Weekend Roundup

Friday:  We ran in a 13.1 relay on base.  We each ran a mile.  I actually got my time down to 9:30--I usually run about a 12 minute mile, so this was a huge accomplishment for me!

Saturday: One marathon of a day. It began with sleeping in. :) Then I ran and we got ready for our day. We had lunch at IKEA--a rather inexpensive and great lunch. After all of that, we headed to Clearwater to the "Festival of Trees" held at their rec center. It was darling. Each tree was decorated with a different theme--they were then auctioned off by Sunday to raise funds for various organizations. The most clever, in my opinion, was game themed. The mom and daughter team had made garland out of SCRABBLE pieces, made stars out of decks of cards or TRIVIA cards, and had filled clear glass balls with the houses from MONOPOLY and TRIVIA.

 There was also a great tree dedicated to Mardi Gras that I thought was wonderful!

 From there we stopped by the Hixon park, which is right next to the Tampa Art Museum.  It has this great installation of pinwheels made out of license plates, which are attached to bases in the shapes of states.  It's done by Michael Kallish and it's just great.

From Clearwater we headed back to Tampa for the Auto Show, which was located just down the street from us.  I've never spent five hours at an auto show.  It was enlightening and humbling because I had no idea what a brand new Lexus or BMW cost and now I do...and now I know I will probably never own one.  :)

The end of the night was lovely.  We had dinner at Columbia Cafe and walked back home.  This is a view from the bridge that takes us over to our "island".  It was a gorgeous night.

Sunday:  Church and rest  :)

October Highlights

Crazy, crazy month.  I was home for five days out of the first fifteen days of the month!  While home, we made the most of it.  We worked on the flag detail at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers game.  It was my first NFL game and it was a blast, even from the nose-bleed section. 

The big highlight came towards the end of the month.  Jason passed his promotion test, which now makes him a Master Sergeant!  He tested out-of-cycle due to his deployment, which also meant he could tack on his stripes soon after receiving his test results.  I got to "help" tack on his stripes, as is evidenced in the second-to-last picture.  :-)  One must uphold tradition!