This morning we went to this really awesome craft fair being held at the seemingly run down shopping center across the road from our housing area.  First of all, the shopping center is HUGE and not at all run down, huh….I guess all that sea air makes things look a lot dingier than normal.  So anyway….3 floors full of handmade pottery, glass, leather, wood, linens, stuff made out of poop (well, I think it was anyway….)

You tell me, petrified poop? Or not?

I didn’t take too many pictures, I didn’t want to look like a weirdo.  But we spent a couple of hours wandering around looking at everything.  They had a bunch of stations too where we could make our own crafts.  The boys’ all chose to make leather key chains.  They loved that!  They picked a color and style, then pounded out whatever letters or symbols they wanted.Emma chose to buy a beautiful blown glass necklace.  She took her time picking out just the right one, she even said she’d let me borrow it someday :)  They told us the tiny flower inside is blown glass, then it’s put inside more blown glass.  I know right, how crazy is that!  There are some mega talented people out there!We then headed over to the Baskin Robbins and ate ice cream!  I would like to let you know that right after that we went to the PX barber and got the boys’ hair cut :)  My little ragamuffins!  It was a fun day, I’m so glad we can finally go out and DO things together! 

I made this cake the other day…..it was SO GOOD!  I didn’t take any pictures of it, so just use your imagination!  OK, here it goes…..

2- 1/4 all purpose flour (I use cake flour instead)

1- 1/2 cups white sugar

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter

1- 1/4 cup milk

3-1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla (I always add a little bit more, for fun!)

3 large eggs

1. Heat oven to 350.  Grease bottom and sides of pan(s) Lightly flour.

2. Beat all ingredients until well blended.   Pour 2/3 batter into prepared pans.  Stir in 3 TBS baking cocoa and 1/8 tsp baking soda into remaining batter.  Drop chocolate batter by tablespoon fulls onto peanut butter batter.  Pull knife through batters using S shape. 

3.  Bake rectangle 40-45 minutes, 9 inch rounds 30-35 minutes or until toothpick insterted in middle comes out clean.

Peanut Butter Buttercream frosting:

3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup smooth peanut butter

1-1/2 tsp vanilla

2-3 tablespoons milk

1.  Mix powdered sugar and peanut butter.  Stir in milk and vanilla until smooth.  You may need a little more milk to make it spreadable. 

And that’s that!  I did decorate a bit with some fudge frosting, but it turned out really thick, I think I’ll have to find a different recipe for that next time.  Enjoy!

Every morning at Jared and Emma’s bus stop, I had been noticing a few ladies stay back and chat after the kids are off to school.  One day I thought to myself ” hey self, you should stay behind too a minute and introduce yourself, and try to make some friends.”  So I did and it has really been a lot of fun!  Sometimes it’s only a few minutes, but there have been times when over an hour has passed and we’re still out there chatting away.  It’s usually not long before Evan starts whining to go HOME!!  Yesterday at the bus stop they invited me to go to breakfast with them, off post at this little Italian restaurant down the street.  Yes I know I live in Japan….But anyway, that’s what I did this morning and it was so much fun!!  There are some talkers in the group, so I didn’t have to say too much, which was actually kind of nice :)  Oh, and none of these ladies are members of the church, which is not really something I do.  Not like I have anything against non-members,  but that’s just usually where I find about 99% of my friends.  Since we haven’t had a van, and hence haven’t been able to go to church I haven’t really been able to connect with any one yet.  At least anyone that lives in my neighborhood.  I only bring that up because these ladies are all huge coffee addicts!  Hey, I’m not judging here!  Also, at the restaurant, they offer free coffee and tea with your meals, and I was having a heck of a time understanding the waitress when she was asking me if I wanted either of those drinks.  I was good with my water!  They actually made fun of me a little too!  But it’s cool, I can take it :)  Oh, and as a side note, the food was SO GOOD!   Those Japanese can make some killer french toast and scones!  I’ve decided that that’s where Tyler and I will go on a date in a couple of weeks!  He doesn’t know that yet. 

