent a cold, rainy afternoon, putting Christmas lights up on the house. Of course, the day before and the day after were sunny and beautiful… typical! At least we weren’t putting the lights up in the snow. I also did some decorating on the inside of the house and put up my most favorite decoration – the Christmas tree. I try to convince Chris to get a real one whenever possible. This year, we fall firmly under the “not possible” category. There are trees available on the island, but they make Charlie Brown’s tree look amazing. Thank you to Misty for your foresight in knowing that we would need a fake tree at some point in our lives and giving us one for our wedding. You are a genius!

COOKIES: I had my first of three cookie exchanges last night with the CE spouses group. It was a blast! I made sugar cookies and had lots of fun decorating them to look like snowmen and Christmas trees. I didn’t realize when I started exactly how many six dozen cookies was, but I sure understood when I finished baking and decorating.

Shopping: Chris and I sent a few island treasures to Mom and Dad before Thanksgiving, but the rest of our family’s gifts were purchased and sent thanks to the wonder of the internet. I spent about a day in my sweat pants with a cup of tea shopping, comparing prices, and trying to figure out how to get Amazon.com to gift wrap some interestingly-sized items. I wasn’t completely successful with the gift wrapping venture, so sorry if your wrapping is a brown box with a packing slip for a card!

Snow: Snow?? On the island? Well, maybe not exactly SNOW, but this is the closest we are going to see! It hailed/misted ice today. It looked like snow on the ground for about 37 seconds before it melted!

We are going to try to start our Christmas letter soon. Maybe we will get it out in time for Christmas, or maybe it will be more of a New Years/Valentine’s Day letter. We’ll see!! In the mean time, check out all the new pictures of what’s been going on at our house. Hope you are all staying warm wherever you are! Until next time…

Inside the House

So, I spent several hours late last night working on this page because I couldn't sleep - again. I'm finding that not having to get up in the morning is making it really hard for me to actually get up at a consistent time. This is not good for my ability to go to sleep at a normal hour at night. Oh well, it's not like I need to get up for anything in the morning. Hmmm…I think this is where the vicious cycle starts all over again.

You, however, benefit from my lack of sleeping. I finally got the entire house clean all at one time this weekend… go me. I also got pictures taken of said clean house. Here's the grand tour for your enjoyment!

I am going to start the tour at the front door. We have used the ‘living room’ for the entry way and a small sitting/reading area near the window. Our couches and TV ended up in the ‘dining room’. All of the wood furniture as well as the small arm chair are government issued. I love the tables and the entertainment center. I’m trying to figure out how we can take them with us when we go, but everyone has told me "no", so far.

Next up is the ‘family room’, which is really the dining room… not sure who labeled these floorplans or how the envisioned them being used. All the furniture in here except the bar chairs are government issued and will be coming with us if I get my way! I never realized how functional furniture could be until I had things like a china hutch and a buffet table. I have apparently been living under a rock for the last 26 years.

Finishing out the first floor are the kitchen, laundry room, and a bathroom. The kitchen is small, but surprisingly functional, as long as I’m the only person in the room. I’ve been trying to teach Chris some cooking basics, but it gets tight with the two of us in there at the same time. Cooking lessons have been going pretty well. Chris even made lasagna when we had friends over the other night. He got rave reviews, so hopefully, that will encourage him to try something else!

Now, we move upstairs. There are three bedrooms, a study, and two bathrooms.

The first pictures here are of ‘Bedroom #3’ and the ‘Study’, respectively. We decided to use the Study as a bedroom for our smaller bed because I wanted ‘Bedroom #2’ for my office/craft room.

As I mentioned, ‘Bedroom #2’ serves as my office and craft room. It has lots of room for my desk and the hotel conference table I use for sewing, gift wrapping, scrapbooking, etc. At least, I tell myself that’s what that table is for. I haven’t actually used it for anything other than gift wrapping yet. This room has the best view of the ocean! Can’t beat working and seeing the ocean at the same time.

This is the guest bathroom.

