A Video Tour of the House!

We'll see if this works since the video upload on blogger hasn't gotten the kinks worked out yet...It's a very primitive video of our house (well...our multiplex, but its what we call home!)

A Summer in Pictures!

Here are some of the pictures from our travels this summer...There are a lot of them so I'll just narrate with captions:

Piggy and Bailey at Michael's dad's house in Vegas--they love looking outside!

As always...we have to watch the fountains at the Bellagio at least once at night:
Our anniversary dinner at Treasure Island (we also saw Mystere there):

Jan was nice enough to take our picture before we left the house:
In Kennewick: Michael, Boo and my dad after ice-cream:
Livi-Lou getting extra ice-cream from her Papi:

Outside in the swimming pool, Boo loves to jump right off the edge into her Ya-Ya's arms and Tay loves to play with the hose and the watering can...
Nothin' like some Otter Pops to cool everyone down!
Livi in her "dress":

Monica and Dominic came over to swim and hang out...it was great to see you both!!

Hangin' out at Ryan's house in Spokane:The boys playing some PS3.

Too cute...
All the kids the night we made dinner with no running water! :)
Me and Tay goofing off...
Michael and Tay tickling each other...
It was a great cross-country trip...but now we're getting settled in our new house over here in Japan! I have lots more pictures to post of our new surroundings and I plan on doing that tomorrow. Michael was "selected" to go to Tokyo this week for an anti-terrorism training so I'm embarking on my first week by myself over here----at least it isn't 7 months!! This is a walk in the park compared to a deployment--thank God my animals don't look at me crazy though when I talk to them! We miss everyone lots!

I've got what!?

Who gets pink eye at the age of 26? Me evidently. Just woke up with it this morning...which means we were able to make my obligatory first trip to the Naval Hospital ER during our first week here (just like at Lejeune when I sliced my finger open). Aren't I something. At least I was able to get some medicine to clear up my cold sores while we were there...smarty pants me forgot and packed it all in the express shipment. Which brings me to our really big news............

WE HAVE A HOUSE ON BASE!! Normally this would not be an "all caps" sort of announcement, but since it means we get to get our babies out of kitty and doggy "jail" (aka boarding kennels) before October 7th (the end of their 180 day quarantine) I am ecstatic!! It will actually be a multiplex, but is bigger than our house at Lejeune----and it has 2.5 baths!!!!!!!!! For anyone who visited, or has lived or is living in, Lejeune, you know we only had one bathroom and it was not very reliable. Also, our express shipment is already on island so after the beautiful gov't furniture is delivered we can get some of our stuff! Maybe it will start to sink in that this is actually "home" for the next three years when we can cook dinner in an oven and the kids can fall asleep on our bed :) For those of you that love to take baths...come to Japan! That is one of the best differences that I have seen thus far. All of their normal bathtubs are extremely deep and huge--I'm in heaven!!

Also, we both took the test for our overseas drivers licenses and passed...that first trek in the car on the lefthand side was....ummm....interesting. We're getting better though! We aren't going to venture real far from the bases until we're more comfortable though. Sorry Ryan--no drifting as of yet... We did test drive the little Mini Cooper today. It was a 1996 but it was the old style. However, it didn't have power steering, the windshield wipers didn't work real well, and it was missing the oil cap...you know, little things. So no Mini for me--gotta give credit to Michael for indulging me though. Still looking for "my" car...

Another Day On Island

Well--Michael found the place to check in, only to have someone hunt him down and tell him the Col had been looking for him all day. Of course, his first thought was "what have I done already...without even checking in yet?!" Evidently, the Col was just so glad to have a "living, breathing officer standing in front of him". What?! Our best guess was that he had had quite a few officers pulled from his battalion before they had actually checked in so he was glad that Michael was actually there. Whew... We're also thinking that Michael is pretty safe from being pulled from this battalion to deploy since there was a list of over 50+ Marines and only 7 of them had deployed already! Then again...until we're done with the military we're not saying anything is certain!

I have another long day in the hotel room. It's really cloudy here...but still insanely hot. I thought Houston was hot and muggy when I lived in Texas. Then I thought that Camp Lejeune was hot when we were living in NC. They have absolutely NOTHING on Okinawa!! Holy cow...since starting this paragraph it has become a torrential downpour outside. It'll be interesting to see how long it lasts. I digress... I guess I was rambling about how crazy-hot it is here. Within five minutes of being outside and walking, your body temperature rises quick enough to make you start sweating profusely. Hopefully this degree of heat is only for a few more weeks.

