My first chili trophy!

We had a chili cook-off two weeks ago at work as a fundraiser for our Wingman Day that we had today.  I entered the cook-off with a chili recipe that was part mine and part two other recipes that I tweaked and came up with one really good pot of chili.  I named my chili "Afterburner" because one, it was hot and would burn you afterwards and two, afterburner is an extra little kick of fuel into the exhaust that makes our girl go a little faster.  And be a little more badass.  :) 

And I got SECOND PLACE!!  My very first time competing in anything since I baked cookies for a 4-H fair in the 5th grade.  First place went to a coworker who is famous for his chili, Brunswick stews, pulled pork, you name it, Mr. Farrell can cook it.  He's won five chili cook-offs with that recipe, which was just meat and seasonings, true Texas chili.  He even has a team down at the Big Pig Jig down in Vienna (and today he invited Larry and me to come down there and be his guests in November!) and they've been cooking pork for over 20 years.  The man knows his stuff.  So for me to come in second behind Mr. Farrell in a chili cook-off was an honor and I was tickled pink!

We didn't have trophies or anything like that, just a certificate for the first place winner so my sweet Larry went and had me a trophy made.  He gave it to me today at Wingman Day so that I could show all my friends.  And I'm showing it here so y'all can see it, too.  If you read my blog, you're my friend.  Even if I don't know you.  :)

My first chili trophy.  I love it.

What we've been up to!

Another month is nearly gone!  We decided to take the month of January off, as in NO plans for the weekends, to just rest and do some projects around the house.  The holidays were so crazy and we were so rushed to go here and get that so we decided to have a peaceful, easy January and we have.  It's been so nice!

We'll kick off February with Ami's birthday and then start hitting estate sales again!  I'm so excited.  It's been a while since we went to a good one and I think my body's in detox!  I'm also looking forward to the Peaches to the Beaches yard sale in March, too, and maybe another trip down to Florida before summer.  Yay!!  Beach!!!

The Great Blizzard of 2016 proved to be a blink-and-you'll-miss-it dusting of snow around here.  Literally.  If your eyes were closed at 4:30 Saturday morning, you missed it.  I was up, excited to see something, so I let Banjo out around 4:45 to find everything outside covered in a fine snow dust.  That was enough for me!  I woke Larry up to come see!  This was our little patio table.  :)

It was all gone by 7:00.  The blizzard was pretty bad further north.  14 deaths were reported and some states got three to four feet of snow.  No, please and thank you.  The Good Lord knew exactly where to plant my feet!  I'll take my little powder-dusted table any time.

One of my January projects was to clean out my closet and dresser drawers.  I got rid of everything I had not worn since we bought this house and I was amazed at the things I still had!  I boxed up some 100 items and we took them to the Heart of Georgia hospice thrift store in Byron.  We like to go there not only because we find rare vintage treasures sometimes but because they do so much for the terminally ill and their families.  And it's all non-profit and volunteer.  They survive solely on donations.  We took a truck load of stuff up there and brought a few things back.  :)

Some of the things we brought back were scarves, hats and gloves that we donated to Chase The Chill here in Central Georgia.  We saw a story about them on Channel 13 about them leaving scarves and hats tied to trees in Washington Park for the homeless in Macon and we wanted to be a part of that.  We bought every scarf, hat and pair of gloves the store had and when I told the cashier what we were going to do with all those things, she had tears in her eyes and let us have them all for 29 cents a piece!  We met someone from the local chapter the other night and gave her a bag full.  We are going to be on the lookout for things like that at yard sales and estate sales from now on.  You can get scarves and hats virtually for free at estate sales.  No reason we can't try to make someone's winter night a little warmer.

We got this little plant stand at the thrift store that day, too.  It was a sad sight but I saw potential!  I saw a place for it on our front porch!  I think we paid $4 for it.  Larry painted it for me and gave it back to me today, as an early Valentine's present.

Here's the poor little thing before.

And here it is today!  All ready for a pretty pink pot.  :)  I love it.

 

I put together a Valentine's tea cart.  I don't have a lot of Valentine love stuff (crazy, I know, since we got married on February 13th!) and I hope to add to my tea cart collection this year.  Of course, I had to decorate with some Pyrex!  March 1st, the Easter cart goes up!  

I just love these vintage Valentine party napkins I picked up at an estate sale last year.  And my Beatles All You Need Is Love tablecloth that Brandy made for me years ago.  :)

My 1958 Holt Howard Cozy Kitty salt and pepper shakers are perfect for a love theme.  That little flea bite on his nose is adorable to me.  I thought about fixing it but it's just so dang cute!

I graduated from my Georgia Tech OSHA program last week.  They gave us a really nice ceremony in the ballroom of the Horizon Event Center at the base.  We had three guest speakers and we were presented with these beautiful certificates mounted in pretty wood and glass frames.  They also gave us a really nice Georgia Tech laptop bag and lapel pin.  

I'm back in my office in F-15s now after having been in the Commander's Action Group VPP office for four months.  It's kinda like starting all over again each time I come back "home" but we're getting there.  I'm going to start teaching some of this OSHA knowledge to my folks in the coming months.  We're undergoing a complete restructure in our squadron since Rewire is now finished.  I've had mixed feelings about that.  On the one hand, I remember how miserable I was when I worked there but on the other hand, I'm grateful for the things I learned (about the plane and about ME) and for the people I met and worked with "down the hill".  We had a lot of fun in spite of all of our challenges.  So I am a little sad about Rewire standing down.  It just seems weird that there will be no more F-15 rewire work done at Robins. The end of an era, so to speak.  Most all of the people are still with us, though, nobody lost their job over it, but there won't be any more running 27 MILES OF WIRE through that plane, clamping them down, stripping and then splicing them together to make that fabulous girl fly.  We'll be just fixing her now, fine-tuning her and adding technology to make her better.  I thank God every day for the opportunity He gave me when He sent me to Robins Air Force Base and for the doors He opens for me at every turn.  I can't wait to see what He's got in store for me next.  I know it's going to be awesome.

