Informational of Another Variety

September 2008 brought on a journey that my Aviator had been dreaming of forever. 13 months later, the United States Air Force made it official with that beautiful set of wings you see on his chest. From here on out it's going to be the real world. As soon as we get to Yokota, he'll be flying missions and deploying. The past almost 2 years have been cherished and will always be close to my heart as we started out lives together both as married folk and as an active duty military family.

I know I'm not exactly a hand model but I wanted to show off my new ring.. :-) As some of you may already know, the Aviator and I have had a very interesting time with my wedding ring/diamond from the very start... We started off with a beautiful tension setting engagement that was later on accompanied by a complimentary wedding band. After about a week of wearing the wedding band with the engagement ring, the diamond popped out and was lost forever, the day BEFORE we insured the ring........ Needless to say, it was very traumatic for us. We'd been married almost a full week when this happened and neither of us knew what to do next... So we waited a about a month and then called the jeweler that made the engagement ring and wedding band and explained what had happened, hoping that perhaps they had their own form of diamond insurance... That was a big fat negative... The only thing they could do was reset a new diamond for us at no cost. They felt terrible about it. So we eventually ordered a new diamond from Blue Nile that was absolutely the perfect one. We mailed the ring set to Montgomery, Alabama to have a new setting fashioned from the gold after I described to them over the phone what I'd like.. No more tension setting... This girl NEEDS prongs to sleep at night... :-) So upon delivery of the diamond, I drove to Alabama to hand deliver the diamond for the new setting... The new set the jeweler fashioned was beautiful. I couldn't even begin to describe how happy I was to just have my wedding ring back. That was almost 2 years ago. Since then, I've been keeping my eyes open for a heck of a deal on something that I absolutely loved, something that said "CAITLIN" all over it... We found it about 2 months ago at the mall in Little Rock, marked 70% down from it's original price. It was perfect. It still is. There was no centerstone and it was the perfect size. We waited and waited and waited. Then we went ahead and got it. :-) Here it is with my same diamond. We took it and my old setting to a local jeweler to have the diamond set and to have a wedding band made with the original one. It's so beautiful. We still look at it and check to see if there is a diamond still there... Old habits die hard... Ha ha... This one is insured... Ha ha... ha.... ha...

We went on a quick weekend trip to Chicago a couple of weekends ago. We met one of the Aviator's childhood friends and his wife up there for some sight seeing and food eating. :-) Here we are at The Bean at Millennium park... This was an amazing sight! You can see the entire city of Chicago in the its reflection! It's really neat!

This was taken by a really sweet couple from Denver... They said it was -40 degrees with windchill in CO so the 3 degree weather we were griping about was quite endurable for them... This is the SkyDeck at Willis Tower (formally known as Sears Tower). 108 stories up and 4-feet off of the wall makes for quite an exhilarating photo opportunity...

Aviator and I in the heart of it all. There is really nothing like being married to your best friend... He is the best travel buddy a girl could ever ask for!

Just wanted to throw this in here... We got a new camera a couple of weeks ago and it has a food setting... :-) Cool right? Kinda makes me feel like 'The 'OTHER' Pioneer Woman'... :-)

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas season! Don't forget why we celebrate it! Joy to the world!