A Presidential Visit, A Sledding Misadventure and Other Randomness

Sorry to say that this post will be without pictures (insert big sigh here). Clayton took the camera to work last week and he went to Vegas this morning for this week and I still don't know where my camera is.. He took it to work last week to get a picture of Air Force One on the tarmac at Elmendorf. Yep, you guessed who our mystery guest was last week in AK. Mr Prez himself. It was his first trip to Alaska and he got off AFO during a refueling stop to "rally the troops". A two hour stop apparently constitutes a visit to a state even though those Facebook quizzes say you can't count a state as visited if you just were in the airport for a layover... anyway, I guess when you're the president, you get to make your own rules.. Anyway, there was much pomp and circumstance at EAFB concerning this visit, you can imagine. It turns out, they actually used the 525 (Clayton's flying squadron) hangar for the staging for the speech. Maybe you all didn't know, Clayton flies F22's so the 525 hanger actually stores F22 jets (weird, I know).. which the President's advisors promptly had removed (insert sound of a record being scratched and brakes being applied squeakily). Oh, and the president also wouldn't sign anything that had an F22 logo on it. So all those pictures, t-shirts, hats that had F22s on them, right, his aides informed the pilots he wouldn't sign them. Oh, and the F22s that they made the maintainers move from the hangar, they replaced with an F15 that is headed to the bone yard. And let me also add that Clayton's butt was in the alert shack (F22s on 24 hour alert to keep the Russians in check).. and there were 2 F22s flying air-support during Barack's (I'm going to call him by his first name, we're all equals here in AK) visit.. BUT, by all means, make sure the man isn't photographed with one. WHAT?!?! I digress.. He said some nice words about military families and blew other assorted smoke up people's hind-ends. I think people enjoyed lining up for his kool-aid. I mean, it was a historical event and I'm sure my kids would have appreciated the opportunity to see a real live president had I not had other plans that day. (I guess the logic for the advisors, let's lay blame where it is due (snicker, snicker), is that one of Barack's first acts as president was to effectively kill the F22 program. Forget about the billions already spent on the program that he wasted signing off on the bill...again, I digress. I guess he wouldn't want to appear hypocritical being photographed with or around an F22).

UGH!! I thought I'd feel better after the rant but I don't. Now I'm going to post a picture of us as a family.. we're not ashamed to be photographed with an F22.

And here's another one of Clayton who is not ashamed to FLY and F22 let alone be photographed in one.

(please don't let my irritation offend those of you who are big fans of his.. really, I respect the office and all that.. I do. I was just (and am obviously still) VERY ANNOYED by the behavior of his advisors..who speak for him)

********onwards and upwards*********

So we've got some snow.. and we're sledding. Clayton took the kids one evening last week and they had a great time. So good, in fact, that Kara's dinner prayer went something like this: "Dear God, thank you for this wonderful day. Thank you for my friends and my good day at school. Thank you for our food. Oh! And thank you for my awesome crash. Amen." I guess when Clayton was "launching" Kara down the hill, he ended up launching her off the sidewalk and she ended up sailing off a 6 foot "cliff"/retaining wall onto our street. Sweet! NOT!! We're thankful she wasn't hurt and we've spent much time reviewing how that is not awesome... My sweet little adrenaline junky.

Clay-Clay is good, too.. he's a hoot. He found out his friend Ryan's mom is pregnant and asked us how you get pregnant. I told him that God gives you babies. Fortunately, it satisfied him (for now). UGH!!!!

The kids and I are on our own this week, as mentioned above. Sadly, it's been below zero and is predicted to remain that way for the week. I'm sorry, but just like 115 is hot, anything below zero is cold. We've got the proper cold-weather gear but it just doesn't cut it when it's that cold. I went for a walk this morning and I forgot how unforgiving frost on the upper-lip can be.. in other words, I will be waxing my lip tonight or I will never live it down once Clayton gets home. Ah, the joys of arctic living. Wish you were here :)