I did find out why I couldn't see my post last night. Evidently blogger won't show my post until Eastern time hits the time when I posted over here (13 hours later). Weird huh. In case people were wondering, we are 16 hours ahead of the Pacific Coast. That was strange to talk to my parents at 1pm Monday and it was still Sunday night for them!!

Where to Begin...

I had all sorts of ideas for my first post from Japan...but since I cannot upload any pictures and ALL of blogger is in symbols (not Japanese mind you, but little boxes that are supposd to represent Japanese)...I figure I can only hope to tell everyone about our first few days on island. Our flights over were rather uneventful and the animals did as well as could be expected. The sponsor assigned to us picked us up from the airport and took us to our hotel and then out to eat at some of the best sushi I have ever had. Driving over here is a trip!! They drive on the left side of the road...with NO RULES!! I swear Doy's (our sponsor) little car was inches from the other cars on more than one occasion. Speaking of driving...we bought a car yesterday! Thank goodness for the lemon lots on base. We hooked ourselves up with a little Toyota Rav. I always made fun of these little compact SUV's in the states, but they are almost gargantuan over here. I actually was pulling for the really cute green Mini-Cooper but it didn't hold anything but us and was over twice the cost of what we paid. Oh well... The housing issue is atrocious right now. With the Air Force in charge of everything, there are quite a few questionable practices (in my eyes at least...which means nothing to everyone else). Right now we are supposed to be offered housing within the week. This would be awesome, if there wasn't a chance that we could be offered Tower housing (where pets are not allowed). We get two chances to accept housing before getting kicked off the list and having to go out in town to find a place to live. I actually wouldn't mind living out in town, except the pets then have to stay in the boarding kennels until October to finish up their quarantine. Living off-base is actually really safe here. Michael had heard that if there is a crime committed on the island, then there is a 90% rate of finding that individual. Who knows if it quite this high though. Michael is actually checking in at this moment to his unit...hopefully he found the place where he was supposed to go b/c they didn't know where he was supposed to be assigned as of last week :) I'm stuck in the hotel room (thank God for the computer and internet in our room!!) until we can get our licenses on Wednesday. Then I get to try my hand at actually driving over here...watch out Okinawans!!

I have lots of pictures from our adventures across the states...the drives were pretty uneventful. I do say that Oklahoma needs to spend more of their federal money on fixing their roads though. We got to go to a nice Italian dinner and see Mystere in Vegas for our third anniversary which was great. Michael's step-sister even got up from Dallas for a few days so we could spend some time with her. We went and saw two impersonation-ish shows there in Vegas too. One was at the Hilton and had one band that covered 6-7 different bands (Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Elton John, etc) and the other was at the Stratosphere and more diverse with performers covering Prince, Britney Spears, Michael Jackson, etc--both were very cool!! Unfortunately, Michael's dad took a turn for the worse while we were there so he ended up back in the hospital the day we left for WA. He's doing better now (the last report we received) and is now in rehab. Please pray for a quick recovery for him as this has been a very long and painful disease. Once we got to Kennewick we got some great time with my brothers, sis-in-law, parents, nieces and nephew!! It's hard to imagine how much more grown up they'll be when I see them again. It's also sad to think that I didn't even get to see Bryan and Kristen's little boy before I left...or how big Garrett and Sarah's little ones had gotten. I am very happy that we got to see my friend Monica, her fiance Chris and meet their little boy Dominic--so cute!! If I had one thing to do over again, I would definitely have stressed less about the move and taken more time to just enjoy everyone more. Maybe then I wouldn't have cold sores all over my lips! Maybe someone can tell me how to turn Blogger back into English so I won't be so afraid to post, but until we get our own computer there won't be any pictures...sorry!! We miss everyone!

**Update**
I have gotten Blogger into English, but I am still having trouble getting it to publish...if you see this then I have been successful :) hee hee...

Signing off...for now.

It's been a long time coming...but I finally got a rocking chair!! 2 of them actually! I was dead set on getting an old school rocking chair but after comparing prices, comfy-ness, and material we decided on these vinyl rockers. The thought of having to re-paint wood rockers just wasn't very appealing (and with all the moving we do it'll be nice to not have to touch up scratches). The kids still aren't too sure about them yet. They're also getting a little freaked with everything being moved around our house (1st pack date is tomorrow!) We have to pack up the computer tonight so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back on for an update. The next time I blog will not be from Camp Lejeune!! (HOORAY!!!)

This is Michael's rocker:

and this one is mine...

