Fire behind base housing...

Last night while coming home from running some errands we noticed a fire truck going down the service road behind housing. We've walked these paths a few times since moving here so we were wondering what was going on. We noticed smoke as we got closer to Korina so we went to check on some friends of ours who live on that street, Luckily they were fine. The fire was directly behind Laurel and Korina in the canyon behind housing. Our friends have one of the few back yards on Korina that has an unobstructed view of the canyon all the way out to the ocean. So we were able to watch as the firefighters were trying to contain it. It was pretty bad. Four homes on Laurel were evacuated last night they were allowed to return this morning. So far the fire has burned over 10 acres and moved away from housing. Hopefully this will be over soon.

Screen door...

As most of you know who have been stationed here at Vandenberg and lived in base housing a screen door is a must have. A neighbor of ours was nice enough to pass their door our way as they head out this week. Well, it's hung and I did it on my own yesterday. No small feet considering I've never done this before and I'm under 5'2". It went surprisingly well. Our house had been empty for close to two years when we moved in. We were told it was going to be in the next phase of construction but the plans changed and East housing is supposedly next instead. Our yard was in bad shape, brown grass, two very dead climbing rose bushes in the front and no flower beds at all. Slowly but surely it's getting there and for only being in the house since May it's looking good.



Notice Dobbie in the bottom left of the door.




Looking out...



Front walk way

Monday Morning/Braces update...

I am enjoying the calm before the storm. What I really mean is the girls will be up soon. This week shouldn't be to busy. M will be starting the dental work for her braces this week. She had the bands put in to space her back molars last Wednesday, a little discomfort not to bad she said. This week she is going to the dentist to have a baby tooth removed. Some of you may remember the "good times" in Minot she had with baby teeth. The baby teeth refuse to make room for her adult teeth so they usually come in directly behind the baby tooth. This is the case yet again with an eye tooth. (The other eye tooth is impacted and will require oral surgery later this month). So the baby tooth comes out Friday, new bands for bigger spaces on the 2nd then two more baby teeth taken out that week. Another baby tooth has no permanent tooth to replace it so that one is staying put. All coming to the grand event on the 11th (we hope) with the actual placing of the braces she will be wearing for about the next two years. The fun doesn't end there...seems her front four teeth are peg shaped. One size all the way down the tooth they are supposed to become slightly larger. So after all the braces are done she will be getting her front four teeth capped. (FOUR!!!!$$$$) It's all worth it though. K has none of these problems with her teeth. She will just need to close a small space in between her front two and have a little straightening with her bottom four. That's still a year or so off. Well, now that you all have M's dental history I'll be going....

The Boat House adventure...

Today we took the girls to the Boat House down on South Base. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, you have to pay a dollar a person ($4 for us) for the day and then in turn they give you a key to unlock the main entrance gate and enjoy the beaches there. No swimming just beach combing and if you fish you can off the giant pier. Note to anyone thinking of going there, the bar on the gate sticks, pull really hard and I mean really hard. Do not waste your time driving all the way to Outdoor Rec to see if there's something else you need to do to get down there. Yes, that's what we had to do. We had to drive all the way back to main base. Seems the person working there was on the phone for 35 minutes straight while we were trying to call to see what we needed to do to open the gate.
Luckily "we" have a pretty mild, laid back temperment so when we got there... P did all the talking while I spoke to someone else waiting in line. Good plan, right? I could hear the person saying to P you have to really pull hard, have you ever opened a gate like that before, it's really tough. This is where I said Yes, we're from New England his family owns a farm in Vermont I think we can manage a cattle fence. I then took a couple deep breaths and tried to ignore this person giving P advice.
The end result was we did finally get the gate open and we had a great time even though we did miss low tide.




I do know half of P's head is cut off but the girls look great.













The Boat House,
a former Coast Guard commander's residence,
Notice the fence surrounding it?
You aren't allowed near it. It's in some disrepair.



The girls posing for me

Our sea glass collection from today

First post...

I know, I know, We've told people we don't have the time to do a blog. Well, since moving out here to Vandyland in April and being so far away from family and friends and seeing that we really are not that great about keeping in touch through emails we have rethought our decision. So here we are...



It's summer vacation and that means the girls are home all day enjoying their time off from school. It also means no rest for Mom. We're started braces for M which means lots of doctor appointments, running to and from a College for Kids dance class a couple of days a week, trips to the library, (I'm not complaining about the need for more books to read), sports check up, soccer sign ups and numerous trips to many other places we "had" to go to (Home Depot I found out is not on the list of acceptable field trips for K this summer) and it's only the second full week of vacation. Can we make it all the way to August??