With Tiffany in South Carolina for three months training for her army job, we decided to visit Jake for a long weekend in August and keep him company. Molly didn’t want to be left behind, so we packed her into the car with us. (She may have come to regret accompanying us later…see below)

Jake and Tiffany did a lot in 2 months to make their house a home,

including putting up a hammock in the living room.

Jake has a great setup for doing grad school homework in the office. He had a big lab write-up due the day after we arrived, so he excused himself to work on it that night.

At least he looked like he was having fun!

A couple days later, Jim helped him put up a wall-size white board so he can work out complex equations without having to erase.

The boys played lots of spike ball in the yard.

And we got to meet Poppy, Jake and Tiffany’s friends’ new puppy. Poppy the puppy. We were in love.

It reminded us of Molly at that age. The next day, we thought we would have the elderly Molly meet the whipper snapper Poppy. It went just as we expected.

Notice the stress on Molly’s face. She kept hiding behind me or retreating to a corner in order to get away from the little squirt.

When it was clear she had had enough, we separated the dogs to their own corners.

We spent two days at the National Museum of the Air Force. It was massive and full of more aircraft than we’ve ever seen. And we’ve seen a lot of aircraft over the years.

The masked brothers in front of a replica of the Wright Flyer.

There was so much to see and read. We also took advantage of learning from some of the docents roaming the hangars.

Some of us flew in the flight simulators.

I loved watching Jake share the knowledge he’s gained over the past few years. And I think he loved sharing it with us.

This museum is impressive to say the least. We really needed another full day to see everything, but instead we sped through the last hangar and were more or less the last ones out of the museum at closing time.

Jake and Peter cooked up a fish fry one night,

and it was a hit with everyone.

It was a fantastic trip and so good to spend time with Jake. We did miss having Tiffany with us, however. It helped to know that I would see her the following weekend!