Alabama Adventures

Here are some pictures of the Air Force Base here. There are a lot of static air displays, and the road leading into the main circle has a flag for every US State in addition to a flag for each country that works with the US military and sends representatives to our bases.






























The houses on base are gorgeous! There is an entire neighborhood of houses like this for families of Majors and up. If we ever move to this base on a semi-permanent basis, I would be perfectly happy with one of these houses.















Over President's Day weekend, we went to Birmingham for Shabbat again, then headed to Atlanta Saturday night and stayed for two days with the Kovals. On Sunday we had a very nice brunch, went to the JCC for Laura's basketball, then went to visit Alison and the boys!
Daniel took to Yoni. He reached for his hand the entire afternoon. It was quite cute!














And I was quite content with Ezra in my arms the whole afternoon :)
















On Monday, Aunt Debbie and Uncle Mike had to work, but Will and Laura were off of school, so we took them downtown to the Aquarium. The Atlanta Aquarium is quite amazing! We went through all of the exhibits then did the special Titanic experience.
Here's a picture taken in the tunnel of a shark above us:














There wasn't enough room in front of any of the tanks to take a picture of us, so we attempted in front of a video screen of fish, but it didn't turn out so well. Here's the four of us:















Another fun experience we had was the babysitting evening! Yoni's flight has 9 married couples with children, us, and four single guys. The single guys decided they wanted to watch the kids one night to allow the other married couples an evening out. Yoni and I volunteered to help in the babysitting room. I went into it thinking that it would be quite necessary to have a female present with all of the children. I was actually quite impressed with all the single guys though! Yes, they were thankful to have me when a diaper needed to be changed, but when it came to playing with the kids and keeping them all happy, they were aces.















The best was Mike Love's story time - which kept all of the kids mesmerized for about 35 minutes...















We now approach our last few days here in Montgomery.
Yoni has his exam on Tuesday, a 5K run on Wednesday, the ICARUS tournament on Thursday, and then graduation early Friday morning. After graduation we're planning to drive straight to Memphis where we'll spend Shabbat. We'll then drive just past Little Rock Saturday night and back to Oklahoma on Sunday. On the way back home we get to stop in Oklahoma City and pick up our puppy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We're still working on the name. Hopefully it'll be a no-brainer once we pick her up and get to know her.

It's so hard to believe - we're almost halfway through our time in Alabama!!
We've actually been very busy here and having a great time.

A recap of the last few weeks:
1) Our first Shabbat in Birmingham - Yoni jumped through all the diplomatic hoops and got special permission to leave an hour and a half early on Friday for three weekends while we're here. This way, on those weeks, we can make it up to Birmingham, the nearest Jewish community, in time for Shabbat. We spent our first Shabbat with some families up there. The community is small, but warm, and we had a really wonderful time. We are looking forward to getting to know them all better as we continue to visit throughout our time here. It's so cool meeting people in all the different communities. It's so neat to think that we never know when our paths may cross again. We definitely like this lifestyle of newness and changes - neither of us are quite the type of people that could be in one community with all the same people for life - so I guess it works well that our lives will be full of the newness!

2) Hank Williams - That first Sunday, we ventured to downtown Montgomery and went to the Hank Williams museum. This was his town - born and raised. What an amazing trip back in time to the era of '52 Cadillacs, Gibson steel guitars, and Nudie western suits! It is deceptively small from the front of the museum, but incredibly deep once you get inside and see the huge amount of show suits, instruments, cowboy hats and boots, gold records, and other Hank Williams memorabilia that tell the story of this pioneering country superstar. They even have the '52 Cadillac convertible that Hank rode that fateful New Year's Eve in 1952. We enjoyed this experience immensely and recommend it to anyone who considers him/herself a country music fan. On the way home, we listened to old classics like "Kaw-Liga" and "Move it on Over" and Yoni's been spending a good deal of time this week perfecting the guitar solo for the latter.






