The last room upstairs is ‘Bedroom #1’ – our bedroom (and the attached bathroom). We have great views of the ocean from our windows, lots of light when we actually open the shades, and nice big closets. Although, they must not be quite as big as the one we had in Wichita, because we are having a little trouble getting everything to fit!

Hope you enjoyed the tour! The entire house album plus a few extra pictures is under the pictures tab, in case you want to find them again later.

It is a beautiful day out today, so I think I am going to go work in the yard. A big shipment of plants and yard materials is supposed to be available on Thanksgiving Day, so I want to have a good idea of what we’ll need by then.

In other news, Chris gets both Thursday and Friday off this week for Thanksgiving (seriously, they don’t ever work around here). We are having a group of our friends over for Thanksgiving Dinner. Wish me luck as I attempt to roast my very first turkey. Hopefully, it won’t kill anyone!

Packing the Car Video

What is this?  Another post so soon after the last one?  We are going to get spoiled if things keep going like this!!  Don’t worry, it probably won’t happen again.  I finally beat our video editing software into submission today and finished the “Packing the Car” video I promised a couple months ago when we started this crazy journey.  We video taped ourselves loading up our car the morning we left Kansas for our half-cross-country trip to Baltimore.  Dad, I would like to thank you for teaching me how to defy the laws of physics by allowing two objects to occupy the same space.  There is no other explanation for how we got everything in the car :).  See the video below… Enjoy!

Poor, Sick Husband

Chris has spent most of this week fighting off a terrible cold/cough.  It was bad enough on Tuesday that he actually went to the doctor.  The visit to the doctor resulted in a prescription for Codeine and a couple other random medications.  Unfortunately for Chris, Codeine does nothing for him.  It doesn’t even knock him out properly so he can get some sleep.  So, he’s been getting rest when he can, and I’ve been doing “quiet” things around the house.  I got the office unpacked and put away and even had time to clean out our overgrown file cabinets.  Why didn’t I do that before we moved, you ask?  Mostly, because I had a full-time job then and very little time to mess with things that could be put off until later.  I guess this is later.  Chris did manage to drag himself out of the house for a Star Wars marathon at Steve and Jill’s house on Thursday in honor of Veteran’s Day (we are a strange bunch, I know).   Until next time…

Shopping in Angra

Because Chris never has to work a full week here, we had a free day on Friday to do some touring of the island. We decided to drive to Angra, the largest city on the island and check out the shopping. We were on a mission for Christmas gifts!

The morning started off incredibly foggy making it very difficult to get to Angra – maybe we should have taken it as a sign and stayed home! Our first stop was at Megaloja, a Wal-Mart type store, where we picked up some awesome party hats for our friend Alyson’s birthday celebration. We also ventured into a home improvement store and an electronics store called Radio Popular, located near Megaloja. The next stop on our list was the “big” Modelo. Modelo is a grocery store that also carries some non-grocery items like pet supplies and a very good selection of books (random, I know). There are two on the island, one in Praia, near our house, and one in Angra.

We spent the next hour or more driving around Angra trying to find Modelo before finally giving up. Every road we tried turned us around and took us right back to the city center, so we decided to just go with it and browse the smaller shops in downtown. The trip into downtown was somewhat successful… I have been looking for a bookstore since we arrived, and we found two located within just a couple blocks of each other! They are now marked in our GPS so we can find them back later. We weren’t able to find anything else that really jumped out at us for Christmas gifts, though. :( We did walk past a Poinsettia tree (yes you read that correctly, tree!). Anna – you told me these existed, but seeing them in person was too weird.

While in the city center, we stopped and had some pizza cones for lunch. They were basically slices of pizza rolled into the shape of an ice cream cone. They had a lot of cheese and not a lot of anything else! We walked along the ocean while we ate our cones to wind down from the craziness of the city and our drive around it.