So it was fun and I’ve realized that I’ll be alright, and my 5 years in Clarksville and Tyler being deployed have helped me become less shy more open to just throw myself out there to make new friends.  But dang it I miss my Fort Campbell friends!  But you know y’all are welcome to come visit :)

Phew, so many posts!  But I’m sure this is the one that you’ve all been waiting for *coughheidicough*  We did finally make it to Okinawa on December 6th, a day late and many dollars short!  Hawaii is expensive ya know.  So it’s winter time, right?  I would say it was probably around 70 degrees or so out here.  Beautiful!  We keep hearing about how we’ll acclimate and next winter we’ll be like everyone else bundled up when the temps reach 60!  I do wish I had some pictures of the locals out here with their parkas on :)

But anyway, the TLF was really nice (much better than Turner on Fort Campbell!)  We had two adjoining rooms, a full size table and kitchen, and two full bathrooms.  Like I mentioned in my last post, there are no elevators, so that was really stinky.  Plus, no internet hook ups in the rooms.  Oh well, we survived.  Well, I just barely survived only getting to go to the library maybe once a day to check my facebook.  Here are pictures of us in our first few days on the island!

The kids by some freakishly cool tree

A random building. I think they're apartments

Yes! Something wonderful and familiar!

Ferris wheel on top of a store, you can pay to ride, and there is a great view! On our to-do list!

Driving on the other side of the road

Such narrow roads!

Awesome road signs!

After Tyler got his driver’s license we rented a van so we could do a little sight seeing.  He took us to Torii Beach,  it’s on Torii Station, one of only 2 Army posts on the entire island.  The sand was a bit rocky, but we had a BLAST messing around in the sand and ocean!  Too bad we weren’t just a bit more prepared with shorts/t-shirts.  We still had a great time though! 

What a bunch of beach bums!

Torii's at the Torii Station gate. Guess that's where they got the name :)

After we were done at the beach we headed over to a store called Jusco.  I’ve heard people describe it as a “Japanese Wal Mart”  Oh no, it’s way cooler than that!  It’s actually like a huge mall, except without the separate stores.  There are food courts and a huge arcade.  They are several floors, they sell clothes, appliances, some furniture, all sorts of stuff.  There is a HUGE pink wall dedicated to Hello Kitty.  Now that was scary.  Next time I’ll take pictures.  I was so overwhelmed that day.  It was right before Christmas on a Saturday and the place was packed!  We picked lunch up at one of the stands.  We ordered a few chicken skewer type of things, and some other fried potato things.  I’m actually not 100% sure what I ate, but it was good!  That was pretty much the last time we were able to explore together.  We bought a van, but it has been giving us trouble and is in the shop right now.  Bummer!!!!  Tyler has a great little black car, but we don’t all fit in, so it’s been impossible for us to go out all together!  My next post I’ll catch you all up on our new house and Christmas :)

I do have to start this post with what happened to us AFTER getting the van in storage!  It was only around 4pm, so we decided to use this gift card Jenny gave us (thanks Jenny!!!) for Chili’s, Macaroni Grill, and a couple other restaurants.    We figured it would be our last chance.  So we break out our trusty GPS Susan, and get to looking up Chili’s.  We find one and head that way.  And we “reach our destination” and there is no Chili’s in sight.  Anywhere.  We drive around the shopping center a bit and decide that there is NO Chili’s.  So, we look up the second one on the list and head there.  By the way, all of this going back and forth took us past the Seattle Temple several times, so there wasn’t too much complaining!  We get to the second Chili’s and that one is no where to be found either.  What the?  So there are zero Chili’s in Seattle?  And yet we’re being told there are…So we decide, hey Macaroni Grill!  We find that, right smack dab in the middle of down town!  Um, yeah, there’s no way we’re going to find parking and make our way there.  Sigh….so we decide to eat at the hotel restaurant (yum) and call it good.  This all took us probably 3 hours by the way, so no time to do anything fun like I hoped we could.  You know, like see the Space Needle or something!  So anyway, it turns out that Chili’s and the Macaroni Grill are the ONLY full fledged American restaurants on the island :)  We were able to use it, thanks again Dahlke family!

Ok, now on to the fun part!  Van is in storage, bags are repacked (for the 30th time) passports and itinerary are in hand.  Now to wake up at 4am to make it to the airport and turn our car in, do all of the junk needed to get on a plane and wait for our 8:30am flight to Honolulu, HI.  Once there we needed to jump on a connection to Osaka, Japan.  Then onto Naha, Okinawa, Japan.  This is what we looked like while sitting and waiting for our flight…..

Emma watching the planes pass by

Wish I could have been doing that too

Classic!