3) Bowling - There was a VERY fun ASBC spouse night at the bowling alley! Michelle got really bright neon colored shoes, and Yoni wowed everyone with his bowling finesse!!

By the way, this picture of Michelle bowling is included, because it's one of the few in which the ball is in the middle of the lane and not in a gutter.









Yoni's chest pass!











4) Atlanta trip - Last week, I went to Atlanta for a couple days to see the family! I stayed with Tanah and Alie, and got to play with Daniel and Ezra a lot - that was definitely a treat! We also went out to dinner with the whole crew - Aunt Neda, Aunt Debbie, Uncle Mike, Will, and Laura. Atlanta is such a great city, and it's nice having so much family that close to visit! We're planning to go again Sunday and Monday this weekend, because Yoni has off for President's Day, so he can come with this time.

5) Shabbat on base - In Atlanta, I also stocked up on a lot of good meat, because we made Shabbat here last weekend. With our fun little kitchenette, we actually managed to make a pretty hearty, exciting meal. Since we usually eat at the counter bar in the room, and we don't really have a table, Yoni got permission to borrow a table from his flight room, and one of his buddies was very nice and helped him carry it over to our room. It was a kind of interesting shape, but worked just fine for our innovative meals. We had a few guests too! On Friday night, Emy came over. She's a Lieutenant in ASBC as well, and when she saw Yoni and was so excited to meet another Jew in the Air Force (she said he's the third she's met), we invited her for the meal! Then on Saturday, we had Yoni's ROTC buddy Mark Shiffrin, and our neighbors over for the meal. It was very nice having people to share the meals with :) We'll be doing that one more time before we leave, in two weeks.

6) Mall -This past Sunday, we decided to explore the town of Montgomery a little bit more. It's quite a bit bigger than Enid. They have a beautiful outdoor mall that we explored. We only bought one thing - a Labradoodle book at the book store (SOOOOO Excited!!!) - but we had a great time walking around in the gorgeous weather :) ... Yeah, it's been about 78 degrees and sunny for the past week :-D

7) ICARUS - For each academic training program at Maxwell, they have a game which the guys/girls have to learn and compete in. For ASBC, the game is Icarus, often referred to as, "Dodgeball on steroids." It's actually a really cool game. It is a VERY complicated real-life simulation of war strategy. Each game we go to, I learn a few more of the rules, and I'm starting to understand it. After their first game last week, when they lost by quite a bit, a bunch of the wives decided to give them some spirit!! So we made t-shirts and bought a lot of orange stuff (that's the color of their squadron - the Dragons) and went out to cheer!! It was a beautiful day, and they won!! Their flight has actually had quite an amazing week! In their war gaming simulation the other day, they got the best score in the whole squadron, they got the third best average on their first exam yesterday, and they won their Icarus game. We're all quite proud :) Yoni's loving every minute of it and having a great time.

The whole team ordered temporary tattoos of dragons (their team) to increase their spirit!
It was definitely quite funny seeing Yoni with a tattoo, but it only lasted about 24 hours, so no harm done..














The whole team after the win!!










A picture right before the game was about to begin...






















8) Sarah - My friend Sarah (from high school) was down in Alabama visiting her parents who moved here a couple of years ago. They're up in Huntsville, so Sarah and I met for the day in Birmingham, which is right in between. Unfortunately, it wasn't a day quite as beautiful as the rest we've been having, but we still had a great time catching up. We met at a mall there and chatted for a while, then went on a drive around downtown to a non-existent casino and a beautiful tower statue. It was starting to clear up, so we walked out to the tower, and as we got there about to take pictures, the skies opened up and we got caught in a downpour!! We quickly took this one picture to prove that we got together and were there, then made a mad dash for the car!!














This weekend we're going to Birmingham again for Shabbat and then going straight from there to Atlanta to spend some more time with the family over the long weekend. So much fun :)