We decided to give finding Modelo one more try before heading back home, mostly defeated. On the last round-about before our turn to home, we saw a HUGE sign about 20 feet off the road. How we missed it the 4 other times we’d driven by that morning, I’ll never know! The “big” Modelo lived up to all the hype. The store was fantastic and had a better book selection than either of the actual books stores we stopped at, in addition to a lots of grocery items that aren’t available at the Modelo near our house. Very handy knowledge when the Commissary on base is open limited days and hours.

The rest of the Christmas shopping had to wait until Saturday, though, because we were exhausted by the time we got home at 4pm! We were much more successful on Saturday. We ended up at a shop I’ve been in many times, so I knew going in what I was going to get. The best part of the day was when the shop owner insisted that he wrap all of the gifts we bought. Be prepared for the FULL Portuguese gift experience, strange wrapping included!

More pictures have been posted in the ‘Pictures’ tab. Check them out. I have also been looking into doing a Mediterranean cruise (not sure of the exact route yet). So far, I have found cruises by Holland American, Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Lines. Anyone have any experiences, good or bad, with these companies? Any thoughts on why type of room you would recommend (do we want one with a window/balcony, or is not worth the extra money)? Any thoughts on the shore excursions offered by the cruise lines?

Halloween

First things first… I have completely redesigned the website (hopefully, you noticed something was different when you opened it up!). All the pictures are now under the pictures tab at the top of the page. I have also added an “About Terceira” page. This page has a map of the island, information about the weather, and a Google Maps image of the location of our house. I will add more to this page as I come up with fun things you need to know about the island.

Now for the other stuff…

I go from having nothing to talk about for a month to having no time to post about the things that have happened in the last week alone!

Most of the excitement this week was from the Civil Engineering (CE) Squadron’s Halloween haunted house. The squadron transformed an old dining hall building into a seriously scary haunted house over the last month and spent Wednesday thru Saturday nights last week scaring the pants off all sorts of unsuspecting people. The CE Officers were in charge of creating and manning one room in the house. We made a big maze out of black plastic sheeting hung from the ceiling. Then, four of us scattered throughout the maze and did our best to scare people. It was a long and tiring 4 nights, but it was a ton of fun.

After we finished working in the haunted house on Saturday night, I got to attend my first official “Club” function. We weren’t dressed up for the costume contest, but there were plenty of amazing costumes to look check out anyway. The winner of the contest was dressed as a Transformer, complete with working headlights. His costume was amazing.

Along with the haunted house, the spouses group sponsored a Halloween themed bake sale. I made orange and black brownies and little witches’ broom cookies. The brownies were easy, but the witches’ brooms were a lot of steps and a lot of work. Good news is that making them kept me out of trouble for most of a day!

On Tuesday, I braved the local outdoor market to get some produce that hasn’t been on a plane for the last month to get to me (all our food comes from other places via Germany – weird). The produce I bought was wonderful, so I think we’ll need to make the market a weekly outing. I also decided to brave the fish market for some fresh fish. We are on an island in the middle of the ocean; I shouldn’t be eating frozen fish! When I walked up to the fish table, all the fish were whole – fins, heads, eyes, everything! I thought to myself, I can Google this when I get home if necessary and figure out how to clean and fillet a fish. What I wasn’t expecting was that they would scale and cut the fish into steaks right there at the table. I went home with the whole fish (yes, I still had the head and tail) all cleaned up and ready to cook. I am planning to grill it tonight for supper, so we’ll see how it tastes. Hopefully, wonderful!

Chris gets tomorrow off (because they don’t actually work here), so we are planning a shopping/exploring trip to Angra. Supposedly this is where all the “big” stores are. We’ll see how it goes.

I'm Back!

All right folks!  The "every day is totally new and picture-worthy" stage of our move is officially over.  Because it's been almost a month since I've had a crazy adventure to post about, I figure I can talk about whatever I want to now :).  For those of you who have been impressed with the quality writing I’ve produced thus far (all 2 of you), you may want to stop reading.

Our furniture finally came about a week and a half ago. I've spent most of the time since then unpacking and trying to fit all of our junk into various closets around the house.  Let's just say I really miss our huge master bedroom closet in Wichita!  It’s almost all put away, except the bathroom, the office, and Chris’ side of the closet.  That’s his problem… not mine.

