Just to take care of a few things before I head out to Walt Disney World…

Those nifty Disney Parks images at the top are actually meant to be for the cover of your new Facebook Timeline.  They are free and not watermarked and sized to fit, if you are into that sort of thing.  I found them at the Disney Tourist Blog, if you want to download them… all they ask is that you say where they got them.  Which I have just done.  It’s also a fun site to read if you should be into the Disney stuffs.  I’m just using them for the moment so there’s not a huge blank space up there, as I expect to have some decent ones of my own to replace them in a couple weeks.

You that are particularly observant may notice there is only one name in my blogroll.  Anne is my superinternetsgoddess and she helps me with everything, including the redo on this here blog.  So props to Anne, go visit over at her site.  I have no one else in there because I am a horrible friend, don’t check on anyone’s blog, can’t remember where any of them are, and therefore can’t post them up.  Give me your link in the comments and I will be thrilled to add you in there.  Because despite being a hideous friend, I love you.  Really I do.

If you notice stuffs not working around here or anything, let me know.  I’ve only just now taken the whole thing completely live after the redo, and even though I have Anne back there ready to do whatever I tell her to (she really does, it amazes me every time that she doesn’t just tell me to fuck off, I swear) I sorta did things myself, so who knows how that will work out really.

Anyway.  I’m off to pack…

I’ll admit it, I have a new obsession.  It’s Instagram.  If you are not so lucky as to have an iPhone, you don’t get the Instagram app yet and may have no idea what I am even talking about.  So here’s a quick rundown.  You can take pictures with Instagram.  Or bring in ones you have already taken.  It makes them square in a retro sort of manner, and then you can apply different old school type filter styles to said picture, make it so its only focused in one area, etc.  Then, the best part, you can hit a button and post it to not only your Instagram feed, but your Twitter and Facebook accounts and so on. Whatever you tell it to post to.  The feeds work like Twitter and Pinterest (Pinterest is a whole different post on obsession) where you can follow people and people can follow you, plus there is a button for looking at what is popular right now, you can search by hashtag or keyword, etc.  It is MAGNIFICENT.

Now, if you were just looking at my pictures I have uploaded to Instagram you would never realize I am obsessed.  That’s because there are only about 25 or so pictures.  Because there are people on this thing that AMAZE me with what they do with just the cameras built into their iPhones.  I am flat out intimidated, honestly.  I know a lot of people use other editing apps before they post, and I am slowly getting some of these and figuring them out too.  Here are my recommendations for things to use with Instagram:

If you are still wandering around with a silly Android phone or something…. I like the iPhone 4S. besides getting to have Instagram and several hundred thousand other apps you don’t currently have access to, Siri is pretty amusing. 

If you have iPhone, first go get Instagram.  It’s free on your app store.  Then get Instaplus, which gives you different filters and frames and such.  If you really want to do some detailed editing of your pictures, get Photogene2 or Snapseed.  If you want to make panoramas, get Photosynth.  If you want to make little collages, get Photo Frame.  And if you want to add fun text to your Instagrams, get TypoInsta.  If you have an iPad, Instamap is fun, it shows Instagrams from wherever you tell it to on the map.  Sometimes you can get right down to a neighborhood or intersection in larger cities.

Yep, I have all these. Still trying to find things to take pictures of to use all of them… it’s pretty disgusting weather here in Peyton, and I’m exhausting my angles of the dogs and the snow on the school next door.  If you’d like to see what I have so far though, my Insta-name is hollyannheck.  The picture on this post is one of mine. To see the rest, just follow me.  :-)

Now, a little background if you are not local.  The Air Force Academy is built sort of into and up the side of what we call here a large hill.  If you are not in a mountainous state (shoutout!) this is a mountain to you.  Because of this, the weather in town, even though ‘town’ is all of 5 minutes from the south gate, can be completely different from the weather at the Academy, because it’s higher up and closer to real mountains.  I’m sure you all see where that is going.  Also, the Academy is large and consists of many different buildings, only 2 of which (the stadium and Arnold Hall) have any sort of large parking lots.  These buildings are kind of clumped together here and there and are separated by large stretches of athletic fields or mountainous scrubland, and you get from one clump of buildings to another on a bunch of hilly, winding roads.  You probably see where that is going as well.  But I’m gonna tell you about it anyway.

I had read online that the festivities would start up there at 4, so we planned to leave around then and see what was what.  There were concerts scheduled for some orchestra or symphony at 730 and the Air Force Academy band at 815, with fireworks at 930.  We figured we would get some food, play some games, catch the concerts, and take advantage of good parking by getting there early.

So, at like 5:30 or so, we finally got out the door.  As we were pulling out, I said to the kids, “keep an eye out for a gas station or bank on our way, momma needs an ATM”.  15 minutes later, we were driving through light rain on base up the hill towards the parking at Arnold Hall.  We got fabulous parking!  Yay!  It wasn’t raining all that hard, so we got out, trekked across the lot, down a big hill towards the giant athletic field we needed to get across, when suddenly, downpour.  We were just passing the baseball fields, so we took refuge under the bleachers.  Good thing, because there was a little bit of hail too.

Ok, I had a stunning picture of the kids under the bleachers looking sad because of rain somewhere, but it seems to be lost in cyberspace.  You’ll just have to imagine it I guess.  Ooops.

The rain slowed down so we ventured out across to the first food tent we could find.  Yay, we are starving!  Wait.  Remember when I said “ATM”?  Yea.  Forgot about that.  No cash in my wallet, no credit cards at the food stands. Wait, another downpour.  We take refuge under the beer tent this time… so now I am under a beer tent in the rain with no money to buy beer.  I should have taken a picture of myself at that point, talk about sad.