Michael's Trip to Florida

A couple of weekends ago, Michael was able to fly down and see his brothers and their families in Florida. I wasn't able to go b/c I still had that job-thing that I was doing (I am unemployed as of last Friday though!) It sounded like they all had a great time together...and Michael got to meet his newest nephew Kenan!

Here are the boys:

(Michael, Garrett, Bryan)

Garrett and Sarah's kids, Sydney and Ethan:
Eating seafood in a real city called Jacksonville (...Florida)
Michael and Kenan:

A Sad Day For Michael

This last weekend our friend Marcel was able to come down from WA DC to spend some time with us. Marcel was the best man at our wedding and was Michael's roommate in college. They got to go and play some golf and between the 3 of us we drank way too much wine! It was good to see him before we had to leave though.Sunday was a tough day for Michael. We had to put the "Pony" on a truck to have her shipped out to Vegas. Michael's dad is going to take care of her while we're in Japan for the next 3 years. I think Pigdog was sad too...she kept climbing in the car.
Michael scraping the base stickers...
So sad...

There she goes. Yes. Michael wanted to follow her as long as possible. We'll see her in a few weeks when we get to Vegas ourselves!!

Myrtle Beach and a Japan Update

Our trip to Myrtle Beach was just what we needed to unwind. After starting the first couple of nights with a bang (and being quickly reminded by our bodies that we are no longer 21 years old and cannot drink like that anymore!)...we mainly relaxed by the pool, read our books, and floated on the lazy river.

This was our first night in our condo, Michael was really excited to play bartender for everyone. In case you are wondering, we were trying to "kill" our entire liquor cabinet b/c none of it can go with us to Japan!! (We failed miserably)Mat and Sara at Hard Rock (where I somehow came home with a "Hard Rock" tumbler all packaged up?!) I like this picture b/c Mat looks funny. It's going to be sad, and very strange, not to see Sara everyday once we move.
Our adventure the second night we were there was to Medieval Times. It was a lot of fun...helped along by the bartender giving Mat and Michael free drinks all night (and Sara and I free "sparkle glasses" b/c we weren't drinking) long b/c they were Marines and so was the bartender's brother.
The food was (surprisingly) REALLY good! You don't have any utensils to use so you had to drink the soup and eat everything else with just your fingers.
This was our knight. The RED KNIGHT!! We ended up being bad guys trying to overthrow the king...go figure. Sara and I kept commenting on his beautiful, luscious locks of hair. (It seemed really funny to us at the time anyway)

After Mat and Sara left we became the lazy couple that we usually are. I was able to pursuade Michael into taking me to Alligator Alley up in North Myrtle Beach. It was AMAZING!! I have become obsessed with alligators since moving to NC (they actually just caught a 7-footer here on base and then released it at an undisclosed location...on base. Whatever.)

These are pictures of Utan. He's the biggest alligator in captivity in the world!! I failed to take a picture of his specs tho and I can't remember them exactly. (12 feet long?)

Here are some of the alligators after the feeding time.

This is an albino alligator.

...and after all of those cool things (including a trip through the snake area where they had a black mamba, all sorts of 8-10 foot pythons, etc)...these turtles were Michael's favorite part of the excursion.

As for our move to Japan...of course the Marine Corp has to make it more difficult than it should be (at least PMO is)...thats who books our plane tickets... We now are not able to fly out of Sea-Tac until Aug 2nd...won't land until 1500 on Aug 3rd...and Michael is supposed to check in by midnight Aug 3rd!! This is a Friday...in Okinawa!! People are off of work by about noon!! When you add on the baggage of getting me to a hotel, the kids through their quarantine check, to the boarding facility, and to the vet within 72 hours (without our own car) -- it doesn't seem quite feasible. We'll see. My biggest gripe about all of this is that they won't allow our animals up in the cabin with us b/c they're stupid. Piglet has flown all over the US without a problem, but now that it is an AMC (military charter) flight, there are issues. They were so excited to fly in their Sherpas too. Just to be a pain...I'm sending Piglet on the plane in her crate that could house a Great Dane. It's within the weight restrictions. So there. (that's me sticking it to The Man).

Here's Bailey all snuggled up...

We're Outta Here!

Yeah!! The vacation that I had no faith in actually happening has finally arrived! (I've learned to always expect the Marine Corp to cancel it until you're actually out the door) We're headed to Myrtle Beach, SC for a week. Mat and Sara are going to join us for the first few days so, hopefully, we'll have some good pictures to post when we get back.

Some unsettling news is that Michael's dad (Steve) is not doing well and was put in the ICU last night. At first they thought he had Bell's Palsy, but now they are diagnosing it as something else. Please say a quick prayer for a speedy recovery.

Have a great week!