In addition to unpacking, I've been channeling my inner '50's housewife and donning my frilly apron for lots of baking, dinner making, and cleaning.  Seriously, I did all three this afternoon while wearing my apron (It's practical - don't knock it).  I stopped after I finished Swiffer/mopping our tile floors and just rolled my eyes at myself.  Then the timer went off, and I ran to pull the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies out of the oven.

Once I get everything put away, and our house isn’t a maze of boxes anymore, I’ll put up some pictures of the inside.  I’ve gotten a couple requests for inside pictures, but we just aren’t there yet.

In other news, I’m thinking about planning our first big trip off the island.  I posted on Facebook for suggestions, but if anyone has any ideas for places (in Europe – no, Kansas and South Dakota don’t count) that would be good to visit between now and the first of the year, let me know!

Until next time… 

Bull Fight, Fence Installation, and More Island Tours

Sorry to those of you wondering where I wondered off to for the last couple weeks.  We finally moved into our house on base two Fridays ago, but we didn't get the internet hooked up and actually functioning until Friday.  Lots of fun stuff has been happening since then.  Here's the run down:


After looking at many houses off base, we finally decided that on-base housing was the way to go.  Base housing has a great location, a great view (we can see the ocean from almost every room in the house), American-style appliances and electricity, and a yard for the dogs.  We got the keys on the 17th of September and had our small, unaccompanied baggage shipment delivered that afternoon.  The dogs got to come home from the kennel, and I finally had a kitchen again after going nearly 6 weeks without!!



The dogs love the new house.  Roxie likes to chase lizards in the back yard, and both dogs have decided they need to keep watch over the front of the house from up on one of our tables.  Silly dogs!  

When we first moved into the house, there was no fence in the back yard for the dogs.  We went to the Self-Help office, picked up the necessary materials and construction requirements, and filled out some paperwork.  Because the Americans are tenants of the Portuguese Air Force on this base, any construction has to be approved by the Portuguese Air Force.  So, we waited a couple days for approval and got to work.  Of course, we over-engineered it just a little bit.  Pretty sure you could drive a truck into the poles now that the concrete is hard. 

On Wednesday, September 22nd, the Lajes Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) chapter took a tour of a local wind farm.  The wind farm is made up of 6 wind turbines and can supply up to 20% of the power for the island.  Construction of several new turbines is scheduled to start this year.  When the project is done, the island will be able to receive up to 40% of its power from wind energy!  Wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power are the main sources of electricity for most of the islands in the Azores, as transporting and storing fossil fuels on the islands is very expensive.

The week ended with the Civil Engineering (CE) Squadron's end-of-summer picnic.  We grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and played rediculous games against the other people in Chris' Squadron.  We had beautiful weather and lots of fun.

On Saturday the 25th of September, Chris and I went on the Outdoor Recreation Center's "Tour of the Northern Coast".  This tour included a trip to a local vineyard and winery, as well as stops at a folk museum, a church, and a basket weaver’s shop.  We finished the day out with lunch at a local restaurant.  The vineyard was very interesting because the grape vines on the island are not grown on a trellis as they are in other areas.  Instead, a 1'-2' think bed of lava rocks surrounds the plants, and the vines grow on the ground over the rocks.  The rocks absorb heat in the day and release it as night, helping to regulate the temperature of the grapes.  The wine typically made from these grapes is a green wine.  Chris and I got a bottle hoping that it would be really green.  It wasn't... it looked like white wine, but it tasted good.  One our way home from the north side of the island, the tour van got stuck in our very first "cow jam".

Saturday the 25th was a busy day for us.  After our tour, we joined our friends Steve and Jill for our first bull fight!  We found a nice high wall and waited for the action to begin.  For this type of bull fight, a long rope is tied around a bull and 12 men are positioned at the middle and end of the rope to help keep the bull under control.  The bull is then allowed to run up and down a long section of a local street.  People (usually just one or two crazy ones) run up and try to touch the bull or wave something like an umbrella at the bull in an attempt to make it chase them.  Then, when the bull gets too close, they jump up on one of the walls lining the streets to get away.  All the bulls wear round protectors on the ends of their horns to help keep people safe, but I still wouldn't have wanted to be any closer then we were!