As we’re sitting there we see the departure time start to get later and later….Aw crap!  We already had only maybe an hour in between flights anyway, what the heck!  Tyler talks to the lady and she says “Well, if we make it there for your flight, you could get on but your luggage wouldn’t make it.  OR you could wait for the next flight, and have your luggage.  Of course North West airlines will put you up in a hotel in Honolulu, and give you taxi and meal vouchers.”  Hmm, what to do what to do….As it turns out our next flight was long gone anyway by the time we got there.  SCORE!  The airline people were waiting right there at the gate when we got off and took us to get our vouchers for taxis, hotel, dinner and breakfast.  There is only 1 flight a day heading to Osaka, so we had to spend the entire day suffering in Hawaii :)

Off we go!

We got to our hotel around 3pm or so.  The Ala Moana, I highly recommend it!  It was beautiful there!  We could tell a storm was coming, but we decided to take a walk to the beach, I mean, we’re in Hawaii, right?

Then it started raining.  A lot.  We ran as fast as a four year old leg’s can go back to the hotel!  After changing we headed down to the Japanese restaurant to eat our “free” meal.  Turns out they don’t really give you enough to cover an entire meal…but it helped!

I know I look like an idiot, but I was about to eat Sushi for the first time..

The next morning we woke up to this….

View from the balcony, so pretty!

Then, we re-packed (for the 31st time!) ate breakfast and headed on down to the air port.  That all went smoothly.  We scanned our passports (ah, it’s really happening!)  and settled in for a nice 10 hour flight.  I didn’t take any pictures.  We were pretty much the only white people on the plane, AND there were maybe about 2 other kids.  So I didn’t want to look like a weirdo.  It actually was a great flight, everyone had their own TV on the back of the chair, you could play games or watch movies.  For FREE!  So that’s all we did the whole time, so it went super fast!  Osaka was very interesting!  Obviously every sign was in Japanese, so we just kind of followed the crowd until we came upon a line that said “foreigners” Well, that’s us!  We had to unload our jillion bags, and go through customs.  Poor poor Logan!  He volunteered to push one of the carts, and on his way out of the zig zag customs line all the bags fell and he made quite a little traffic jam :)  But everyone there is so nice, it was no problem!  FINALLY we ask around and make our way to the ticket counter to get our bags checked (again!) and we could take a deep breath and wait for our final plane ride to Okinawa!

I have no pictures of that either.  By this point we are dead on our feet!  We left Hawaii at around 10am on Friday, flew for about 12 hours total, and made it to Okinawa at 11pm on Saturday!  We lost a whole day, kinda sad!  We were able to meet up with some lovely ladies from church, got to the TLF, lugged our jillion bags up 3 flights of stairs  (technically I didn’t do the lugging, Tyler and our new friends did!  Thanks!).  Who doesn’t put elevators in a hotel?  Who?  And actually jet lag wasn’t too big a problem.  Since it was already pretty late, it was bed time anyway, the kids woke up the next morning at a normal time!  Sweet!  Next post I’ll put up Japan pictures (sorry Heidi, be patient please!)  This post is long enough!

Once we left Idaho we made our way even further west to Vancouver, WA to stay the night with Tyler’s brother, Stuart, and his family.  On the drive out there we’re flipping through our info on the VPC where we’re going to be storing the van.  Tyler suggests we give them a call just to check in and make sure we’ve got what we need.  Wow, good thing we did!  They tell us we need some form that gives us specific permission to store a vehicle.  Um…..why did no one at Fort Campbell tell us we needed that?  We can’t call back to KY because the office is closed for the day.  WHAT THE HECK MAN!  So I’m panicking, like always, and we decide if worst comes to worst, we can give it to Stuart and Arlee!  Thankfully the  next day we were able to call Post and get what we needed faxed over.  Besides, it would have been a huge headache to try and let Stuart have our car.  Insurance agents are very picky!  Sorry guys, we love you, but no car for you!  Anyway, let’s get back on track here.  We met Stu at  Red Robin :)  We had to get in as much bottomless Steak Fries as humanly possible!

Awww, sweet! RaeLynn is only 11 days older than Evan

We just headed back to their place and relaxed the rest of the evening.  The next morning we head out to Boring, OR to visit with Tyler’s Grandma and Grandpa Hardy.  Tyler hasn’t seen them in many years, and they’ve never met Evan, so it was such a wonderful trip!  His Grandma had a terrific day planned!  We ate lunch at the house, then they took us to town to see A Christmas Carol.  Jim Carey’s version, it was really cool!!  A little scary for the younger ones (Emma) but very well done.  We came back to the house for dinner with them and Stuart’s family.  Man, we just couldn’t get away from them ;)

The kids helping Great Grandma make dinner

It's a Hardy Party!

