You Can Take the Girl Out of Colorado...

I woke up early this morning (Colorado time) and realized that it has been a while since my last post. We have been really busy lately! I had promised to post some pictures from our morning out watching the racehorses, so here they are:

These horses are so powerful, yet graceful. It's such an amazing experience to just see them train, so we can't wait for race season to begin!

They walk right past you after running up the hill in the distance.

We were laughing at these guys, because as they passed one of the jockeys was singing Beyonce's "Put a Ring on it". That's the town of Newmarket in the background.

Last week, Jordan's flight to the Azores went really well. He was happy to be back in the jet again, and he had a a lot of fun. I have been trying to convince him to write about it for you all, but as you can see I haven't been very successful. He came home with a few pictures (one being of his fish and chips that he had for lunch), so I was really proud of him! As you can see below, the island is really green, with mountains all around. Apparently landing can be tricky, because there is lots of wind up until you get below the elevation of the mountains, and then the wind just stops.

In other news, Jordan had his M-9 (i think) training, and shot expert!! He was really proud of himself, because he hadn't picked up a gun in quite a while. Unfortunately I did not get the OU job, but let's face it--who really wants to be a Sooner anyway? ;) I'm sure that there is something else out there that will be a much better fit for me. In the end, I got a practice interview out of it, and my resume is finally up to date!

This past weekend, Cooper got a haircut at a little doggie grooming salon in town, called "Bubbles". It is all the rage with the dog owners at the gallops in Newmarket. During his brief stay, the spa owner and her daughter fell in love with Coop and didn't want us to take him home! Afterward, we went to visit a castle in a nearby town called Framlingham. They allow dogs, so Cooper came along for the ride. (Have I mentioned how much we love England for this reason?!)

Here we are outside of the castle. Wikipedia tells me that it was founded between 599 and 624 A.D.
This is inside the castle walls. I fell in love with this tree behind us.

Now can you see why?

In order to take the self-guided tour, we had to climb the winding stairs shown below. They were incredibly steep, without much depth. Not to mention, the hand rail was just a rope with quite a bit of slack! Cooper skipped right up with ease, but I took my sweet time.

The breathtaking view outside of the castle... Definitely worth the climb!

The view of the castle from the inside.
After finishing the tour, we spent some time on the grounds outside of the castle. There were lots of little trails to hike on, and some great picnic spots! As you can see, Cooper thoroughly enjoyed himself!

After walking around for a while, we decided to find a place to eat, and of course no day of site seeing is complete without finishing with a pint of ale from a local pub!

On Sunday, Jordan flew to Fairchild AFB in Spokane, WA. His crew is to stay there through this coming Sunday (the 26th) to help with their local mission. Since I had nothing going on, I decided to come along for the ride! Under USAFE Command (United States Air Forces in Europe), spouses are allowed to come along on some of their husband's TDY's! Sweet!!! I was able to take a couple of pictures of the inside of the plane, and I even got to sit in the jump seat in the cockpit while Jordan had the controls!

This is what the KC-135 looks like on the inside, looking toward the tail. The seats are made of red cargo net, lined up along the sides of the plane facing inward. All of our luggage is strapped down in the middle. Surprisingly, it was a fairly comfortable 9.5 hour flight because once we hit cruising altitude everyone stretched out with sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows.

This is looking toward the nose of the plane. The door is still open, so it makes it hard to see. There are 4 little windows in the "pax" section of the plane like the one shown in the middle, so it's fairly dark when the lights are turned out.

Jordan came back to "visit" for a couple minutes. However, it's extremely loud in the plane. In order to communicate, we had to be right next to eachother, looking directly at one another, and yelling at the top of our lungs. :) Quite an adventure if you ask me!

After spending a couple of days in Spokane, I flew home on a commercial jet (not quite as exciting) to sunny Colorado!! The weather has been in the 70's all week, so you better believe I've been working on my tan! I surprised all four of my nieces before their softball practice on Tuesday, and have been enjoying spending lots of time with my family. Yesterday, my parents took me up to Boulder and we had sushi for lunch. We spent a couple of hours walking around the mall on Pearl Street, and looking at all of the beautiful tulips in bloom--the reason that this is one of my favorite times of the year. I couldn't have picked a better week to come home!

My mom and me enjoying the sunshine on Pearl St.So all in all, it's been an awesome couple of weeks! Thanks for bearing with me during this long, drawn-out blog post. I will try to be better about posting more often, so you don't have to spend a half hour reading a single post!