December 2025

December 4th was last FIAR field trip of the year;  we went to tour the Durham Bulls Athletic Facility.  It turned out to be much more informative than I expected and kids were engaged in our docents monologue.  After, we took over the patio dining at Mellow Mushroom pizza.  The ironic part was when we arrived at parking garage Lance calls us immediately, apparently my car was registered with the garage (since he'd taken it in the past) and it notified his cell and charged his card when we drove in.

December 9th we went on a family Christmas light drive.  This year I chose well, no wild Mom chases, the lights were beautiful and conveniently free.  We brought along Reindeer Chow to eat along the way, sang songs and devolved into a strange sound making contest on the way home to much laughter.

December 11th Titus promoted to Senior Master Sergeant.  He's getting quite the "fruit salad" on his chest.  But he's not cool to find time to chill with his goose...

On December 13th Amber and Lance had a date night at the rodeo.  They got to see Amiee compete in the drill team and the "cowboy" :-)

Amber and Kimberly made a lot of progress clearing the island in preparation of their Spring garden plans.

Amber worked a lot this month are riding Thor without a bridle and with her riding skirt to keep them both warm.

Titus spent a lot of time doing color guard with CAP at the NC Sporting events.

Of course they boys were busy dancing too, this month at the Jingle Bell Swing.

I found time to spend the day with my old friend Amy too.

Lance was promoted from Quick Lane Manager to Level 1 Tech Apprentice under the Chief mechanic, which of course meant the need for a new box. 

Christmas dinner was festive as always.  People were under the weather so we missed the bells at Candlelight services this year but we'll go next year.

After Christmas Jared had is Christmas Party for BAM at Rushhour carting.  He had a great time hanging out with Daniel, his wife and beating his co-workers on the track.

Titus and company's Christmas light display reached new levels this year.

We finsihed out the year with dinner with Frank and Mary and fireworks.

That's all till next year!

November 2025

We finally got the new shelves constructed next to Jared's windows to display his models.  It turned out fabulous!

For my dear friend Kathy I went way out of my comfort-zone and went to an Escape Room and lunch with a group of women I didn't know for her birthday.  I'm happy to report it was fun and we successfully escaped. 

Lance played his first game of pickle-ball with his friends the Sakells.  It was more fun than he thought it would be.  Also, his car's tags were up for renewal so as surprised we got him the custom plate "PLURP'!  To make Plurp look his best Lance added a wreath, and changing lights.

FIAR went to Grasshopper Corn Maze this month.  It was actually a maze you could get a little turned around in, kids of course had a great time (esp. since the owners goal was to have fun, not micro manage).

Jared and I drove Titus to the fall RTW (Search and Rescue Training) and got to see pilot mountain for the first time and incredible fall colors.  Ironically, when I picked him up a couple days later most of the trees had already lost their peak color; it amazing how quickly they change.  

He achieved GTM 3 during his stay, did some night sorties and got to use an "L-Per".  His cabin/"shed with sheet door" had a spider/daddy long leg issue that resulted in some great stories on the way home.

While Titus was at RTW, the rest of the kids went with friends to Warbirds Airshow.  Hightlights of this year's airshow was seeing the ME 262, the first jet fighter to ever be used in combat, and the B25 Mitchell, the J variant meant for strafing runs.  They also stayed late for the swing dance after the show, but I think that was a one time thing.

With all the kids gone, Chris and I were actually alone for a day.  We'd had a gift card for years to restaurant called "Lucky 32", we hadn't gone because we didn't think we'd like it but rather than cooking we decided to give it a try and go there for brunch.  Boy was that the right choice!  This is our new favorite restaurant; beautiful atmosphere, fantastic food, great prices and just around the corner from our house.

Lance's Fall Baseball Team won the Men's league Championship. That's two championships in one year!

Additionally in the land of CAP, Titus took on leadership roles in Aerospace and Cyber Security and continues to volunteer at Coffee House serving special needs adults.

11/15 was a busy day, boys went to the Gill Party to play fun holiday games and the rest of us went to the Fall Festival at the barn.  Amber and her friends had great time running around, while we adults talked around the bonfire (Whinny sat next to me and kept me warm).

The month finished up with Jared calling an ECD and Amber officially attending her first dance with her brothers.

October 2025

While Titus and I were in Charlotte, the rest of the kids went to Game Night at Lyon's and Chris got a night alone at home (sort of an early B-Day gift).

Amber and I caught a great moon shot on our way to the barn; it looked like an African moon on the Serengeti.

After the ECD dance, the gang met up for treats at Cook-Out.

Titus got his drone this month and he is a natural.  He plans to get his commerical drone pilot license so he can take real estate photos and become CAP drone pilot for Search and Rescue missions.

Jared got Chris hooked back on LEGOs, he says its helping fight off dementia.  

As Frank was a little immobile, so we brought birthday cake over to them so they could still celebrate Chris' birthday.  I'm so blessed to have such an incredible man as my best friend to go through life.

Though the geese felt a little left out, they wanted cake too.

We did a bit of dual birthday celebration this year where Chris took the day off and came to the Aloha Safari zoo with Amber and her FIAR friends.  Chris and I enjoyed walking about a bit alone while the paperwork for Amber to "adopt" her friends little sister was being written up.

