What is drop and why the Mundy's are excited!

For those of you who don't know, today is a very big and exciting day for Rick and I. Tonight is what is called "Drop Night" or "Assigment Night" which is when Rick and I will find out the plane Rick will fly and the base we will live at for at least the next 4 years. As I'm sure you can imagine, this makes us insanely excited and anxious! A week or two ago we got Rick's dream sheet which listed all of the different base/plane combinations that we could possibly be assigned. We had been stressing out about what this list would look like pretty much since Rick started T-1's. Will the list be filled with bad bases and planes? Will the planes that Rick wants be on the list? etc. Luckily for us, we got arguably the best list yet this fiscal year! There is no "terrible plane" on the list that Rick would be devastated to fly. Actually, there were a lot of really cool planes that don't always show up on the lists. It was our job to rank every single option from our most to least desirable combination. Check out our dream sheet!:

This is before we filled in the left side with our preferences!

Ultimately, Rick and everybody else in his flight have been ranked best to worst pilot based on academics, flying tests, daily ride scores, and commander's ranking. This ranking as well as their dream sheet are submitted to the instructor pilots whom ultimately make the decision of which plane and base we will get. The past few weeks have been awful with all of the jokes and teasing. Many of us are very worried about FAIPing (First Assignment Instructor Pilot) which means that you stay at Laughlin AFB for another 4 years and teach the future generations of pilots how to fly. Of course, this wouldn't be the end of the world, but most of us have enjoyed our time here in Del Rio and are ready to experience a new location.

Rick finished flying for undergraduate pilot training!

Rick and I cannot wait any longer to find out what the next four years of our lives will look like. After today, then we will look forward to Rick's Graduation which is when he will get his wings and become an official Air Force Pilot. Soon after that Rick will go to SERE which is survival and resistance training in Washington state. Once he returns from SERE we will probably temporarily move to his plane's school house, which is the location where everybody is trained up on the specific plane. Then, we will finally move to our next base. 2014 is going to be nuts for us, and it all starts today.

We are afraid of the future!

For those of you whom don't know, I was able to teach at Del Rio High School for the first semester, but then had to give my notice because of our upcoming departure from Del Rio. I have so much respect for all of the teachers out there after this experience. To sum up teaching: you know you are a high school teacher when you care more about how your students do than they do, you are a professional who is treated like a child by administration, and you can never stop working in order to stay up to date with grading, posting the grades online, making copies, making lesson plans, etc. In the end, I met some really great teachers, and I had so many great students but I am not interested in teaching high school math again! Here are some pictures of my classroom:

 Teaching at the high school level takes the right type of person, and it definitely isn't for me. It has made me so determined to find another engineering job at our next base. Take a look at some of the little surprises my sweet students have left me throughout the semester:

Ok so this wasn't sweet, this was just weird!

Two of my students cooked me this traditional Mexican meal in culinary class because they didn't want me to leave without trying it.

For our last few months here I will be volunteering my engineering services at the Civil Engineering Squadron on base in the hopes for some insight on how it is to work as an engineer at an Air Force Base, as well as some recommendations. We will see how it goes!

Sorry, just a cute picture of our napping dogs.

Other than that, we were lucky enough to have my brother out for a visit earlier this month. He is actually heading off to Basic Training right now for the Army National Guard for the next few months. We were so happy that he got a chance to visit us at Laughlin AFB, because by the time he finishes Basic Training, we will hopefully be moved out of here! Here are some pictures from Steven's visit:

Iww, they shot a duck.

Cleaning up the duck so they can cook it and feed it to the dogs.

Playing fetch at the dog park!

We met up with Uncle Larry and Aunt Judy in Fredericksburg!

And here are some other photos I would like to share:

Rick was in a friend's wedding!

Us and the Warfields! Gotta love Jeremy's mustache!

Watching Ohio State football with the Warfields.

Leche in her football outfit.

Gotta love them cuddling in their kennel!

Waiting for us to drop food while cooking.

Leche looking cute in her sweater.

And Dulce in her sweater.

Do I have too many pictures of Leche?

Probably.

Rick and I at the Student Squadron Holiday Party.

Rick and I at an ugly sweater party!

I got to meet up with Anastasia and Tracey during Christmas break!

Rick and I at a friend's wedding in Phoenix.

Ok, I just looked at the clock and I don't even think that time is passing. Could 7:00 PM come any slower? Gahh! Be looking forward to our drop night photos sometime next week. Eek! I can't wait to find out where we are headed!

