We're Staying???

We are 99.99% sure that we are staying in Louisiana. Who would have thought we'd be so excited about that. The 20th BS (that's Bomb Squadron for the average person but you have to admit being apart of a BS squadron is pretty funny) is expecting him to work for them whenever he finishes his requalification. That could be anywhere from March-June of 09. We are looking forward to not moving for a couple of years. We've moved 7 times in 10 years. I am hoping we can only move 2-3 times in the next 10 years.

Nathan is the most excited about this news. He's tired of moving as well though he's a good sport about it once he makes new friends which he does really easily. Nathan can pretty much get along with anyone. I wish I had his ability.

I'm Batman

I know the picture is out of focus. (I'll have to talk to my camerman about that one) but Chris and I were coming into his game room to tell him it was time for bed and this is what we found. Batman watching t.v. I was a little surprised until the next morning when a power ranger showed up too. We had friends over the previous day for dinner and the two younger kids love to get dressed up. So the kids found all of Nathan's old Halloween costumes to dress up in. I had Batman, a Power Ranger, and Bat-Girl. The girl had made her "own" costume with Batman's cape. Pretty ingenius I thought.

Better Fettuccine Alfredo

I love Fettuccine Alfredo but just can't justify the calories so I was very excited when I rediscovered this recipe. It tastes just like the calorie laden stuff.

Smarter Fettuccine Alfredo

8oz. fettuccine, uncooked

1 1/4 cups fat free reduced sodium chicken broth

4tsp. flour

1/3 cup Philadelphia Fat free Cream Cheese Spread

3 Tbsp. Kraft 100% grated parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1/8tsp pepper

2 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley

Cook Pasta as directed on package

Meanwhile, combine broth and flour in medium saucepan. Stir in cream cheese spread, 2 Tbsp of parmesan cheese, nutmeg and pepper. Cook 2 minutes stirring constantly with wire whisk until mixture boils and thickens.

Drain pasta. Toss with sauce. Sprinkle with remaining cheese and parsley.

4servings, 1 cup each

280 calories/serving

TIP ALERT:

I make the sauce in the pan I cooked the pasta in after its done cooking and been drained. It saves on dishes and the sauce cooks up so quick pasta doesn't have time to cool down.

ALSO make sure you use SPREAD and not block cream cheese.

First Day of School

I know that the pics are pretty much the same but I don't have much else to blog about. School has pretty much taken over our lives right now. Nathan "gets" to wear uniforms this year. (that's something my Dad always said. You GET to you don't HAVE too.) He was not excited about that one at all. It seems to be working out okay. We had an Open House Sunday afternoon where we got to meet the teacher. Since there are 33 kids in his class there wasn't much one-on-one time with the teacher though. I cant believe how many kids are in the classrooms here. It's CRAZY!!!
He was a good sport about getting his picture taken. These are for future generations.The first day of school I took Nate to school but the bus picks up/drops off right in front of our house. AWESOME huh? We had to huddle in the garage today since it was raining. Something about the remenants of Hurricane Fey coming up to visit us. On the first day of school Nathan had spelling homework. He was suppose to write 25 words 3x in cursive. This is bad. In his previous school they didn't do anything in cursive. After an hour of him having a MAJOR tissy fit (and only writing 6 words) I lost my cool. (I did last an hour though before I went completely ballistic) What you have to understand is we live in a cave and all sound is hugely magnified. I guess I made my point heard though cause all belly-aching stopped immediately. I think I just hurt his ears to be honest.

He's funny like that. He can lose his temper but if Mom does it freaks him out. Why is it that patience doesn't work with this kid. He gets so spun up that he literally has to be shocked out of it. I guess me losing it was the shock value.

