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.

In Okinawa

We finally arrived in Okinawa. The trip was long to be expected. We only ran into minor snags and the kids were angels. And I didnt puke which is amazing because I always puke on that long flight. The real problems didnt start until we actually arrived. I cant really explain that feeling of finally getting OFF the plane upon arrival in Okinawa. Exhausted, angry, relieved, happy, annoyed, and more tired than you ever have been in your whole life. All you want is to get to your hotel (TLF in our case) and sleep. We got in around 10:30 am and I really wanted to get on a schedule right away as far as sleeping. But I didnt care anymore, I wanted to sleep. So we come out of customs and immigration to meet our sponsors and hit the road.

What do we find? NOTHING. I should have known. Our sponsor didnt show up, call, or send someone else. I was beyond pist. Hubs thought maybe they mistakenly went to the domestic airport instead of the international one so he walked over there. Nothing. He tried to make some calls to his unit. Nothing. I sat around for about an hour waiting. A woman approached me with her two kids and said I looked like I needed help. I obviously would never get in a car with strangers (especially with my kids) but Okinawa is that exception. She was heading in our direction and offered a ride. I gladly excepted and we packed 3 adults, 4 carseats and 5 suitcases all in her car. I still cant believe we got it all in there. It wasnt a very comfy ride, but it was a ride.

We get to TLF. Im not even going to begin to talk about that. Lets just say its unacceptable for a family with 2 kids. Our sponsor calls us 7 hours later to ask how we got to the hotel. We tell him and he says "sorry, my wife had the car". Your wife had the car? You didnt discuss that you are a sponsor and you need to be at the airport. That you left a family stranded? And are JUST NOW calling us to ask if we are ok?? If hubs wasnt in a sleepy daze, the poor kid would have gotten a mouthful. He tells him we are fine, and to pick us up tomorrow morning for the New comers brief. The New comers brief is very important because it's where you take your drivers test and its only once a week. So we wake up and head out to meet sponsor. Of course he isnt there. He is 15 minutes late. We get there and ask where the childcare is and they tell us its at the CDC. Great. So now our kids have to sit through a 6 hours brief with us. They didnt do well at all. They were bored, hungry, and so tired.

We sent sponsor off with Hubs card to be signed by the CO. Without the card signed, he cant get his license. I tell sponsor to come back with 12 with the card. Of course he comes back without the card. So hubs cant get his license that day. Fantastic. Luckily, I passed the test and got mine. Hubs is at work all day today so me and the kids are in this mico sized hotel room. Its so aggrivating knowing that he is standing around work trying to get petty paperwork signed by someone who thinks they are more important than you. Knowing that we have such more important things to do. Like go look for a car. Go to housing. Feed the kids.

So many people say they hate Okinawa. I didnt hate it when we lived here. But I didnt show up with a family either. I feel so bad for families who show up to this. No assistance what so ever. It puts a bad taste in your mouth right from the start. Hopefully things will start to improve soon. Our sponsor said he was sorry about not being at the airport and it was difficult because "we showed up during a 96". He is lucky I didnt punch him in the back of the head from where I was sitting in the backseat.

Hopefully my next post will be a little more upbeat. But for now, Ive had it.

Im homeless

Well I have my computer so I can blog now. And ohhhhh do I have some complaining to do. We wont be going to Okinawa on Wednesday. Our overseas screening adviser is useless. Im not being mean...she really is useless. She has made mistake after mistake with out paperwork. Everytime she makes a mistake our stuff gets delayed. It looks really bad on us because it looks like we waited until the last minute to get our stuff done. The monitor is pissed off and threatened hubs with ANOTHER 1 year unaccompanied tour. Anyway, now we have no idea what is going on. We are basically waiting on a phone call from Okinawa to tell us if its denied or approved. Then we schedule another flight since they canceled our tickets for Friday. The real bummer is we only have until Friday to stay in TLF. (which we've been in since last Wednesday!) Our poor kids. If we hear NOTHING by Friday Im bringing the kids to my moms house back in Boston. Im a pretty patient person. Im reasonable and understanding but this is bullshit. At least the gym is across the street and I can run off my frustrations. Although Im used to going to an all womens gym, so this man fest is....different.

Oh! And thanks for all the lovely comments on my boudoir pics! I totally recommend doing it!

Until next time, I will stay frustrated!

My Photo Shoot Sneak Peek

Ok I know I said yesterday was my last post for a while but Ive been dying to share these. I did a Boudoir Photo shoot for my husband for Valentines Day. It was soooo much fun. I felt like a super model! I made a gorgeous album for him and gave it to him this evening. He loved it so much! I really wanted something creative and unexpected this year. And thats exactly what I did. Here are a FEW shots. Obviously some of them are private :D