Everything is Bigger in TX

I'm sorry folks, this post is going to begin as a post about bugs. Please continue to read though, I promise it's not all about bugs, and I hope this makes you thankful that you are living where you are living. I have some job news announced at the bottom ;)

Random picture of Dulce: she just loves a good stretch.

When everybody says that everything in Texas is better, they definitely mean that everything is bigger, which is not always a good thing. One thing that Rick and I have not been able to get used to since we moved here was the size of the bugs. These bugs are so large, they are the size of small pets in MA! I know that we have been living here for over a year now, but I am posting this now because we have had a very eventful week. This past weekend I jinxed us by saying that we have never had a scorpion in our house. Well maybe two days later we had caught a scorpion on our CatchMaster. Iww! We stick these wicked sticky papers behind the toilets because that is where we tend to see cockroaches. One of the creepiest parts about this was that we figured it was dead and we left the sticky paper there for a few days until we could get more. Well, three days later while I was getting out of the shower it started moving again! Ughh!

And to think that Rick had a pet scorpion named Steve while he was at prep school in California. Gross.

Speaking of cockroaches, we have had quite a few this year and they are the grossest, quickest, nastiest bugs ever. So, this week we actually found a total of 3 cockroaches on our patio that my official bug killer, aka my hubby, had to kill. I'm normally not too concerned about bugs if they are outside of our house, but when it comes to cockroaches on the patio, it's just a little too close for comfort.

I didn't have a picture of any cockroaches, so here's a picture of Rick washing some crawfish from H.E.B. for a crawfish boil.

Speaking of killing bugs even if they are outside, check out this bad Larry. We found this guy in our carport a few months ago and he had to go. For those of you who don't know, a carport is an open roof enclosure for your car which basically just protects your car from the sun and rain (if it comes straight down and doesn't flood).

Gahh! That is a standard size brick!

In other news, I was just dumping about a million photos from my camera so I figured I'd do a bit of a photo dump here. Check out some (old) fun photos:

Here is Rick looking studly in his flight suit.

June and Bill came to visit us and we visited Judge Roy Bean's court room! So fun!

Here we are at the Seminole Canyons.

Look at that face!

Here comes Leche!

It's ok that I'm posting so many pictures of my dogs, it's national dog day!

Leche can be very impatient and while she is waiting she prefers to be sprawled out on the floor.

While Rick and I were celebrating our 1 year anniversary, I found some of the product that our company makes in an antique shop. Health care product to wrapping paper, go figure!

Here is Rick enjoying our anniversary tier!

Yum!

Happy 1 Year, love!

We stayed at the Hangar Hotel in Fredericksburg for our anniversary, which is really cool because it's an active private runway.

Here is Rick finding out he will fly the T-1.

T-funs!

We're going to the lake!

It's not sand, but we'll take it!

Dulce likes to swim until she gets tired and latches on to Rick.

There is nothing better than a nice waterlogged stick!

My friend Anne married her college sweetheart Noah up in Maine!

We made sure to decorate their getaway car!

Streamers!

Maggie, Gabby, and Brandon were putting on the finishing touches on the cake that Maggie made.

Beautiful and delicious!

The happy couple on their first dance!

Feeding each other the cake.

Oh my goodness, they're the cutest!

Anybody want Mexican food? Good, because that's the only option down here!

I made my favorite oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe for Rick's squadron since they had to go to school on a Sunday.

So on Saturday night my hubby and I went with some friends to a roller derby  (click on roller derby to learn the rules) to watch the Hell Rio Rollers skate. Really quick, a roller derby is a game on roller skates where each team has a "jammer" or the team member who scores the points, and a bunch of blockers. The skaters skate around a rink and every opposing team member that the jammer passes earns her team a point. There is a bunch of hip checking, booty checking, blocking, and fishnets so it's pretty entertaining! We were so happy that they won! These girls were intense!

Roller derby at the civic center.

Here they come!

So much fun!

And finally, my job news is that you can just call me Mrs. Mundy! I am the newest high school math teacher at Del Rio High School! I will be teaching Algebra 2 and TAX prep (similar to MCAS) this year! During this time I will be earning my teaching certificate and at the end of the year I will be a certified teacher. I wish that I could have continued to use my engineering degree, but given the area we are in I know there is no shot of me getting another engineering job while we are in Del Rio. I figured it would be worth my while to get another portable degree that I can take with me wherever we go in our future. I am excited for the opportunity to try something new and hopefully help these kids learn to love math (or at least learn it). I will have more to tell shortly, but until then I will be getting ready to start teaching on September 9. The school year officially started today, but I had to give my two weeks' notice at my current job.

Thanks for reading!

Love,
The Mundys