Come what May

Wow.  It's the 10th of May already!  Larry has been in Quitman a month already!!  He's doing great!!  Cooking, working, fixing folks' transmissions, wearing ties to church, growing a beard.  :)  He's working in their store down there Tuesday through Saturday and he cooks for the rest of the guys on Mondays, when the store is closed.  He has made fried chicken, baked chicken, mac and cheese, veggies and cheese, grilled cheese sammiches (He likes cheese.  A LOT.), brownies, cake, salads, just all kinds of stuff.  I am SO proud of him!!  And really looking forward to having him cook for me!  ;)

I officially finished school last Friday night with our graduation.  Yay!!!  I held on to that 4.0 GPA so I got to graduate with honors.  Never did that before.  Now all I need to do is get a copy of my transcript from the college, turn it in to the base along with my training folder, do a little paperwork and I'll be converted out of the co-op program and I'll be a WG-08 out there.  I've been working in the fuel pit lately since that's the last thing that I need to get signed off on in my training folder.  I worked out there last night actually.  And we had a wiring issue in a Cannon plug and it was cool to troubleshoot and find the problem.  It was also pretty doggone cool to sit in the cockpit and turn external power on!  If you'd told me three years ago that I'd be sitting in the cockpit of an F-15 and pressing buttons and flipping switches to turn power on the plane, I would have looked at you all crazy.  Do whaaaa???  But I do and I have and I DID.  :D

Mama and Daddy sent me the sweetest graduation card this week and Daddy even drew an airplane with a little girl on top of it.  That's my favorite place to work on that F-15.  The backbone, as we call it, or the wings, I like being on them, too.  I LOVE to just stand up on top of that plane.  It's still a little surreal to me that they are LETTING ME DO THAT.

Last weekend, I tackled our bedroom closet and even though I wanted to make it an even half and half, it's 3/4 girl stuff and 1/4 man stuff.  Still needs work, obviously.  :)  But!  He has four drawers in the dresser so I think we are good.  I'm not cleaning out or organizing a thing this weekend!  I'm meeting some girls from Central tomorrow afternoon for little hen party of sorts.  I haven't seen them since we left in March.  I have met and become friends with so many wonderful, beautiful, strong women over the years.  It takes unbelievable strength to live that life and love that man despite all kinds of obstacles, that I believe with all of my heart that God handpicked us all for it.  He had to.  I'm proud to call these ladies my friends.  And we are going to cackle like a bunch of hens come tomorrow.  I've missed them.

And Sunday is Mother's Day.  Gonna go see my mama and the rest of my family.  I'm really looking forward to that, too.  I'm gonna make a Hawaiian pie.  I got the recipe from a guy I work with and he said since his wife started making it, he hasn't had a birthday cake since.  He just prefers this pie.  I found a pic of it online.  It's crushed pineapple, bananas, coconut, Cool Whip and sweetened condensed milk with lemon juice, all smashed into a graham cracker crumb and butter crust and topped with maraschino cherries and pecans.  I can't wait to try it!!

I kinda fell off the weight loss wagon in March with all that TC/Wilcox drama mess that Larry and I went through.  When I'm stressed, I eat.  And I eat badly.  But I dusted off my butt and climbed back on May 1st and I've lost nine of the eleven pounds I gained back.  One step forward and two steps back.  Story of my life.  I've been losing a pound a day so maybe all eleven will be gone in the morning.  Or, rather, later THIS morning.  :)

So there we are.  All caught up again.  Thank you for stopping by to read about my life!  I want to do something special for my 50,000th visitor.  Have a little giveaway or something.  We're at 49,200 now!  All you'd have to do is leave a comment.  Virtually painless, right??  We'll talk more about that later.

Like a lion

It seems when I gave up Facebook for Lent, I also gave up blogging!  That was not intentional.  Larry and I have had quite the whirlwind month.  Lots of wind and crazy hair-blowing, that's for sure.  We are still on target but nothing ever happens fast enough, you know?  I'll just be glad to see this March GO.

I got out of my Antennas and Transmission Lines class with a 94.  I wasn't happy with that but it's still an A!  Seriously, though, that mess is hard.   

Yes.  Hard.  And mess.








We started our Microwaves and Radar class yesterday.  One more to go!  Fiber Optics and then I'm blowing that popsicle stand!  I will be finished with the electronics program!!  A little over three years to the date that I started.  It's been a long road but one that lead me to a job that I love.  I'm pretty crazy about that F-15, if y'all haven't heard.

It's actually spring and it's still cold.  I've been calling that blankety-blank groundhog a big fat liar cootie head for three days and NOW they're saying that he (that Southern gentleman, Punxsutawney Phil, is the one we go by) projected six more weeks of winter but they "misread his message".  Ya think??  Really, though, with the effects of global warming as severe as they are, can we really depend on what a rodent has to say?

Ami and Brian had a tree move in with them during that bad storm earlier this month.  Thank God only the house was damaged.  It could have been so much worse.  God had His hand on them that night!

So, yeah.  March has pretty much sucked.  Sunday is Easter and I am SO much looking forward to it!  I'm going to sunrise service for the first time in my life and I can't wait.  Then it's hamburgers, hot dogs and an egg hunt with the family.  

And then April will be here!!  Yay!!