Happy New Year!

(Since I think the holiday card is never going to get mailed...here ya go!)

Mooshi mooshi!

In February, Mason finally got done being a “student pilot” of any sort and became qualified in the B-52. Last year, we were at Sheppard Air Force Base, TX for pilot training. We came to Barksdale AFB, LA for B-52 specific training and then we were lucky enough to skip an extra move by joining an active squadron here at Barksdale. The only two options were Barksdale and Minot AFB, ND, so there weren’t too many choices. So Mason’s now flying training missions with the 20^th Bomb Squadron here. One would think that as a pilot, Mason’s main job would be flying, but “white space” on the schedule quickly gets overfilled with additional duties like managing the squadron’s finances and tracking the annual checkrides for everyone in the group.

The flying has been good though- 3 times just last week! In April, Mason got to go to Red Flag Alaska for three weeks. It’s a joint exercise with squadrons from all over the world, designed to simulate actual missions as closely as possible. When he returned, he was tossed into nuclear exercises and inspections galore. In total these last few months, he spent about 4 weeks sitting alert either here or up at Minot. In between all that, there’s been lots of good times flying for as much as 10 hours straight, air refueling, and dropping bombs in training ranges.

Despite all the time apart this past year, Ellen has kept busy manning the fort and attending spouse coffees with the 20^th wives, being co-social coordinator for the base Officer Spouse Club (OSC), a member of the OSC book club, hanging out with all the ladies, and not to mention baking for all these exercises. Ellen has continued to tutor at Sylvan Learning Center, and teach at Stanley High School. Although she drives an hour each way to school she really believes that is where she is meant to be teaching for now. This year the school has switched back to a seven period a day which means lots of planning when you teach English to almost all the high school students. This year Ellen is teaching freshman, sophomores, juniors, and has a new drama class. After the success of prom last year, and the production of The Wizard of Oz, she is directing the school play, Peter Pan, in the Spring and has already started planning prom with the junior class. This year they also started a student and teacher book club, so she of course has helped organize that.

Just this week she was awarded high school teacher of the year at her school and found out she passed her last exam to get an in-state teaching certification! Woohoo! And of course, she didn’t want to let Mason be the only one in the house working on a Master’s degree, so in March she started her Master’s in adolescent literacy and technology. It makes for exciting weekends of sitting on the couch typing away on laptops.

The highlight of our year was escaping our busy work schedules and traveling around Japan for two weeks in June. Mason had plenty of leave saved up and we decided there was no better time than the present to get out and do something crazy. The tour group was actually from England, so we ended up getting a taste of more cultures than we expected. We maxed out our walking legs and saw everything there was to see from Tokyo to Matsumoto to Hiroshima to Kyoto and everywhere in between. Our best souvenir was the 2,000+ photos we took. We wanted to see a different world and that’s exactly what we got.

Although we haven’t kept up as well as we’d like we still have our blog up and running, so check it out at www.ellenmason.blogspot.com. We hope that everyone is enjoying this holiday season, we know we are! Feel free to visit Louisiana anytime, we always have time and room for family and friends.

Love, Ellen & Mason