Rain stops, out we go to find an ATM.  We ask some people where the easiest one is, they tell us there is one on base.  Score!  Wait, the directions are confusing me.  Hilly winding roads, remember.  Directions sound like go back the way you came, take a right at the B-52, go past the stadium, then turn right at the street where you can only turn right, only because of fireworks you may not be able to, so if you can’t, just turn right at the next street, and the ATM is by the Burger King.  So we start off to do that.  Only when we get to the stadium, it’s all blocked off because they are now parking fireworks people there and having them ride shuttles up to Arnold Hall.  So we detour through the stadium parking lot.  Sure enough, once we get back on track, can’t turn where we are supposed to turn.  So we turn at the next street.  Where a helpful MP promptly tells us we can’t go up the hill to the ATM that I CAN NOW SEE because we don’t have a military ID.  So we’ve driven clean to the other side of the base by now, so I just whip out the south gate and get money at the mall.  Then back on the highway and back in the north gate hoping we can still park at Arnold Hall.  Wait, more downpour.  And hold up, why are they routing my lane to the stadium and the other lane to Arnold Hall?  I am turning around and going back and getting in that lane.  When I get back to where they were splitting lanes, I have to explain to the MP there that I want to go up, not over.  He’s just shut down the Arnold Hall lane, he says.  I don’t care, my… other kids are up there, that’s it, I need to go up there.  So he moves cones and lets me through.  Score, no shuttle bus.    Still downpour.

We now are routed to a lot below Arnold Hall, in fact a lot below the one below Arnold Hall, so we have to trek up the hill then back down to the field.  It’s been almost exactly an hour and a half since I asked the food stand dude if any of the stands were taking credit cards.  We are sitting in the car waiting for it to stop raining.  Finally it does, so we get out, and it promptly starts again, so we get in.  I have to hand it to my kiddos, through all of this they are looking at it as an adventure, never once did they whine or complain.  Finally we get out, taking my sort of plastic windshield sun cover thingy with us for use as an emergency umbrella should we need it.

We made it to the food stand without any more rain, and got some hot dogs and this marvelous funnel cake.

It started sprinkling a bit when we finished eating, but the Air Force Academy Band had started playing across the field, so we started off that way anyways.  On the way, Kayla saw this in the parking lot and said “Take a picture, Mommy, it’s Hurley’s van!”  That’s my girl. We were far away and only my phone was working for pictures at this point, so it’s hard to see, but I told her I would put it up, so here it is.

The Air Force Academy Band was phenomenal.  They had a bunch of very talented soloists, whose names I will now butcher… Technical Sergeant Chrissy something sang a beautiful version of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66″.  Technical Sergeant Marcel Marketti played “La Virgin De La Macarena” on the trumpet both wonderfully and LOUD.  And I-forget-his-rank Tim Allums is one of the more entertaining Elvis impersonators I have ever seen.

That’s a crappy picture of the band.  I put it in so you can see *behind* the band… The sky is ominous.  I kept trying to get a picture of the band while the lightning was going off, but no luck.  At this point, my other camera was finally not being a brat, though, so here are some better ones.  The whole band:

Marcel:

Elvis:

The band stopped a bit early and announced that they were going to start fireworks a bit early as well, since we were catching a ‘break in the weather’.  We discovered they were shooting them off from about 50 yards from where we were, so we just moved on over to the grass and copped a seat… on top of the windshield sun cover thingy.  Brilliant!  First there was a 21 gun salute from about 30 feet to our left, which we were not expecting, but was cool.  Impossible to even see the cannons in the dark over there, so definitely a bit shocking at that first volley, but we got over it quick.

Right after the fireworks started it began to rain a bit more… but not too bad.  Here’s what we looked like, slightly damp, slightly chilly, but still having a good time.

Charlie isn’t as tired as he looks there, it was just a flash issue. 

Here is my best shot of the fireworks, I wasn’t really trying cause I was watching.  The flamage at the bottom is from them shooting it off, so you can see how close we ended up.

Just as the fireworks ended, on purpose, I figure, based on the fact that the music kept playing after the fireworks stopped, it started REALLY raining.  Again.  Only now the only place we had to go was to the car.  Which at this point was about a mile and a half away on the other side of a large hill.  Then the wind picked up.  This is where we became absolutely miserable.  Kayla has issues with her ankles on the best of days, both kids were wearing shorts, and Charlie and I were wearing Crocs, which while cold, turned out probably better than Kayla’s tennis shoes, which got soaked and heavy in a hurry.  So picture us, me carrying a backpack holding both kids hands, Kayla with a blanket over her head, wind going at about 30mph in a torrential downpour while we go as fast as Kayla can across a football field.  Then another one, then up a hill and through two parking lots.  At the top of the hill simultaneously both Charlie and I are so soaked we now have to hold our pants up because they are so heavy they are falling off, and it starts hailing.  Now we are walking through traffic and parking lots and we honestly can hardly see.  Kayla is crying because the lightning is so close.  I am having a panic attack.  Charlie is going ‘Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshmommyareweatthecaryet’ over and over.  We had to do the push the panic button thing on the car because we could. not. see. where it was.  It was a little scary to say the least.  Right before we found the car, Kayla stopped crying long enough to say ‘At least it’s a refreshing drink!’ and laugh like a maniac, at which point I decided she had simply gone round the bend.   Once we got in the car, Kayla took my picture… it was dark, so I don’t think you can really get a sense of how wet we all were.  That hat is STILL wet, 3 days later.

Once we got home, it was too wet and cold to set off the fireworks we had bought earlier.  So for the last couple days we have been doing them after dinner a little at a time.  Happy 4th of spring, everyone.