Lazy Days...

So with John working 5 on 2 off, or worse 6 on 2 off, and me working 5 days a week it's been a little crazy around here! But I saw D (short for Demon) chilling out the other morning and just had to grab a pic.



He look so happy and content....and least someone around here is having a lazy day!

Santa Fe International Folk Art

As you can see from this picture that is where my mom and I went last week before she left. Apparently they hold this once a year, and it was pretty cool to attend.


This should have been a sign that when we got there the line was about 4 blocks long, and for those of you that know me, this is hell. I am not a good line persons...or have much patience!


Once inside I think there were about 150 booths of different countries from around the world. In each booth they had at least one person from that country, and of course crafts made from that country. This girl was from Morocco!


This was the Hatti booth. The knight and horse you see are made entirely from beads!


This elaborate headdress was in the People's Republic of China booth.


I LOVED these little boxes....can you see why? I believe they were from the Ukraine booth. It was interesting to note that the Ukraine, Russia, Uzbekistan and a few others, all had the same feel and type of art work, since they were all former Soviet countries.




This was the Uzbekistan booth and if you looked closely at the pictures they were very similar in design to what was painted on the boxes from the Ukraine.



This was from the "Folk Art Festival" booth. It was like the gift shop of the Market!!



One of the hundreds of hanging designs that adorned the tents.


They even decorated the trees!


Over all I am glad I went, despite wanting to kill people and run them over after a while (again not a patient person). However my biggest complaint is that most every thing was WAY overpriced. I bought 3 things; one was a Frankincense burner from Oman (which I tried to take a picture of but my camera and I are not agreeing right now). I bought a necklace from Tibet that is supposedly "good luck," and a small purse from Pakistan. All together I spent about $35 and that is only because I would buy things that weren't a completely rip off. If you notice in the picture from Uzbekistan there are paintings hanging, I would LOVE to have one of these however they charged about $3000 for one. I am quite certain I can buy round trip airfare there, plus the painting for that price (and no that's not using ZEDS). But I suppose it is Santa Fe after all. Everything would have been half the price if it would have been in Albuquerque!

A Castle.....in New Mexico?!

As you may remember John and I went to Las Vegas NM last week and we discovered a Castle!! One of the next pictures has some background info on the castle in it I won't go into a ton of detail other than it was built in 1885 by some guys from Chicago, it opened and closed a few times. It was one of the only places west of the Mississippi that had electricity and burned down...3 times I think! It is now the home of the United World College, and the castle is one of the dorms!!

So this wasn't actually in the castle, it was in the prism building which was really cool! All the "windows" are prisms and there are rainbows all over the room!!


Castle from the road!


Fireplace in the main room when you come in the door.


I thought this was a cool picture looking out the window in the dining room to another part of the castle.


This was the fireplace in the main dining room. It was made to look original. The castle was vandalized and in 2000(ish) the college spent 10 million to put it back together the way it was.

This is what used to be the "Ladies Lounge" back when it was a hotel.


Again the main room when you walk it the fireplace is at my back.


Stairway upstairs, we didn't get to go there as it is dorm rooms!

Circle of Airports!

So....long story short. John finished IOE on Friday night at 9:45pm, so we were never sure if he would get a schedule for the weekend or not, so we checked it every hour for 3 days, to make sure they didn't sneak something in. Turns out he never got a schedule and didn't have to work on the 4th, which was a nice surprise!

So today we figured it would be best to play it safe this morning (after all he did have the holiday off) and off he went to LAS this morning. Once there he talked to the company and found out that he didn't need to be back until Thursday! As you can see from the circle of airports that PHX was today's airport of choice to connect at. Yes I am from the Midwest and end sentences with prepositions. So now John is home until tomorrow night :)

Las Vegas...New Mexico!

Since John actually had 3 days off, and my mom is here (so she can watch the animals) we decided to do a one day trip to Las Vegas...New Mexico!


We had driven by Las Vegas a lot on the way to Denver, but never stopped, besides to get gas. So off we went! After exploring a while I decided I LOVE this town. There is tons of history and these pics are from the train station, which I love and (if you couldn't tell) was recently renovated.


This is the La Castaneda Hotel. It was built in 1898, and is next to the train station as it used to be a stop over hotel for the train passengers. This was by FAR my FAVORITE place in Las Vegas. If you look closely in the window you can see a Bud Light sign that is lit up.


This is what La Castaneda looks like from the train tracks.


This is another view of the hotel from the back.


This is the bar inside the La Castaneda. Remember there was a neon Bud Light sign in the window? The rest of the hotel is closed and the bar is only open from 3pm-8pm. The lady who owns it has owned it for 40 years! She used to have a restaurant open and the ballroom but said that the bar was the only thing that made money. It's now for sale so I felt lucky to be able to go in at all and chat with her, it was fascinating. I hope to get up there again before she sells and see if she will let wander me around the place it is 25,000 sq feet!


This is the hotel we actually stayed in the Plaza Hotel. It was built in 1882 and was very interesting as well, but I think the La Castaneda was much more of a unique looking building.

Overall we had a great time and actually may be going back this Saturday, of course who knows if John will have Saturday off. Such is the life of a pilots wife, especially a pilot on reserve!

A Tail or Two..................

Two Allegiant Tails!

So this was John's first day flying the actually 80 and not the sim! His first trip was LAS-PIA (Peoria IL)...his old stomping grounds. PIA was actually where he got his commercial ratings so he figures he has come full circle. His CA was nice to take the picture then send it to his email so I could snag it out and embarrass him by putting it on here :) Over all according to John his first day was fine and he was glad he didn't bounce the plane like he did the first time he landed the RJ. He did say it was nice to only fly 2 legs and be done for the day, at XJT it was more like 4 or 5 legs a day! He has 4 more days of flying before he has a day off....welcome to reserve I guess!

Flying High..and Never Left the Ground; My ride in the Simulator!

After we were done in the sim. John made sure to point out the MD-88/87 on the side!

So I have been in LAS for the last few days, because I got to sit in on John's LOFT (line oriented flight training) which is a real time flight in the sim. A big thanks to the super nice people at the training center for allowing me to sit in on their LAX-LAS round trip! It was really interesting to get to see what John actually does, so many times as the wife of a pilot you NEVER get the chance to see your husband in action, because well..TSA..FAA..and all won't allow you in the jumpseat. There are special circumstances where they will, but they are few and far between.

So we started the trip with paper work; which takes a shockingly (is that a word?) long time. Then there were a few minor problems before take off, cargo doors being left open stuff like that. Once in the air (it was John's leg to fly) there was a "medical emergency." So I got to learn who they call, they actually have a Dr. they can talk to in flight! Then an uneventful landing, other than having the paramedics meet the airplane.

Then we had a brief break while John and his sim partner switched places, also bathroom break, and water break.

Back in the box with John was non-flying pilot and ran the checklists and switches while John's sim partner got pounded a little more though, loss of oil pressure, engine failure, had to divert, and do a single engine land!

I feel so lucky to have gotten to sit in on this "sim ride." I will have more photo's soon as John's sim partner took some but has yet to email them to us!