Most of last week was spent talking to the cable and internet guys and filling out paperwork all over base.  Friday night and Saturday were spent decorating for the CE Haunted House and hanging out with our new friends.  There are new 7 CE officers and spouses about our age with no kids.  We spend a lot of time with each other and always have a great time. 

This weekend was also Doggie Days at the base pool.  We took Sam and Roxie hoping that they would be really excited to be in the water.  Turns out, neither of them like being in water when they can't touch the bottom.  Chris dragged both dogs out to the middle of the pool just to see if they could swim.  Sam did a great job, but Roxie's technique could use some work (watch the viedo below).  We gave up on the swimming after a couple of attempts and just let them play with the other dogs. 

This week we are looking forward to getting our car and possibly the rest of our stuff.  The boat with our car was supposed to come in this morning, and there are rumors that our household goods are on the same boat.  If that's the case, I will be up to my ears in boxes by the end of the week.  It will be so nice to have everything in one place again!

Hope everyone is doing well.  Drop us an e-mail or post a comment to say hi, and be sure to check out the new photo albums on the right!

Island Intro Tour

Today we took the official "Welcome to the Island" tour.  They loaded 24 of us newcomers up in a bus and took us on an all-day tour around the entire island.  We had seen many of the tour locations on our own travels this past weekend, but we certainly got to see new places as well.  The base puts together lots of day trips to see many of the sites we only had time to drive past today.  We will be signing up for as many of them as we can before winter sets in.  I think the highlight of the tour was the fresh swordfish for lunch.  The restaurant we ate at overlooked the fisherman's docks where the fish is brought in every morning.  The sword fish was only a few hours out of the ocean and it was fantastic!  Take a look at the pictures and read the captions to take the tour for yourselves.

Finding a House and Other Rites of Passage

I can hardly believe we've been here for over a week now! This is going by so quickly. Chris has been working diligently all week to in-process the base. I have been doing the handful of random things around base that I can actually do without him (like getting a library card!).

Typical one-way street

Our big adventure for last week was finding a place to live. We looked at base housing (nice, but everyone told us the really great places were off base). Then, we scheduled a tour to look at off-base houses. We drove around the island while Tony, our driver and translator, told us stories about growing up on the island. We looked at 5 houses, all very nice places, with nice yards for the dogs. But... with tiny little ovens, no dishwashers and no heat. We were willing to make to with these less-than-desirable items until we borrowed a friend’s car and drove 25 white-knuckle-crazy-driver-filled minutes from base to the town of Biscoitos, where the houses were located. The picture to the right shows a typical one-way street.  The only difference between this and the main, two-way roads is that there is more room to kind of pull off the street to park.  Not that any of the locals actualy pull off the street to park.  Let's jsut say driving here is insane.  After Chris made the drive to Biscoitos a few times, he decided the large houses and yard weren't worth it. We would need to find something closer.

He spent most weekend calling rental listings closer to base and setting up tours. Unfortunately, every place we looked at was missing some big item that we needed. In the end, we decided that base housing offered the best of everything we were looking for. We move in on Friday!! It's been almost a month since I've been able to cook an actual meal. I am sooo ready to have a working kitchen again!

While we were driving all over the island looking at houses, we made a few pit stops to check out the local scenery. Our stops included another swimming hole in Biscoitos. This one was much more extensive than the one we went to last weekend. We didn't get in this time, but the water looked freezing - still. We also stopped at a few scenic overlooks along our drives. The coast line of the island is very pretty!

