Wrapping up 2007

While Lana and I were on our honeymoon, my squadron was in Bulgaria for a training exercise...while there, our squadron commander and operations officer announced who would be next going into what we call the flight lead upgrade (FLUG). It consists of 10 graded flights were we have to brief, lead and debrief the flight. There are also academics involved before each different phase of the upgrade. It's going to take a lot of study and preparation so I'm ready to brief well, lead well in the air and then pull the lessons learned from what went well/wrong during the flight. We start off with 1v1 BFM (close in dogfighting) and then work our way up to a 4v4 and 4v2 at the end. At the completion of the 10 rides, we're a 4-ship flight lead able to lead around the 3 other jets in our formation. I'll be in the lead and making decisions, but along with that comes much added responsibility because lead is responsible for safety of all those in his flight whether in training or in war.

It's great to finally get my change at going through the FLUG. While we were in the desert for 5 months we were not able to do any upgrades, so naturally I was starting a little later than usual...but, later is better than never! My first FLUG ride was in late November and I was able to finish the BFM phase before Christmas break. The time off was great, but I spent a lot of my time getting briefing guides ready for my next flights when I returned.

This Christmas, Lana and I flew to Denver, Colorado for a few days to enjoy the mountains and snowboarding. Since she's still new in her flight attendant job with Lufthansa, she had to work over Christmas. So, I jumped on the flight she was working to Denver so we could be together on our first Christmas. Flying business class for about $100 round trip isn't anything to complain about...it's great being able to fly for cheap! We spent our days at the 16th Street Mall and snowboarding at Breckenridge. Christmas day brought snow as well, so it was a nice way to spend our first Christmas being married.

After Denver, we flew back and spent the rest of Christmas in Germany snowboarding a couple days south of Munich in the Alps. We found a nice pensione (basically someone's home were they rent rooms out to guests) in the mountains for that and then spent New Years in Munich at a restaurant owned by a friend of Lana's. Germans are crazy when it comes to fireworks...I've never seen so many fireworks being shot off at one time! It's a good thing they build their homes out of mostly concrete or else all of Munich would have gone up in flames!

Well, that wraps up 2007 already...it's crazy we're already into 2008! God continues to be good to us and we're looking forward to another year in Italy. Sometime towards the end of 2008, early 2009 we'll probably be moving so we'll keep everyone up to date with the latest.