I'm attempting this blog from my iPhone so let's see how it goes! We FINALLY got a house! It's a great house with an amazing view. I can't wait to post pictures. It's empty ( we haven't received our TMO yet). We also have some exciting news, our family expanded by adding our latest member, Maggie! She is an English Bulldog (representin' USMC) lol! We adopted her from a family who is MSG and can't bring pets. We love her sooo much already. The kids are so in love, it's as if we've had her for years. I'm dying for things to get back to normal but I know it will be a little while. But it's going good now thatvwe finally have a house. I LOVE living off base. There is a produce stand less than a block away where we buy veggies from. I shop at a local Japanese grocery store... Last night I made homemade yakisoba. It was delicious! Tonight I went traditional with chicken/broccoli and Ziti, but I got some of the ingredients at the Japanese store! As soon as we get Internet I will be posting pictures so stay tuned!

*UPDATE*

Im Alive! I often use that phrase when I havent blogged in a while but it seems a little more meaningful since there was a massive earthquake and Tsunami in Japan this past weekend.

Hubs and I were walking around an Ikea type store looking for furniture when we saw a bunch of locals gathered around a TV watching with their eyes wide open. Hubs even said "maybe there was a natural disaster or something". Sure enough we are on our drive home a few minutes later and the sirens were sounding all throughout the city. School kids were running home and EVERYONE on the entire island was on a cell phone. We heard exactly what happened on AFN radio. Of course we went right back to the hotel to watch the news. Sure enough Okinawa was scheduled to be hit by a Tsunami at 6:12 that same evening. They evacuated all low lying areas of on and off base housing. There is always those moron who sit on the seawall and watch though. We just headed out to dinner with friends. We remained on Tsunami warning until the next morning.

Marines have already been dispatched from Okinawa to help. Since my hubs works in the III MEF, Im not sure how this will effect him. But I know III MEF do a ton of humanitarian assistance so I wouldnt be surprised is he was sent up to mainland Japan to help. They have set up a lot of fundraising and donation centers around the bases here to help too. I read a story about a 4 months old baby girl pulled from a collapsed house this morning. She is starving, but alive and crying.

We spent all of last week house hunting (even before we had our clearances, but I was done waiting). We looked at some teenie places, some dirty places, some places with a million stairs to climb. Its tough to get what you want off base. And I have a large wish list! I knew I would have to give up some things I wanted. Until we found The House. Yaka Beach House to be more specific. We got SUPER lucky with this one. The houses here get snatched up literally the second they go on the market because of all the incoming people going off base and the renovations on base are forcing people off. Back to the house. Its sits RIGHT on the water so it has amazing views and a gorgeous beach. Im so happy its not in one of those super congested, American filled areas like the seawall. Yuck. It has a garage (very rare here) with an opener too! My kitchen has storage, which is also hard to find. The girls have huge jacuzzi tub to swim in. Beautiful hardwood floors, a large backyard, a huge patio on the second floor. I LOVE this place, if you cant tell. The locations isnt ideal, but Im willing to drive since the house is so great. Its very close to hubs work but will be far for me to drive to work. And since everything in Tampa was 5 minutes away, driving 15 minutes makes me cringe. Ive been spoiled with the convenience of the states, I know this.

We cant move in until all the paperwork is complete which takes forever. We've now lived in TLF for 6 weeks, including 3 fires and a giant natural disaster. Im done complaining about TLF, I know we are lucky to even have a roof over our heads right now consider the poor people on mainland.

Here is a picture of our house and our beach.

Finally!!

After over a MONTH of waiting, we finally got our area clearances today. Im happy we got them, but still extremely frustrated with the sponsor ship that goes on here. I WILL make a difference in the system for future incoming families. They actually have us sponsoring a family already...before we had cars and housing or anything!! EFMP families get priority for expidited paperwork (like area clearances) because without it, you cant check in to medical. I could go on for hours about all the mistakes that have been made and set us back but Im not going to. Im happy we have them but action will be taken for the mistakes. Anyhoo, Here is a picture of our super cute daughter getting ready for bed and a picture of my sweet new Japanese car. I will post more pics later. Im sooooooo excited to start house hunting!!!!! Be prepared for some awesome pics of Japanese houses!

My bittersweet relationship with Okinawa.

Sorry bloggers, but blogging has been at the bottom of my list lately.

Things are not going as planned. (Go Figure). I forgot that being on base/doing things on base is almost impossible. We still dont have area clearances. I have no idea when we will get them. Without them...the housing office wont even look at you. So here we sit, in TLF. The worst TLF I have ever seen mind you. Not sure if I mentioned anything about it before. But they put us in a 1 bed hotel room. 1 bed...for 4 people. Oh, excuse me, there is a pull out couch from the 70's that my kids keep getting cut on because the springs are popping out everywhere. Im like - close to writing my congressman about the conditions of TLF.

Anyway. Hubs cant get leave until he is all checked in. Which you need an area clearance for. So he goes to work every day while the kids and I are in this crappy room. Luckily, we have some nice connections. Hubs has a lot of civilian friends from our last tour here. One of which has an auto business and he is letting us borrow a car for free until we find one of our own. I am soooooooo thankful that he is so generous with his recourses.

So we have spent the last week test driving about a million cars (more like 10 or 12). Seems like a million because it's ALL we do. Look for cars online or in the lemon lot, call the people, set up a time, test drive, Decline. Im getting REALLY impatient too. People need to stop WASTING my time. I ask them on the phone if the car has any problems and they say "no, its in great shape" then I get there and they are like "oh the ac is broken" or "it has a coolant leak" or one guy said "its a great car, but needs an engine". Oh? Just an engine? We drive way out of our way to test drive a car that Hubs "had to have" and the chick tells us she is selling it for a friend so we cant test drive it. UGH!

FINALLY I find a car that I really like, in my price range, new Japanese inspection (they inspect your car every 2 years, and it cost between 500 -a few thousand dollars) so getting one with a new inspection is ideal. I really liked it and made her an offer. She accepted but said she needed it until the end of March. UGH! I said I have cash now and she changed her mind and said we could have it Monday. So Im realllllllllllllly hoping this works out and I get this car on Monday.

In the meantime, Im going to start harassing people about our clearances. It drives me NUTS that some Lance Coconut is sitting at a desk not doing his Job. He actually told us "I never got the email" When here I am LOOKING at the email that was sent to him.

Wish us luck. End Rant.