Fun on the boat!

Yesterday we had a fun day out on a local reservoir with our neighbors, the Hendersens, who were so kind as to invite us to tag along with them in their boat. It was a lot of fun and we're plenty sore enough to prove it.

CJ Paradise

On Friday we went to Leonardo's Discovery Center here in Enid. It's basically kid heaven where everything can be 'hands on' and nothing is breakable (for the most part). It's a big warehouse where there are all kinds of interesting science experiments, cultural and historical activities, animals, mazes, painting, pottery, aquariums, moon rocks, etc... We even got to see a small boa constrictor catch and eat a mouse, it was cool! And everything is geared towards little kids and having fun (the snake show is of course geared towards us bigger kids).
Oh, and for Les and Janie, they even have a miniature Post Office.

Welcome To Enid, Oklahoma!!

Sorry it's been so long since we've updated the blog, but it's been a busy couple of weeks.
Since last time we've packed up our home in Milton FL, moved into our new home in Enid OK, and unpacked and situated all of our stuff; along with a bunch of in-processing stuff that had to get taken care of. A lot of things have happened while getting from there to here, such as wearing the wrong color shirt in Mississippi and getting offered drugs, blown tires, mysteriously-vanishing-churches, and bad movers with slippery hands who tend to drop things!

Storytime:
Before we left Florida we contacted the housing office here at Vance AFB in order to see how long we would have to wait before we could get into a house. They told us that there were lots of homes available and that we should have no problem getting into a house right away. Excellent, right? Well, when we actually got here they changed their tune and said that we would probably have to wait as long as 3 weeks to a month before we could get into a home, which meant that we would have to live in a 1 room hotel room for that period of time. Well it didn't take long before we noticed that CJ was having a pretty rough time in that situation. The daily temperatures were well over 100 degrees (sometimes 112 ish), way too hot for CJ to play around outside, and the small quarters of the VOQ (our hotel room, or visiting officers quarters) were not conducive to the energy levels of a 16-month-old. Another depressing thing about the house wait was that it meant that the movers would have our stuff here before we get a house, meaning that it would all go into storage (more man-handling which usually means more breakage), but what could we do?
Well on Wednesday morning (19 July) about four days after we arived at Vance, Laura got a call from the movers saying that our stuff was in town and they needed to know where to put it. Laura had to tell them to put it into storage. After that conversation Clay came home from in-processing and while Laura was telling him the depressing news, the phone rang again; this time it was housing telling us that a colonel had just called and decided not to live on base, so if we wanted a house right away, we could take it.... We took it. We hurried and called the movers and got them to deliver our stuff. So within a half hour we had a house and had our stuff to go in it. Heavenly Father definitely has a hand in all of our lives.

Welcome to the USS Alabama!

Click on a picture to made it larger!

Yesterday we decided to head to Mobile and check out the USS Alabama; an old WWII battleship. It was awesome to be able to see how big the ship was and how everything was put together. CJ had a blast running around and trying to turn every knob, climb every ladder, and basically try and get the battleship running again from what we could tell. He is definitely a boy. Anything mechanical is what he wants to get his hands on. Even here at home when dad was out getting the tow dolley ready for the move, CJ was right along side with dads wrenches, trying to unscrew everything from the lug nuts to the tire stems. He's a lot of fun.

Just a Little CJ

We just got off our walk earlier this morning and shot a short clip of the little "Bubba".

A Fun Day out on the Blackwater River

Yesterday the Ward Crew had a fun time hangin' out with the Morrisey's, the Baileys, and the Mayhans out on the Blackwater River. We rented a 12 person party boat and went out for a couple of hours and talked, looked for alligators (unfortunately for Clay none were spotted), and dodged sandbars. A couple of those sandbars snuck up on us and we ended up paying for a new prop. Anywho...what can you do? Nothing, so we still had fun boating around with a half-busted prop! After the river we had a picnic and enjoyed one another's company, as well as the Bailey's watermelon.

Selection Day!

Well, the end has finally come (at least this end here at Whiting NAS...there's still a long ways to go yet in pilot training). Clay finished his last set of formation flights on Tuesday, and we found 0ut on Thursday that our next training aircraft is going to be the T-1 Jayhawk. So in the next couple of weeks we'll be packing up the Ward Mansion and shipping it to Vance AFB, Oklahoma for advanced training. Fun, Fun, Fun!