Finished my pilot's license!

After a year and 54 flight hours I passed my private pilot checkride on Jan 24th, the day before we left on our vacation to England. The weather wasn't flyable at first but luckily the ceilings lifted just in time, because the examiner didn't have another opening for several weeks. He grilled me for a couple hours then we did a soft-field takeoff and started on the planned course, then diverted (which had the side benefit of getting me out of the approach path of some T38's landing at Ellington!). After that we climbed to do upper air work (instrument flight, steep turns, stalls and slow flight), then an engine-out scenario of picking a place to land and going through the the restart checklist. We were flying through some light drizzle at this point but the clouds were still plenty high and there was very little turbulence, always nice when you're in a two-seat Cessna. After ground reference (turns around a point) we headed back to the airport to do the other takeoffs/landings: short field, slip, go-around, and soft field. The examiner gave me a temporary certificate and they mail me the permanent card sometime in the next 4 months (!). My instructor Jeff Kling (in the MMACS group at work) was awesome during the whole process from first flight to checkride prep, the only challenges throughout the year were the weather, plane maintenance and my own schedule. Now I'm just looking forward to taking Christina up and staying proficient - first destination is of course we have to overfly our house, then maybe visit Port Aransas on Mustang Island (on the way to Corpus Christi).