Goldsteins in Alabama!!

We have arrived to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. This will be our home for the next six weeks. We still have our house at Vance, awaiting our return, but we are here while Yoni goes through ASBC (Aerospace Basic Course).

The drive here went rather smoothly. We went to Dallas on Friday and stayed with the Deganis up north for a lovely Shabbat. One of the boys in the Rich family had his Bar Mitzvah, so we walked to their shul and joined in the simcha!

Saturday night we hit the road! We crossed the rest of Texas on I-20 and called it a night in Bossier City, a few dozen miles into Louisiana. We're definitely seeing a lot of this country...

On Sunday it was only about 7 1/2 hours more across Mississippi and into Montgomery, Alabama.

The base is big and really nice! They have just about everything here... there's a riding club, golf course, paintball, etc. And we've only just begun to explore...

I've also discovered their beautiful library, as it's a good place to sit and work on Math homework.. This Air Force Base is actually the location of Air University (the university for the Air Force), so there is an aire of education.

Yoni is doing all sorts of fun stuff. He reports usually by 0730 and is home by 1630, and during that time he does a lot of classroom learning, leadership training, and physical training. Next week he'll do Combined Ops, which combines him with students from the Senior NCO Academy (Senior and Chief Master Sergeants) and a bunch of captains here on TDY. This week he's performed his first PT test of our stay here, and passed easily.

His academics are somewhat challenging, and there is a great amount of extra projects that Yoni's flight has taken on and his day is always filled with stuff to do.

We really like it here. We were placed in a unique flight of mostly married couples with children in tow, so "Thanks!" to the Air Force for being considerate and making it easy for us to mix it up with the young families. Our neighbors are very sweet people and we look forward to becoming close with them. There is a spouse club here, too, and we have events planned every day. As wives of the LTs, we can also join our husbands and participate in certain activities and lectures.

This weekend Yoni has received special permission to leave an hour and a half early, so that we have time to drive to Birmingham for Shabbat. We have families to stay with and eat with up there. Via phone, it seems like an open, welcoming community. By the end of our career, we hope to spend Shabbat with every Jewish community in the United States!!

Some fun pictures:

Our room is a little short on dresser space, so Yoni converted one of the kitchen cabinets into his dresser :)











Last night, Yoni's whole flight and the families had a bbq in the courtyard in front of our dorm building. Yoni played some guitar and we all hung out for a few hours.

Getting to know the real "Enidians"...or as some call them, "Enoids"

Today was quite a day!!!

During the morning, I (Michelle) had two appointments, both of which made me a little nervous, so Yoni was a wonderful husband and came with me for moral support.

For the first appointment, I had to get the new sheitl cut. My friend Michelle told me I should go to this hairdresser she found in town. She loved him, her hair looks great, and the price was about a tenth the price of a sheitl macher in Baltimore, so I figured I'd give it a shot. To ease any worries, I'll tell you right now - he did a great job! I think I may actually be more happy with this one than the other one.

The real story though lies in the experience.

Day in and day out, Yoni and I encounter genuine curiosity as people have never heard of or experienced Orthodox Judaism. When I called the hairdresser two days ago, I tried my best to explain the situation. I must not have explained very clearly though, because we showed up today, and he said to us:
"Ok, so I have been racking my brain for two days. I remember you telling me you always cover your hair for religious reasons, and I can't see your hair, but I couldn't figure out for the life of me how you expect me to cut it if I can't see it!!!"
Haha, this poor guy, I thought I explained it was a wig, but for two days he was worried how he was going to fulfill my wishes and do a good haircut at the same time.

The second appointment was a little less exciting. To avoid unpleasant details, I'll just say I had outpatient surgery at the podiatrist's. All in all, it was not so bad. Funny story from this though - the podiatrist had quite the sense of humor (kind of reminded me of being in Dr. Sandler's dental chair actually)...
They numbed the toe and started working... yet it wasn't completely numb. Ow. In goes another shot to numb. I hear lots of stuff going on, feel very uncomfortable and the Dr. says, "Ah! Done!!"
I got very excited and said, "Really???"
"Nope," he said, started laughing at me and kept going...

This had Yoni and the nurse in stitches, but I really didn't find it so funny (at the time).
Oh Oklahomans...

This afternoon was also quite great!! Dani came over and we made challah together, and it was the first time she ever made it. I taught her how to make the dough and she had a great knack for the braiding. It's so much fun to not only be able to teach someone something so special as making challah, but to be able to share an aspect of Judaism with people out here :)

This weekend we're off to Oklahoma City for Shabbat, staying with Mike and Wendy (another young couple who often goes to Chabad), then flying Sunday morning to Atlanta for Ben Kogutt's wedding (one of Yoni's good high school friends).


T minus 60 days until we get our puppy :-D

The planes are flying again and we picked a puppy!

After a nice long vacation, with plenty of visitors and skies vacant of planes, the normal routine has begun again! We awoke to revelie, three to four planes are seen in the sky at any given moment and the new year has begun!

In slightly more exciting news, Michelle got her bike yesterday! (Just like Yoni's, except the girl's version..)

Annnnd we drove down to Oklahoma City and picked out our puppy today!!

She's 5 weeks now, so she'll be just about three months when we pick her up when we get back from Alabama.

She doesn't have a name yet (we're working on that one), so as of right now she's Female 4...

Her Mom is a beautiful lab, her Dad is a standard poodle, so she's a...
LABRADOODLE!

She'll grow to about the size of a normal lab, but have some waves in her hair and she won't shed.

Here are some cute pictures of us with her:



























The "doggy pile" of the whole litter sleeping together -- sooooo cute!











In other news, the rest of last week was wonderful. On New Year's Eve, Dad and Mom came. We had a few nice relaxing days exploring the Air Force Base and the town of Enid, and then we had our first Enid Shabbat!!

It was very nice. Not only did we have them as guests for both meals, but on Saturday we also had Michael, Dani, Daniel and Melissa over for lunch (most of the crowd from the Chanukah party). They're all so sweet and it was wonderful getting to know them better and enjoying the afternoon together. After lunch we played games till just about seudah shlishit!