A Day with the Downings: Allardice Family Trip for 2010

Most of you all know that I leave for a deployment later this year. My family tries to have at least one family trip each year. This is extremely difficult since we are all active duty military. We managed to coordinated our schedules and planned a family trip to Colorado Springs this coming July. But, as always, the Air Force had other plans. Around the first week of April, Angela received a short notice deployment (which was odd, because she just returned from a deployment in August before our wedding). She was tasked to leave in the beginning of May, which meant our family trip was not going to happen in July. Furthermore, I leave for my deployment before she returns and I don't get back until spring 2011. Which also meant our family would go a year and a half without seeing each other! We didn't like that :(. So, we all decided last minute that we would fly out to VA for the weekend. Angela is currently stationed at Langely AFB, VA and my parents happened to be TDY to Bolling AFB, VA for two weeks during the time she received word of the deployment...perfect timing (which we all know is rare). So Amber and I flew out to VA. We were almost a complete family...Josh was TDY, so he couldn't go. BUT, at least the five of us were together. It was a VERY short visit. We enjoyed every minute of it :). Our family owns property out in VA (hopefully our parents will retire on it one day!). So most of our time was spent hanging out on the land.