Friday, August 29, 2008

Secret Agent Man

Greetings all, here is a few pictures from my first trip as an Air Force One Advance agent. The trip was amazing and I got to see A LOT! The Presidential aircraft (as you can imagine) are AWESOME! Everyone I met were very professional and a pleasure to work with. The navigator gave myself and the other agents family a great tour of the 747 and I got to sit in the pilot seat...yeah it was cool! Over all I feel very blessed to have this opportunity and am looking forward to future travel with this team! If you'd like to see more on Air Force One and see most of the guys I met on this trip check out the History channel and look for the special that aired on 25 Aug entitled Air Force One, it is extremely accurate and the jet you'll see is the one I was on.
Hope you all enjoy!

This is a suspension bridge in Waco Texas that was initially built in 1846 and our hotel is in the background.


Da & Bob, I thought you might like to see this. This memorial sits on the river bank that the above bridge spans.

I'm on the right helping taxi "the Man" into parking.


Again, I'm on the right waiting for the motor pool to arrive. This is my position for arrival and departure.


It's show time...you can feel the tension in the air!

One of my resposibilities...watch the driver of the stair truck.

"The Man" off to Orlando!

Here I'm taxiing the jet in to stage it for departure. The flight engineers of Air Force One can taxi the airplane when needed.

Some view huh?!

HMX Marine One

I thought this was pretty cool...note the sign infront of the helo.


Me again on the right...man I clean up well hah!

This was the first time I saw the jet up close and this was just after our tour.

The other guy I worked with and his family.

This is the 757 the VP and others normally use. It is also used as a spare if the 747 breaks.

Here I'm taxiing the jet in for the first time.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Some Fun Clippettes

Hi!  Things are going well here.  Eric just got back from his first presidential detail TDY and had a great time (will post some pics later).  We are gearing up to see the Smittys (and finally meet little Joshua)...although we'll see what Gustav has to say about that.  Leah's amazing (and I'm not just biased :).  We've been teaching her sign language and she's actually communicating with us.  She's able to ask for milk, ask for food...and most important (at least for Eric)...identify airplanes.  She truly is a gift.  God is good!!!

I took this one today and it's one of my new favorites.

One of her latest "tricks"...she loves to clink her sippy to our glasses when we say "cheers".
We taught her how to slurp her sgetti...
Testing out her new car seat before it went into the truck.  She is all smiles in the car now and enjoys looking out the front and side windows.  She's constantly pointing at everything with her trademark "ehhhh?"
She just loves getting in and out of baskets...usually the laundry basket or this one.  In fact she pulled a small one down from her bookshelf and got herself wedged in it....I had to pull her out!
Playing with her "first golf bag" that Nana Kate sent her.  It's too cute.  Has a little ball, club, gopher, and golfer (decked out with matching plaid pants and hat)

Before bath one night we let her run around naked, and she loved it.  She grabbed her kitty cat towel and rolled around on the ground with him...then took to dragging him around the upstairs.  Thoroughly entertaining :)

We were lucky enough to watch Vince and Adrienne's little girl (Sofia) for the day a week or so ago.  It was interesting watching how Leah reacted to the "newbie".  She wanted to be picked up more often (especially when I was feeding Sofia her bottle), but overall was a "little mommy" and was just great.  I have a newfound respect for parents who have children so close together (or twins).  

Thursday, August 21, 2008

A Fun Playdate

Here are some cute pictures of Leah's playdate with Katherine the other day.  Every time Leah goes over there, she seeks out this papasan chair.  Apparently they were crawling over each other to sit in this chair!   

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Big Apple

Eric and I had a great time in NYC. We went in early one day and walked arond the lower half of the island. We saw the Empire State Building, Penn Station, Macy's, the Statue of Liberty, many beautiful parks, and....John's Pizza :) We went back a couple days later to try out for/watch a taping of Millionaire (BTW, I now feel really stupid after taking that test...which sadly, wasn't all that hard!). We were going to try and meet up with my cousins Patrick and Kate, but didn't realize the Millionaire taping would blow the whole day. Oh well...we will be back.

The Statue of Liberty in the background...

It was neat seeing the flag flying on the bridge as well as the waterfall...I wasn't expecting that.

The street was being worked on and was ripped up. It was fascinating seeing all the pipes and other stuff under the asphalt.
This church is right by the WTC site and was covered in ash on Sept 11th. There are quite a lot of memorial "items" inside the church. It was very surreal...

At the back of the church looking at the WTC site.
WTC site construction...

Not every day you go into a record store and see two fat cats hanging out. Not everyday you see someone taking a picture of them either...but that's a whole 'nother issue.
THE pizza place (apparently): John's Pizza on Bleecker Street. Eric's father had taken him there when he was younger, and Eric's grandfather had taken Eric's dad. Eric and Leah will have to have a pizza moment when she's a little older.



I saw this sign at a couple different places and thought it was funny for NYC: "Don't Honk; $350 Penalty". Obviously it wasn't posted throughout the city...

We killed some time before the Millionaire tryout and went a block over to Central Park. We were right by the Tavern on the Green...which was just gorgeous! There were some horse buggies and some man-powered cycle buggies out and about.
Looking up at the Empire State Building...

A cool looking building...