Cochorrao Especial

Last night, we took our first dive into the local culture. Praia da Vitoria, located about 5 minutes from the island, is hosting a car show all week. We decided to head downtown and check it out. We drank a beer in a local Mexican restaurant (don't ask??) and watched the police drum corps march past on the street to open the festivities. Then, we walked through the car show tents. Mom - I think we found your old VW in green! We were amazed by the size of the classic cars on display. Even in the 60's European cars were much, much smaller than American cars. We checked out some new cars too. Again, much smaller than American cars, but just as expensive.

We also decided to check out some food from the local street vendors. We ordered a 'Cochorrao Especial'. It turned out to be a hot dog on a giant bun with sautéed mushrooms and onions, shredded carrots, corn, ketchup, mayonnaise (no one here believes in mustard), and tiny little french fries. It was interesting to say the least! The show runs all week and is supposed to have go-kart races, street car races, and other activities. I'm sure we'll be back into town to check it out!

New to the blog this week:  More pictures in the 'Island Pics' album, captions for all the pictures, a daily island forecast (it automatically updates most days), and a map of the island with some of the hot spots labeled.

Let there be Internet

As you will notice, I posted several days worth of updates today.  We finally have access to the internet in a location where we can use our laptop.  Have fun reading about the last several days, and look for more updates to come!

Indroduction to the Island

Jet lag is brutal. Especially when you've committed to a 10:00 am church service. For those doing the math, that's 5:00 am central time. Needless to say, we weren't all that ready to get up when wake-up time rolled around. Steve and Jill (one of Chris' fellow CE officers and his wife) invited us to attend contemporary service at the base chapel with them and then offered to show us around the island afterwards.

Church service was interesting to say the least. However, we were relieved when Jill looked at us later and said that was the strangest service she'd ever been to on base. We'll try again next week and hope for something more along the lines of normal!

After church, we went to lunch in downtown Praia de Vitoria. The food was good, nothing too out of the ordinary yet. After lunch, we drove around Praia and over to the neighboring town of Porto Martins. The roads on the island are very windy and narrow. We are very thankful that our Honda is small! On the drive, we were nearly hit by a crazy person trying to pass when they really shouldn't have been passing. Thankfully, Steve is an awesome driver and managed to avoid the crazy guy.

The four of us went swimming in one of the ocean-side swimming holes in Porto Martins, following our tour of the area. The swimming hole is created in a natural inlet along the coast. The inlet is dammed up with rocks so that at low tide, no water from the ocean gets in, but at high tide water from the ocean can get in and clean out the pool. The dam keeps the waves in the pool to a minimum even at higher tides, so it's a nice place to swim any time. These pools are supposed to be the best places to get into the ocean as most of the island is surrounded by very steep cliffs that make access to the water nearly impossible. We had a good time swimming, but we didn't stay for too long - the water is COLD! Chris is thinking a wetsuit will be necessary before he gets back in the water. I'm thinking that might be a really good idea too!

We are sooo not in Kansas anymore!!

We are FINALLY here and it is AMAZING!!

Checking into the airport this morning was a little bit of a challenge with the dogs, but we eventually got them and ourselves loaded into the plane. The trip was only 4.5 hours, not the 7 we had been expecting. We flew over nothing but ocean for about 4 hours of the trip, but we did get a pretty neat view of our island as well as a couple of the adjacent islands when we landed. (See the new photo album to the right for pictures of the island).

We were greeted at the airport by what seemed like the entire base. Every squadron that had new people arriving sent a group to pick them up. The group from CE consisted of all the officers and a couple of their wives. Everyone was very welcoming and so helpful in getting all of our luggage (and dogs) picked up and loaded into various vehicles. We dropped the dogs off at the kennel and our luggage off at our hotel room and headed to the Major's house for more introductions and a round or two of poker.

We didn't get a chance to look around the base much as it was getting dark by the time we got all our luggage loaded, but what we did see looked even better than the pictures! I can't wait to see more tomorrow.

On the Road (Day 4)

Nothing too exciting to report for today. We drove to Baltimore, picked up our rental car from the Airport, and drove to the port to drop off our Honda. We had a few minor issues at the port (like 1/4 tank too much gas that we had to drive around and burn off!), but after 3 hours, it was checked in and ready to load onto the boat. After the port, we drove to the hotel and did a whole lot of nothing for the rest of the day. It was SO nice not to be in the car all day!!