We decided to follow Stu and Arlee on the way back to their place.  They take us out to the boonies and then turn into this little parking lot a some weird diner.  Oh boy, little did I know yet what that weird diner really was!  It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Twilight, and so is Arlee.  We ended up making a stop at the Carver Cafe, the diner they filmed a few scenes at!  So dang cool!  They took us to another stop where a lot of outdoor forest scenes were filmed.  It was dark so not very many pictures came out, but it was really neat to stop there and see a few spots!

Carver Cafe!!

Booyah!

Not sure what this was exactly, but who cares, they filmed there!

So after that taste of Hollywood, we got back to the apartment and Stuart starts going on and on about these delicious cookies or something Arlee makes (I’m wracking my brain and I can’t remember what it was that sent Stu and Tyler on a midnight mission to the store for ingredients!)  I remember the were so very good and we had a great time eating, drinking eggnog and staying up extremely late!  The next morning we were off to Seattle to get our van taken care of and check into our hotel near the airport!

Alright, I’m back with another post in my long string of posts leading up to…..I guess the present day :)  I’m not feeling very witty or creative lately.  As far as writing blogs go I suppose.  I really want to catch you all up on everything though, so here it goes!

We left Colorado the day before Thanksgiving to give us plenty of time to make it to Burley, Idaho to be with Tyler’s mom for the holiday.  The drive was super easy, thank goodness the weather cooperated with us.  All I can say about that is this…..I’m so grateful that at the last minute I decided to keep our winter jackets instead of packing them away.  It was so dang cold out there!  So anyway, Guylia reserved the church building to hold all of the people that would be joining us for Thanksgiving.  We were able to visit with Tyler’s grandpa, his Aunt Janet’s family, his younger brother, all sorts of fun people!  The day after we were able to spend time with his Dad’s side of the family in Rupert.  We hung out, ate tons of leftovers (mostly desserts!) and then took a little trip out to the middle of no where to go shooting.  Apparently that’s very popular out there!  Heather and Tiffany, Tyler’s cousins, own TONS of guns.  And we had a “blast” out there :)

Playing with the cousins!

Watch out!

Feeling lucky punk?

After freezing our rear ends’ off out there, we decided we  just weren’t cold enough, so we ran back into town to meet up with Tyler’s mom and her husband to go see the Square lighting.  Seriously, talk about small town!  Santa comes in on a fire truck and there’s chili and hot chocolate.  Good times, and the kids loved it!  We didn’t have any that cried when the fire works went off!

Tyler, Guylia, and Stuart

Saturday we took a tour of the Post Office in Rupert.  Tyler’s mom is a Postal Worker so she gave us the inside scoop on how mail gets sorted and ends up where it belongs.  The kids got a huge kick out of that and seeing her mail truck too!  I didn’t get any pictures of that though, so just use your imagination!  We took a trip up to Firth, ID to visit with one of Tyler’s cousins, Amber.  Well, Amber’s husband, Loren, is actually Tyler’s cousin, but whatever!  We were all at Fort Gordon together a few years back and we haven’t seen them in too long!  No pictures there either, but we had a great time!  THEN….we headed up to Idaho Falls to grab dinner and catch a performance of The Forgotten Carols.  I highly recommend seeing that if you ever have a chance, and bring lots of tissues!

Emma, Ainzlee and Logan

And that does it for Idaho!  Monday morning we left for Washington!  Alas, that is for the next post!

We were very fortunate that we were able to swing flying out of Seattle to make it over to Okinawa.  We chose Seattle because they have a VPC (vehicle processing center) and it would take us straight up through Colorado, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.  Conveniently enough where our families live :)  It took us a good 2 days’ drive to get to Colorado, but holy cow, when we first laid eyes on those Rocky Mountains…..ahhhh!

Tyler hadn’t been back at all since he left for Basic Training back in April ’04.  We stayed with Tyler’s sister, Candice.  It was a great time!  I don’t think I’ve ever played so much Rock Band in my life!  Of course we HAD to hit up our favorite restaurant,  Red Robin!

Rodney, Trent, and Candice!

Will, Logan, Cooper and Emma...back there somewhere!