Science Center

"The wind up and the pitch...." I am thinking MLB contract! We could live very nicely on his signing bonus, he can keep the rest. He really did register 30MPH on the radar gun. Kid has a cannon! Yet one more exhibit that deals with flight. This one has a control stick that lets you fly the P-51 Mustang in the wind tunnel. It climbs/descends, banks left and right. You have no airspeed control but you get to feel what it is like to fly the plane.
Nate checking out what angular momentum can do for you. The wheel is a little small, it barely moved me around when I tilted it, Nate got a little more movement out of it than I did, of course my body mass is considerably more than his 50ish pound frame.
"Check out my arms, they're HUGE!!!" The pulley exhibit let you test your upper body strenght. This one had the least amount of pulleys so you were lifting almost all of your weight on just two of the pulleys. Should have brought the work gloves for this one.
All in all, we had a great time, caught an IMAX flick, The Grand Canyon, we sat in the second row, Kaye would have been sick sitting this close to the screen. As it was my neck was killing me at the end of the 50 minutes. Nate thought it was cool though.

Planes, Planes and Landing the Shuttle

The Sciport had an exhibit that let the kids, old and young make paper airplanes and then use the launchers that Nate is standing in front of to shoot the planes down a lane. The lane had hoops to shoot the planes through, if you were a "dead eye" and made it through the hoop it would light up to signal your success. It took a while to get the launcher down, but once that was figured out it was a lot of fun!

The picture below is of the Space Shuttle landing simulator. They had three different levels to play, novice, student pilot and no fear. Being the young aviation prodigy he his Nate immediately chose student pilot. After several attempts, its harder than it looked, Chris elbowed in for an attempt or three to try his hand at it. Got it on the third try, kissed the pavement with a sink rate of about 7 feet per second, the goal was 15 feet per second or less. Rolled out at Edwards AFB to a successful full stop.


This is one of Nates first attempts, it is at night making it a little more difficult, no visual references to see what you are doing other than the HUD (Heads Up Display) on the screen. Amazingly enough if you take the time and listen to the tutorial on the simulator you can actually land it with some practice.
Here you can see the HUD and the runway threshold markers as Nate comes in for an attempt. We almost got him on the runway several times, he just needed to be a bit more smooth on the controls.


Future Astronaut? Maybe!

Owl Pellet Dissection

After only three attempts and no cursing we will give this another attempt. Nate and I went to the Science Center today, the Shreveport Sciport Discovery Center. We had a great time and it got us out of the rain, first rain we'd seen in a while and allowed some together time. Not sure who had more fun, Nate or myself.
Nathan is disecting an owl pellet. I know you are thinking "Gross, owl poop!" Actually its owl vomit so its better?!?! They sterilize it before it gets handed out. The purpose is to see what the owl ate for its meal.

As you can see it had an animal of some kind. They had a chart that allowed you to try and figure out what the owl was snacking on. This is some sort of rodent, nothing more specific than that. You can also see the hair/fur that was part of the meal.

Picking through the pellet of the owl. You can see some of the bones etc. Spent about 20 minutes digging through the pellet (sounds better than vomit). Even got a ziploc baggie to take home and keep as a souviner.

Child Labor

Okay so this isn't really child labor. This one is just so you can see our new humble abode.

The child labor starts here. Nathan is wanting a aircraft carrier from Toys R Us. It's $30.00 and I told him he had to earn the money if he wanted to get it so...he's been buggin' us for extra chores. He gets an allowance ($4/week) but he needed around $15 more and he's not a patience individually. (have no idea where he gets that from) We've actually had a hard time finding things for him to do because we require he do some stuff as his weekly chores. He volunteered to clean out the car and Chris was so excited he didn't have to do it that he agreed to Nate $5. That's more then I would have paid but whatever.

I see his future High School job as a car detailer. He's a hard worker. Granted it's 8am and still 85 degrees outside but you have to up and at 'em here in the south otherwise you might die of heat stroke.

YIKES!!

If you can't tell what that thing is your must be blind. This is what we had waiting for us when we got home the other day. The Terminix man had come and sprayed and I guess this black widow didn't like the chemicals. Luckily it was outside though it was right in our front entrance way. You can't really tell but it's about the size of a quarter. Chris killed it with a piece of wood. It was squishy. Yuck-o!!!