Maya

Our puppy!

Before we went to Ohio, we got in contact with a family that was breeding their yellow lab with their relative's cinnamon colored golden retreiver. The puppies were born on July 8, and when they were 9 days old, Morgan picked out our puppy. She was a cute, cuddly, lazy, and non-whiny pup, but she's quickly changing all of that. We couldn't take her home until she was 6 weeks old, but luckily that was right after we got back from Ohio. Anyways, so after we got back and picked her up, we found the name Maya very cute and fitting. So we have our first new addition to the family--a little furrier and scratchier than most people's family additions, but a cute one nonetheless (and she's WAY more potty trained than all your babies)!

Here's a pic of her on the ride back home:

And after we got home:

Here's one from her first pool party--apparently the water seems pretty cold!

And this is one of our favorite pictures:

We'll make sure to continually take pics and everyone can watch how she grows!

Ohio

Engineers in the Air Force all go to training up in Ohio, and Jason was scheduled to go July 27. We decided to drive up (so Morgan could come along) and left on Saturday the 25th, stopped in Sweetwater, Tennessee for the night, then drove the rest of the way on the 26th. So we made it up here to Wright-Patterson AFB and are living in another hotel room for almost 3 weeks--woohoo. While Jason is in classes all day, Morgan has become addicted to reading. When she gets into her groove, she reads about 1 book per day! One weekend, we got to visit Morgan's relatives Katie and Gary, who live near Cleveland. We also had an awesome trip to Cedar Point Amusement Park. On the drive back, we had to visit Brandon & Stephanie and their kids. What a great family! We also visited Savannah, GA, and had some amazing pizza at Vinny Van Go-Go's! (Sorry, no pics on this post)

Alabama

Well, as we finally post again, we regretfully admit that it has been a while. Sorry. But we've gotta get our quarterly blog post up now! Actually we'll do it in sections--or states... So here goes. So Jason did graduate from ASBC training in Alabama, and his flight ended up winning the Icarus tournament. (Icarus is the "dodgeball on steroids" game invented just for ASBC...it's crazy!) The flight had a great support from the cheerleaders/spouses. Here are some pictures of the Icarus fun Jason had at ASBC. (The academic part wasn't nearly as fun.)

One weekend we went with another couple down to Gulf Shores and Fort Morgan. It was great weather and lots of fun! Our gorgeous beach sunset:

And cool mini crabs that could outrun us and were almost invisible!

The day Jason graduated from ASBC, we drove up to Birmingham and watched the new Transformers movie on the IMAX screen at the McWane Science Center. That was pretty sweet! We did make it to Warner-Robins, GA, and after living in TLF (Temporary Living Facilities--on base) for about 10 days, we got moved into a rental house. It should be a great home for us as soon as we can actually unpack.

Graduation, cross-country trip, and Alabama

Wow. We really thought we'd do better at keeping this updated but we've actually proven to be some pretty lame bloggers so far.

Here are some pictures of graduation and commissioning.

And now, here are two of the many faces of Ian--we were having a barbecue at the park.

After all the festivities were over, we got packed up (luckily the Air Force moved just about everything for us) and we set off on our cross-country trip for Jason's first training in Alabama. Here's a photo of our route. It's not very straight, but we did have fun along the way.

Jason has a great flight (one of the 2 flights whose members have brought their spouses) and we have made quite a few great friends.

That's really all we have for now. Hope to post again soon!

February is for lovers (even though it's March already--whoops!)

So we realized it had been a little while since we last posted. But January and February were quite uneventful. We have been kept busy with lots of schoolwork. Jason procrastinated and is taking 17 credits (in order to graduate), and Morgan has some pretty demanding online classes she'll be finishing up this week.

Here’s a picture of our fantastic play day with the 3rd and 4th graders… We went to the roller skating rink. Morgan was quite impressive on those roller blades. Her group won a competition and got sweet headbands!!