My Mom had us over, and we spent some time with my side of the family, so we were able to see everyone we wanted too.  Well, family-wise anyway, we missed our friends though!  We only stayed 2 full days, we decided to spend Thanksgiving up in Idaho with Tyler’s Mom!  I’ll save that for the next post however…..I’m in the middle of making a Boston Cream Pie, so I gots to go ;)

So I’m finally on here to catch up since my last post way back in November!  Before Tyler came home from BNOC, my lovely friends threw a going away party for me.  It was so much fun!  We just sat around and ate and chatted, there’s no party with friends better than that :)  They gave me a pocket Japanese Pharasebook, wrapped up in several layers of paper.  On each layer, was something about me.  Oh…..like my addiction to chapstick and Parmesan cheese!  AND….we took a big group picture, and it’s been framed.  Everyone who was able to make it signed the matte too.  It was so wonderful to get us all together one last time!   I miss you ladies so much!  I just have to say thank you to Heidi for putting us up for 3 weeks, and making dinner just about every night too!  I’m still not sure what happened with the “of course we’ll split the dinner schedule!”  Thank you Jenny for feeding all of us (and skipping book club just so we could hang out!) and Cori for having ALL of us over every Sunday while we lived with Heidi!

Once Tyler got back to Tennessee, we stayed in the temp lodging on Post.  On November 20th, after school was out, we left and made our way West, to our first stop, Colorado.  Well, before we left we too Evan to Pam’s house (thanks Pam!!) so Tyler and I could go watch New Moon :)  Yes, I dragged my husband to see that movie with me, we had a great time!  Tyler’s a good sport when it comes to Twilight!

I’ll have to continue this in a  new post later.  I can’t stick our travels in the same post as our last days in Tennessee, I’m just weird like that :)  But here are a few pictures of our last evening there,  we went to Heidi’s house then we all headed over to Cori’s for dinner!

Evan and Maddy

Logan with his buddy Noah

This whole week I’ve been nervous, freaking out, and scared because Saturday, November 7th was my 1/2 marathon!  Well that day is today!  I was training so hard all through the summer, then….all of this moving stuff started sneaking up on me, so I would postpone running until tomorrow…or the next day…. Then Tyler left for BNOC and the movers came, so I would say I’d run after I moved in with Heidi (she has a treadmill after all!)  Once I moved in here, it became….I have so much to do to get the house ready for sale, I don’t have time to run….Then all of a sudden, boom, here I am waking up at the crack of dawn eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with bananas ‘cuz that’s what is supposed to give me energy to run this goofy thing!

I was feeling scared all the way until I met up with my friends at the race.  Then it seriously all melted away!  We took pictures and joked about how horrible we would all do.  We didn’t by the way, we all ROCKED it!  We all gathered at the starting line, and sang the Star Spangled Banner.  Way to make us all cry before a race, thanks ;)  Then the horn went off and away we went!  Everyone had a chip in their shoe, so thankfully our time didn’t start until we actually crossed the start line, thank goodness!  There were about 1,300 people participating, and I was BIB # 64!!!  Yes, that means I was the 64th person to sign up for this way back in June!  Hey, I wanted the free hat and to only have to pay $50!  Plus I knew if I paid the money, I would be forced to do it and I couldn’t give up!

Once it started, the first 3 miles flew by!  I thought I had only gone about 1.5 or so.  I was so excited to hear that!  The course wasn’t marked and I didn’t have a watch so I really had no clue about my pace or anything.  I just kept on trucking….I hit the 5 mile water station and decided to eat one of my gummy carb loaded things, and I squeezed it too hard and it squirted all over my pants!  It was so sticky, then my pants stuck to my leg.  I tried to wipe it off and just made it so much worse!  I dumped water on it and then just made my shoes all wet!  GRRRRR!  So it looked like I had booger pants the rest of the way.  Not cool!

It was a windy day, and we started hitting the part of the course that took us head long right into it.  That completly drained me, I was so upset!!!  The 8.3 mile water station  was at the top of a hill, and once I hit that….I just couldn’t take it anymore.  So I started walking a bit and running a bit.  There was a live band at the 10 mile mark, so that was cool!  Only 3 miles left, whoo!!!  The last two seemed to take FOREVER!!!  But I finally finished at 3 hours, 21 minutes!  My goal was 3:30, and I beat that!!  In your face 1/2 marathon!!!!  I’m not sure of my official time, that should be in our local paper tomorrow.

I’m so happy to have it done, and to say I did it!!!  I bought a magnet that simply says “13.1″ on it and as soon as we got back to the car, I threw that puppy on!  I just want to thank all of my friends who did it and finished!!!!   You ladies are awesome!!  Thank you for talking me into this maddness and for waiting around for me to cross the finish line!  I have pictures, but I’ll have to post them later when I have my own computer back.  Will I ever do this again?  Hmmm, probably!  Thanks to my awesome friend Heidi too, she watched my kids AND cooked a delicious spaghetti dinner last night, you know, to carb up!

DONE!

Cori and I at the finish!