Tomorrow is the big day. Wish us luck!

On the Road (Day 3)

Day 3 of our journey was by far the most picturesque portion of the trip. We started the morning driving up the Shanandoah Valley in Virginia. We took a scenic detour onto the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway for a few hours. The Parkway runs parallel to the interstate, but is located near the top of the mountains rather than in the valley. There were lots of scenic overlooks for pictures, and the dogs enjoyed the chance to stick their heads out the windows for a while. There are lots of pictures in the photo album.

We took a quick detour into West Virginia about noon before heading toward DC. West Virginia looked exactly like Virginia, but I guess that's to be expected when you only drive 2 miles into the state!

Our hotel in DC was great. Although, someone needs to explain to me why the nice, expensive, hotels charge you for every little thing (internet, breakfast) and the cheap ones give it to you for free. Shouldn't it be the other way around?? Anyway - our hotel was located about 2 blocks from the National Mall, so we took the dogs out for some sightseeing. It was 95 degrees and humid, so we didn't make it as far as we would have liked. We got to see the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial (from far, far away), the White House, the Capital building (also from far away), and several of the Smithsonian buildings. Not too bad for just a couple hours of walking. We discovered a bonus to our hotel when we got back from our walk - we got to watch the sun set behind the Washington Memorial from our hotel room. Pretty cool!

On the list for tomorrow... the last 45 minutes of driving Baltimore, shipping our car, and re-packing our suitcases for the flight on Saturday.

On the Road (Day 2)

Day two of our trip took us all over the south-eastern US. We started the day with a walk on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. The campus was beautiful, and the dogs enjoyed the exercise. We drove through Tennessee and the Great Smokey Mountains to Asheville, NC - home of the Biltmore Estate. Unfortunately, you can't see any part of the Estate from the gate, and we weren't going to pay $50 each when we only had an hour or so to spend there. The gate was pretty though??

Next, we detoured through South Carolina (check out the pictures for the giant peach-shaped water tower we saw!) and back up into North Carolina, before ending the day in Roanoke, VA. On the list for tomorrow - Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, a quick drive into West Virginia, and then, an afternoon in Washington, DC!

I have never been to Washington, DC, so I am very excited to take a nice long walk around the National Mall with the dogs. Chris and I are both REALLY tired of driving, but we only have a few more hours to put in tomorrow!!

On the Road (Day 1)

After a weekend of tearful goodbyes, today was finally our day to hit the road. We packed WAY too much stuff (and our dogs) into the Honda, said goodbye to our house, and headed east. Twelve hours, five states, three McDonald's stops, and two tanks of gas later, we arrived in Nashville, TN. Check out the photo album to the right for today's highlights.

The dogs did great - they slept the whole way. Now, I just need to figure out how to get away with sleeping the entire trip tomorrow. What do you think Chris?

A million thanks to Derek for the heads up on pet-friendly-hotels.net. If you ever need to travel with pets this website is awesome!

Tomorrow, the plan is to cover the Carolinas and the Virginias. We'll see how far we get before we can't drive anymore.

On a side note - we recorded the packing procedure this morning, and I had every intention of editing the file into fast forward for you all to see. Turns out that is a lot of work, it's late, and I'm tired. I am hoping to get it edited during some of our travel time - keep your eyes open.

The Countdown Begins

Only one week (give or take a day) until we hit the road for Lajes. We recently found out that instead of a leisurely 6 hour plane ride from Wichita to Baltimore, we will be taking a 25+ hour, 1700 mile drive. Commercial airlines won't take pets as checked luggage if it's over 85 degrees, and we just aren't willing to take that chance. We might be a little bit crazy, but we don't want to take this trip without our dogs, Sam and Roxie.


The route is all planned out... Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virgina, Virgina, Washington, DC, and, finally, Maryland. We could have done it faster, but what's the fun in seeing places you've already been? This route checks six states off our "too see" list. Can't beat that!