a birthday surprise

Today we celebrated Patrick's upcoming birthday by surprising him at his squadron.  About 20 of his friends/co-workers gathered together to surprise him and celebrate his 30th birthday! I was sneaky enough to contact a few people he works with to help plan the surprise--we pulled it off! I was happy, as it has always been difficult to surprise him, let alone keep any type of secret from him.  He had no clue--and it was fun to see him in the moment.  

Patrick is his moment of surprise

I ordered a custom C-17 cake to present at the gathering for him..it turned out awesome! I contacted this amazing, new and upcoming cake artist in Federal Way(you can see more of her cake designs here) and I couldn't have been more pleased with how it turned out! 

It's so great to have celebrated today--I remember celebrating with Patrick on his 21st birthday--look how far we've come together:)  Happy Birthday, hunny. We love you!!

{a casual day out }

As mentioned here--this past weekend marked the first of many celebrations leading up to Monika and Aaron's wedding.  Patrick hosted the bachelor day up here while I went down to Oregon for one of Monika's bridal showers. I know that Patrick is honored to be a part of Aaron's upcoming wedding and it was fun planning a day for him- with similar interests it wasn't difficult to say the least. Getting drunk and crazy isn't Aaron's style, nor any of the other guys that attended. Patrick organized a casual and memorable bachelor party for Aaron--centered around the things he loves in life (planes), stories, good food, and a great group of friends.

Many stops were on the agenda-a straight razor shave in the morning, stop at the Museum of Flight, tour of Patrick's jet, dining at a brew pub in Seattle, and ending with a 'night cap' at a bar downtown that hosts the city's largest selection of Scotch(a fave of Aaron's).  This casual guys day out was enjoyed by all, below are a few snapshots of the group.

tour at the museum

snapping Aaron in space

Museum of Flight

the gang

photo op by the jet

the couple's fathers

dinner in Seattle

night cap at 'Bookstore bar'

the "norm"

I get questions all the time about what Patrick does--my response is, "fly C-17 planes".  Hahah....but in all actuality he does so much more than I can ever understand, let alone describe correctly!  So--I thought I'd show you all and describe to those who are interested what a typical air drop training mission is for Patrick(with a little help from him of course!)  

The pictures and videos below show a practice air drop done a few weeks ago at Fort Lewis. This practice mission was to re-supply a forward operating base in a hostile environment.  The first video shows a platform being pulled out of Patrick's plane with a 15 foot extraction shoot. Patrick tells me that once the platform is out of the plane, it opens up and the main parachutes open.  In the video below, the main parachutes are holding 7,000 pounds of cargo--particularly 500 pounds of fuel and a container of field generators. 

The second video below shows Patrick dropping 45 Army rangers.  

It's crazy to me that this is just the "norm" for Patrick.  It's not everyday that you get to go to work and practice flying to drop several pounds of cargo down below.  He loves what he does though and I have always admired his passion and drive.  Plus--I have to admit, I think it's kinda cool. Whenever I see his plane flying around it's kinda neat to brag and say, "yep..that's my husband flyin' up there."