Darn that lucky gnome . . .

In April Kristen took a trip to Poland for her yearly orgy of shopping and estrogen with all the other wives from the squadron. Actually, truth be told, Kristen was the orgy organizer this year and, no suprise, the trip went great. She came back with, and I'm not exagerating, SO MUCH POTTERY I COULD BARELY FIT IT ALL IN OUR CAR. I would normally be critical of such excess but as I mentioned in a post a few days ago, we're about to go on a trip to Burgundy and I have a feeling my keeping my mouth shut about her shopping in Poland is going to pay big dividends. This picture is of Kristen and the travel gnome the squadron wives take on all their trips.

Vegas baby!

We took a short break from traveling for a month or so before I left on a 2 week TDY to Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, in March. The course was purely ground training- no flying but Kristen came out at the end and we started a two week trip to the states with a long weekend in Vegas. We had a great time. Nellis has something we call the "petting zoo" which is a park of enemy weapons systems you can crawl around on and sit in and, in our case, take pictures with. Kristen is on top of a Russian made SA-8, which is a short range surface to air missile system. We spent lots of time having fun on the strip (and winning at casinos!). We also went hiking in Red Rock Canyon- awesome time. From Las Vegas we flew down to Texas where we got to see all of you! Writing this blog, I realize that we didn't take a single picture with our camera while we were in Texas. Kristen says its really hard to take pictures and eat chips and salsa at the same time, and we were doing a lot of chips and salsa eating.

January in Turkey

So, after Paris last Christmas with Meredith I left on a 4 week TDY to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey. I flew a viper down on the 6 hour or so flight. This is a picture taken by one of our guys on the tanker of me while I was being refueled over the Mediterranean. The TDY went fine with lots of night flying. I learned all about Turkish food out of necessity and have been able to share some of that knowledge with Kristen and my mom while she was here- if you ever have the opportunity to try Tava I highly recommend it.

Coleman here- sorry we have been totally neglecting our blog. We've got a lot of catching up to do. Since Christmas travels with Meredith I've been to Turkey (again), Kristen has been to Poland, we've been to Las Vegas, Paris, Nuremberg, and the Bavarian Alps. It has been an eventful spring and Summer. Following Kristen's recent recovery and my early return from the states we are planning a trip to Burgundy and Alsace to do some wine-tourism. So, don't give up on us yet. Keep checking here for rapid fire updates and lots of pictures from the past several months.