In December, right before we left on our vacation, we did get to spend a morning with the 4th graders on their ski lessons trip to Sundance. Though we didn't bring our boards this year, we had fun taking pics of the kids. Here are a the only pictures we got of each other...

On Valentine's Day, our stake had a party and we were partially in charge of taking pictures. So even though we were taking other people's pictures the whole time, we were able to get our own picture in a carboard cutout...it was pretty silly. Hope you like it too!

We really don't have anything else to report on. Jason got his preliminary final orders (is that an oxymoron?!?), and we're excited to get finished with the semester and move. Except for Morgan's kids--that is, the kids in the 4th grade this year where she's working, and the 5th graders (who were her 4th graders last year). She's gonna miss them a ton, but she's gonna be missed more, especially by those two boys with crushes on her :)

We had a great PI day on saturday! Jason is such a nerd, that in addition to the sushi party we had with some friends, we had to have pie on the 14th (the date is 3.14!). We had tons of fun eating sushi and talking with friends.

I think this is our realization that we need to post more than once every other month. We love reading what everyone else is doing, but we're pathetic at doing the whole reporting thing. So we're gonna work on that. Maybe once we get the hang of one post per month, we can move up to once every other week, to every week, and that's probably where it'll stay. But we're motivated to get better!

Here and there...and back again

Getting there We first had to drive down to L.A., which had great weather, but getting out of Utah was terrible. The first big snowfall started just as we were leaving, and we saw many bad situations: jack-knifed semis, a pickup with a trailer that was on its side in the median, and other accidents. We were glad to have 4-wheel drive, but the windshield wipers kept freezing and not wiping, so Jason had to get out and scrape off the wiper blades. It was crazy and slowed us down a couple of hours, but we made it safely. Cruisin' So we did get to go on our cruise down to Mexico, and even though there were some irritating things, we really liked getting away and enjoying the free time and the sun. It felt good to be warm, that's for sure.

We also really enjoyed the excursion we went on in Puerto Vallarta. It involved us joining a bunch of crazy people on a two-level catamaran and going out to the Marietas Islands. On the 1.5 hour boat ride out there, we saw several whales, and one even breached for us. We saw a bunch of spotted dolphins following the boat (surfing the wake) and jumping like crazy. Anyways, out at the islands, we got to go snorkeling and sea kayaking. It was great fun!

Christmas We spent the week of Christmas around Morgan's grandparents and other relatives in San Jose. It was good to see and have fun with everyone. This is a picture of our new ornament we picked up to remember our cruise and vacation. Hmong New Year We got to drive down to Fresno where Jason's brother Erik served his mission with the Hmong people. The week between Christmas and New Year's is when they celebrate Hmong New Year. They had the Fresno Fairgrounds chock full of booths selling anything and everything, and there were celebrations with singing, dancing, and even a beauty pageant. The most fun things were the taro bubble tea and seeing the shirt labeled "Got Sticky Rice?" New Year We spent our New Year's Eve in Mesquite, Arizona, en route to Provo. It was pretty uneventful, but we made it back to Provo just fine the next day. Jason's relatives Scott & Kirsten had all the family over to their house so they could all see Erik and he could see all of them. He was most surprised with Caleb and Lucas, as they are now 3 and 6 years old. It was fun to see everyone, and they were glad to see Erik. Wedding Reception Jason's long-time friend, Josh, got married on January 2nd. Luckily we had made it back on the 1st, and were able to settle down a little bit before driving up to the Salt Lake City area for Josh's reception. It was nice for Jason to see his old friends Matt, Josh, and Greg, as they've all been doing different things the past few years in different parts of the country. Back to school School started again and we were not prepared! Morgan's EOU online classes didn't give any ramp-up time, and neither did Jason's BYU classes. We had a rough first week, and have hopefully settled into a more established routine since then. It's been very cold recently-not nearly the comfort we had in the "cold" 65 degree California... but we're trying to survive!