Posted in Frank, Life, Marriage, Wedding, tagged Frank, love, Marriage on September 19, 2010| 1 Comment »
Seven years ago today, Frank and I were married. We’ve been through quite a bit in the past seven years, and I’ve loved every minute (good and bad). Thanks for being my husband, best friend and partner. I can’t wait to start the next chapter of our life together with you!
Love you, babe. This much, always.
~Em
Our first dance.
Posted in Frank, Life, love, Marriage, reflections, Travel, tagged Frank, history, Holidays, Life on August 22, 2010| 1 Comment »
Last night I watched Enchanted, one of my favorite movies to watch. It’s one of those movies that when it’s on, I can’t help myself. The movie reminds me a lot of Frank. No, it’s not because Frank channels Patrick Dempsy with his dashing good looks and pragmatic approach to life. Nor is it because Frank often introduces me the way Prince Edward introduces Giselle – “Giselle is my love, my heart’s one true desire!”
Enchanted reminds me of a truly K-Fam Thanksgiving experience. Back in November 2007 Frank was a jet Captain on the Dornier at the now defunct Skyway Airlines. As per usual, Frank was at the bottom of the seniority list, meaning that he was working holidays. I decided that I would accompany him over Thanksgiving on his trips so that we could spend Thanksgiving together. On Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, we went to Cleveland. Skyway actually put the pilots up in a somewhat decent hotel which was close to a very nice mall.
One of Frank’s favorite things to do is walk around a mall. This is surprising because he does NOT like to shop. He enjoys stopping at stores that have nice smells or kitschy items with limited uses (ie. Brookstone, Spencers). We walked around the mall for a while and then decided to go see the movie Enchanted. We thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I remember walking out of the theater holding Frank’s hand, feeling light and free. We had dinner at the Macaroni Grill and drew fun pictures on the paper table cloth and enjoyed being together.
The next day, Thanksgiving, we flew back to Milwaukee and then up to Appleton. We stayed at the Raddison Paper Valley in downtown Appleton. We arrived at the hotel at 2:30 in the afternoon and saw, to our amazement, a huge Thanksgiving buffet set out! Victory! We approached the hostess stand, all of our bags in tow, and asked the hostess for details on the buffet. She told us they were taking it down. Oh, the looks on our faces! We pleaded with her – can we just go through once and get some Thanksgiving food – we are far from home and won’t get a real Thanksgiving! Nope. She wouldn’t budge. As we walked by the buffet on the way to our room, we watched them throwing out entire cakes and pies. Oh, how we wanted to weep right there!
Slightly disheartened, but determined to have a lovely Thanksgiving anyway, we went to the hotel bar, hoping that they may have some Thanksgiving fare. No such luck. I think Frank had a hamburger and I had a chicken sandwich. Regardless of the lack of Thanksgiving themed food, we had a wonderful time watching football in the bar and talking with his First Officer.
Later that night, we decided that we wanted dessert, but room service didn’t have anything good, so we found a vending machine and shared a Three Muskateers bar and a Rice Krispy Treat. Oh, it was bliss! Almost like having French Silk Pie… but not quite…
It is one of my happiest memories of us. We had such a nice time celebrating Thanksgiving together and I am so glad we did it! Considering that Frank is back at the bottom of the seniority list again, perhaps we will try the adventure again this year, but maybe in a more exotic location, like LA or Puerto Rico!
Posted in Frank, God, Life, tagged Frank, God, Life, work on August 21, 2010| 2 Comments »
Those of you who know me in real life (IRL), know that the K fam has recently been soooo excited to announce that Frank is now flying out of a Milwaukee base instead of an Atlanta base. Milwaukee (MKE) is roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours away from our home, whereas Atlanta requires a 45 minute drive plus a 2 1/2 hour flight. And, if that isn’t fun enough, Frank had to allow three or four flight options, just in case he got bumped or a flight was canceled. On his way home, he would often be running from concourse to concourse trying to find an open flight – and that was often after an 8-10+ hour day of flying. Sometimes he wouldn’t roll into our driveway until after 1 a.m. after starting his day at 6 a.m. With travel to and from Atlanta factored in, Frank was averaging 6-7 full days home per month. Needless to say, it was rough, but we made it work.
Actually, I look at it as a little feather in our cap that we made it work so well. For all that we’ve been going through while he’s been commuting to Atlanta for the last year or so, including fertility treatments and a miscarriage, the fact that we are still so in love is a blessing from God.