Kimberly of course spent the weekend for Amber's birthday and they got to experiment together with Ambers new digital art tools.  Following tradition, we also went on a hike, this year at Bass Lake.

Big bro couldn't decide what color to get so he just got them all.

Birthday celebrations ended with a yummy birthday dinner made to order with a second dose of fun.  It's amazing that she's actually 14, not sure where the time went.  She's such an incredibly beautiful young lady and accomplished horsewoman, can't wait to see what she does with the coming year.

Believe it or not Lance went to his very first State Fair.  As he does not do rides, he was the official purse holder for all his friends.  A co-worker heard his laugh came up behind and scared the girls till Lance started laughing.  At the end of the night he was a gentleman and made sure all the girls got back safely to their cars (though he was parked right next to them as he had to replace a tire for one before the fair).

We went to a new corn maze this year where we got to meet many of the boy's friends for the first time.  It was a lot of fun, we played some disc golf and corn hole too.  Though the highlight was watching the kids go through the mini-corn maze blindfolded directed by their "friends".

Titus and I had an impromptu date, we went to north Raleigh to get his tennis racquet restrung so he could finish the JTT season strong.  As the guy works from his home, we needed to occupy ourselves somewhere near by while he worked.  He suggested an Irish Pub and we couldn't have been more delighted.  

Month finished out with a square dance, the boys dressed up as the Pontipees from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  It was a bit of drive so they drove three of their friends.  Titus was tasked with making a Halloween playlist for the drive.

Earlier in the month Jared was given another raise and he had another private dance calling event.  This side gig is starting to be quite profitable.

STEM Part2

As soon as we arrived from Hilton head, I had to go and find us a hotel to stay in Charlotte that night as Titus got a shower and all his civil air patrol stuff together. We grabbed a bite to eat. We were back on the road, Charlotte is about a 3 Hour Dr. from our house and we got there around 8 PM.  We stopped at a Panera on our way in for a late dinner.

The hotel was clean and safe and that's how we really cared about and it was eight minutes from the aviation Institute of maintenance where he had eight hours of classes starting at 8 AM the next morning thankfully the hotel provided breakfast so after eating I dropped him off and managed a late checkout so I could just chill in the room for most of the day, the rest of the day I went to a bass pro shop nearby, wandering the store and all the RVs on display outside.  

Titus said the much more entertaining day. The first class was on propulsion and his second class was on materials as his group finished their propulsion exercise first they actually got to stand in front of a propeller model and get blown away by the wind. In his materials class, they learned how to mend metal and how to apply fiberglass to model airplanes, which would be the same process for doing it on real planes or as Titus put it fixing big red.

Now Titus has completed all the classes necessary for his stem badge at Civil Air Patrol when he gets home, he just has to write a dossier turn it in to complete badge.

HH Fall 2025

This trip started out a little different than all our other trips because we were short one member as Lance was still in Myrtle as we began our drive down. Also, because Lance was in the championship games on Sunday as we drove down, we spent the five hour trip listening to the radio broadcast of his games instead of music. This resulted in Amber sleeping two hours until we arrived at Buc-ees for the first time, Buc-ees was a bit chaotic but interesting. Amber and her inmate both managed to get some sleep on the second half, too. 

The final game was getting very exciting as we approach the island and Lance's team won about a mile from us reaching our destination; resulting in an extremely jubilant arrival at the island.

The weather people had forecasted a rather rainy week, but we didn't care. We just needed to get away - all of us. We figured worst case scenario if it rained enough, we'd get our money back since we had a weather promise on the rental, but thankfully as it turned out, there wasn't really any bad weather while we were there just some strong winds.  

We had a first during our first walk on the beach, we found a real message in a bottle. We contacted the person inside.  It turned out it was a last request and we fulfilled their family desire with Daniel taking it to Disney next.

The weather was iffy on Monday so we did our window shopping that day.  We got all new spices and teas from our favorite spice store. Then enjoyed a wonderful lunch at Its Greek to Me; our favorite place to eat.

Tuesday we played Putt-Putt golf, got Aloha smoothies on our way and ate leftovers from Sunday and Monday

Wednesday and Thursday were just rinse, lather, repeat of beach time like we've done every other day, bocce ball, walking and eating Greek food; basically a perfect vacation. The only small disappointment was the waves were way too strong because the two hurricanes off the coast to actually do much fishing. 

We did manage to find a live sand dollar in one of our walks and rescue a duck that apparently been washed to shore, probably from one of the hurricanes; those were highlights of our walk.

For Amber, the highlight was the night the skies cleared up and she could give us all a wonderful lesson in astronomy that she's been learning in school.  She was able to find all the summer stars she's been studying.  As a bonus we spotted ghost crabs.

There were a lot of shenanigans throughout the week; videos of the boys (including Chris) running down the beach like Jack Sparrow, Jared did a "Watermelon" video (They made a mound of sand...but I got watermelon in my hand), Titus got in some skim boarding and some great castles were built and destroyed.

We're hoping to go back in May instead of waiting till September next year we're starting to realize the fishing was much better and the wind is a little calmer. d.v.

On the ride home, Jared drove with Lance,  Having two cars certainly made the packing a lot easier in the morning. Our car chose to keep the music off on the ride home, which let Amber and Titus both get in a good nap.  Napping was necessary as Titus and I had to turn around as soon as we got home, but more of that in our next post.