Together

Here's another launch day layout for you. My mother in law was able to come out here for the launch. It was nice that she got to be a part of what her son does. She was pretty excited to be able to experience it.

Summertime

One of the nice things about living on post is there is this great splash park behind the housing office. We have had a lot of fun playing there. Aaron isn't so keen on it, he doesn't like to get splashed in the face so he pretty much watches or waits til it turns off (it's got a motion sensor so it turns off if no one is there playing). Now that he's in swim lessons and has been putting his face in the water, maybe he'd like it more.

Whole LOTTA Love!

Here's something you might not know, NASA folk can party. You wouldn't think that a bunch of geeky engineers could, but man, oh man, they can drink! So much in fact, that the bar ran out of several items.

THEN, once the drinking has gone on for about 10 seconds, the love starts. This project was a long time in the making and a lot of people spent months, and months, and months away from their families and worked 80+ hour weeks.

I used to work at NASA before I had children and I was very happy to see many of my old friends at the party. Some had moved to New Mexico like us, but I rarely got to see even them since their work schedule was so tough.

Launch it baby!

This layout is the actual 2 minutes of the launch. They were testing the Launch Abort System (LAS) which is the actual rocket (with 3 separate propulsion systems) that would jettison the CM away from potential mishap. It was a highly successful flight and such a great experience. The technology used in this was amazing!

Spies like Us.

Still taking a break from launch posts and giving you the last one from my girls weekend in Pasadena last year. I can't believe it's been a year already, how the time flies. This one is a little.... umm.... I can't really think of a good word. Since me and my friend Jill (pictured, sorta here) are active CTMH consultants and my friend Jen is a former consultant, of course we had to check out the booth.

determination!

Taking a break from PA-1 layouts here for you.

We have a great tree in our backyard here in NM. It's just a little bit to tall for the kids to climb, but they are determined to climb it. My rule is that if you're not big enough to get up on your own, you're not big enough to climb the tree. This day they were taking the hose and using it in all sorts of ways to get up the tree. At one point, they had tied it to the slide and were pulling as if to use the slide as an elevator.
I did tell Martel that on our last day in the house, he was going to have to help them climb the tree. :)

Almost Famous!

As we were watching the PA-1 launch, Martel had Leo on his shoulders so Leo could see better. After the launch a reporter came up to Martel and said that he had been trying to get a picture of them and asked if he could take their picture. I couldn't believe it when Martel agreed and then he spoke, actually spoke to a reporter. My taciturn husband spoke to a reporter. As you can tell, I'm still amazed and it's been a month. Not only did the reporter take this great picture, it was on the front page of the Las Cruces Sun News the next day.

So Cool!

One of my husband's job duties (back home) is Shuttle Recovery if it lands at Dryden Flight Research Center (see this post) Last year STS-125 landed at Dryden and the Commander was Scott Altman. Martel came home and said that it was the best landing he'd ever seen.

Scott Altman happened to be at the PA-1 launch and was talking to the crowd. I went up to him and introduced myself, and Martel, to him and told him what Martel does and said about his landing. Scott (as he introduced himself) seemed to be happy to hear what Martel had to say about his piloting skills and posed for pictures with us (and Alex, our neighbor who came to the launch with us)

One big adventure

As some of you know, we temporarily relocated to the Las Cruces, New Mexico are for my husband's work. For those that don't know me/us, he's a Mechanical Engineer for NASA and is currently on the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) Project. They were getting ready to do some serious flight testing and moved the main crew to New Mexico (from different NASA centers throughout the country) to do the test. What they (successfully) did here was the Pad Abort 1 (PA-1) test which in a nutshell will jettison the crew module off the launch rocket in the event of a mishap. This one test flight is the reason that we've been in New Mexico for the last 8 months.

Enough jibber-jabber now, here's the first page of the album (yes, I'm dedicating an entire album to this, as it's a significant part of our lives). This is the Operations Crew (which my husband is a part of) in front of the Crew Module (CM) with the Launch Abort System (LAS) on attached to it.