TOOT TOOT. (that’s me, tooting our collective horn)
While I was prepared to continue having a long-distance marriage for a while longer, we were soooo blessed when Frank won the bid for the Milwaukee base earlier this summer. Thanks to this new base, Frank was in training to fly a new aircraft which resulted in him being home on WEEKENDS!! This is a rare occurrence, indeed. As a result, we hosted a dessert and cocktail party this summer, we had a holiday together (4th of July!-note – because of his seniority, we do not usually expect to have any holidays together), we went to Summerfest AND the Wisconsin State Fair (two of our favorite things) and generally did weekend-type couple-y things. I LOVED every minute of it. Frank is almost done with training – he is finishing up initial operating experience, which basically means he is flying with a very experienced captain who will later sign off that he is a capable pilot and set him free for regular flying.
So it has been a good summer in the K house this year. We have felt abundantly blessed with this new base and look forward to more time together this fall!
Posted in Frank, Life, tagged attempts at humor, Frank, humor, Life, misc thoughts, odd humor on August 3, 2010| 1 Comment »
So… Frank is a Pilot. This means he is gone for days and days. It also means that we experience much of our relationship over the phone.
Example conversation:
Emily (E): Sooo, what else is new?
Frank (F): HMmmmmm.
Long pause. You have to be ok with long pauses when carrying on a marriage via phone. You have to give the other person a chance to “buffer”. Buffering is when their brain catches up with their mouth. The reason that their brain and mouth get out of sync is because they are playing Bejeweled Blitz online. (Darn you, Mother, for showing us that game!)
E: Yeah?
F: So, yeah, well, I’m still listening to that zombie book on CD.
Background info: Frank has a love/hate relationship with zombies movies/stories. While he hates, hates, HATES being scared, he can’t help himself when it comes to Zombies. He’s like Bubba from Forest Gump, “There are zombies that run fast, zombies that run slow, zombies that swim, zombies that dance and zombies that can be frozen and thawed…” and an hour later, I’m drooling on myself, stabbing myself in the face with a pencil and wondering if I, myself, am a zombie…
E: aaaaaaahhhhhrrrrrggghhhh.
F: Whatever. So anyway, zombies –
E: No, that was me gagging at you.
F: Oh, so you weren’t making a zombie noise to scare me?
E: No! I was groaning that we are STILL talking about zombies.
F: Well, cuz zombies make that moaning noise, so I thought you were trying to scare me. Well anyway –
And he’s off and running on to his next part of the zombie adventure. Something about under water zombies that getcha when you’re swimming. Which, unbeknown to Frank, gives me a whole new arsenal of things I can terrify him with…
Not only is this a zombie, but it's also what I look like when I'm listening to Frank talk about zombies...
Picture this:
Frank and I are sitting on the couch, watching old DVR’d Saturday Night Live episodes. He’s leaning against me while I am trying to master this terrible game called Bejeweled Blitz. My mother is addicted to the game, so if I ever want to relate to her again, I need to learn this game.
ANYWAY. We’re sitting here and I burped through my nose.
You know, the polite way to burp.
But as Frank has explained to me on several occasions, this does not “descent” the burp.
So anyway, I polite burped and blew it out my nose – and onto Frank.
A few seconds later.
“Oh… ohh… EM! Seriously?? Did you just burp? What was that? Seriously – that is nasty – really? It’s not funny. Stop laughing. It’s gross. I’ve told you before that is gross. Why would you do that? Why? Seriously. No, stop laughing. You knew it was wrong. Why?”
“Frank, c’mon, I mean, I didn’t realize it would be THAT bad.” Although, admittedly, we just finished ravioli with pesto sauce and bread with chunks of garlic cloves in it. So yeah, I guess I kind of knew in the back of my head that it could get ugly.
Frank moves over to the other side of the couch.
“I gotta put this on the blog.”
“Don’t put it on the blog.”
“I have to. I am trying to authentically document our life together.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Frank shakes his head is clearly disgusted. “You are the grossest wife EVER.”
A few minutes later, Frank is watching Community and giggling to himself.
“Oh, hey, Em, I realized today that I owe you an apology for something.” I look over at him, surprised. A rare moment indeed!
“Really? For what?”
Joy of joys!
Realization passes over Frank’s face.
“Yeah, but I’m not going to tell you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Oh man, the look on your face…” [insert uncontrollable laughter] “… it’s like that thing from Star Trek 2 that Kahn puts in the guy’s head to make him go crazy. Blog that!”
And so I did.
Frank's Beans 