Welcome to Iwakuni!

 It has been a fun couple of days!  We flew in Friday afternoon, and had a fairly relaxing Saturday.  Dan went on a walkabout to get to know the area before sunrise.  I wasn't sure I wanted to go exploring because it looks kind of complicated.  NAS JRB NOLA was a pretty straight shot through the base, but this was more circular and seemed confusing.

 This is the view from the balcony on our Temp Lodging (military hotel).

This is the sort of housing most folks get here- the Mid Rise Towers.  They are not too bad, and pretty nice inside.

The Branch President actually lives in that mid rise that overlooks our building.  He and his wife stopped by to say hello and offered a trip to the commissary.  Since there is a kitchen in out hotel room, and no food sources without a 10 minute walk, I jumped at the chance.  It was nice to look around as we drove there and kind of get an idea where we were.  The commissary was closer than I thought.  It was also a lot tinier than I thought it would be! We got sufficient to last through Wednesday and I was happy.

I also felt braver.  So I took some girls with me and went on my own walkabout.  We discovered the food court with all the comforts of home: KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and Subway. Oh, and there was even my favorite, Baskin Robbins!!  I saw the school and managed to find our house from there.  I was able to show the girls their new school, and where we'd be living soon.  We checked the doors, but the house was locked tight!  We peeked through the window and it looked okay, but small. There was much whining by the time we made it back to the room.  We probably walked an hour and covered a mile or so.  

We walked back to the Food Court for dinner.

Sunday friends from Facebook picked us up and drove us to church.  Church was small, but awesome!  It was nice to get out and make new friends.  The best part was a gal who gave me contact info so I could have an emergency contact when I signed the kids up for school.  That evening we went to the Branch Pres's house for dinner.  That was really nice.  And yummy.

Monday was Labor Day.  It sure complicated things, flying in on a holiday weekend!!  Dan and I did get out nice and early for a run.  I meant to bring a camera, but forgot.  And I'm so sad I forgot it!  We ran along the Sea Wall (which is similar to the Levee) and it was gorgeous!  The only other exciting thing of the day was walking over to the Thrift Store with Delaney.  It was a nice place and the folks there were full of information.  Melissa (our sponsor) came by to take us over to visit Levi.  The poor dog was so excited to see us, and so incredibly distressed when we did not take him home with us.  He was trying to climb over me as I physically stuffed him back into his kennel.  It was depressing.

This is what the vending machines look like.  I can only identify half the things in most of them.  They are kind of fun!

Today I got a lot accomplished. I walked to the school and got all 4 kids registered.  I thought it would be faster, but five million pages of paperwork take a while.  Today, it took 2 hours. But I got it done.  We did have a minor snag when they asked for Dan's original orders.  Um.... we lost those.  Somewhere between checking in for our flight back at Seattle, and landing here on Iwakuni, they disappeared.  So we haven't got any.  Don't ask me why there was only one copy.  I was able to talk the office lady into accepting Dan's web orders and area clearance, since family authorization and all the kids's names appeared on that.

Next was van shopping!  We decided we wanted something that seats more than 7.  A lot of folks here don't bother to get a vehicle, because you can walk or bike the whole base.  We wanted to have a spot to offer if someone needed a ride.  So we went to look at a van that seats 8.  It looked like it would fit our needs, so we comitted.  Now we have to pass paperwork back and forth and it will be at least a week till we actually have a vehicle to drive.

That's mostly okay because we can't drive till we take the Class on Friday and then pass the drivers test.

A fun house off base.  I like the roof.

What the streets right off base look like.  Check out the awesome blue roof on the right.

 Same thing.  We're in a rural area and they grow lotus here!  I'm not sure if it is the same thing that the lotus blossom is from, but apparently the root of the lotus plant is a dietary staple.

After the successful van-looking, we secured ourselves a house! Let me be clear that this was a miraculous thing.  Housing is getting scarce around here as they move more people here, and the construction has not kept up with demand, and a majority of housing is in the apartment-style towers, which is not thrilling unto me.  Housing will not issue you a house or put you on a wait list till you are boots on the ground physically in their office.  And yet..... and yet, they held us a house (with a yard!) AND scheduled the movers for us, before we even arrived.  It is crazy.  And I'm not gonna complain or ask too many questions.  I'm just going to thank my Heavenly Father for this huge blessing.

So we went to the housing office and did all the paperwork.  We called the movers and confirmed that yes, we would LOVE them to be here Wednesday morning to move our stuff in.  Then we took a little trip over to look at the house.

Here it is.  I have no idea why there is no grass.  I hope we get some.  If not, I'll plant me a vegetable garden.  Since that is not allowed, I bet they'll get me some grass pretty quick then!

Dan in front of the uninspiring duplex we'll call home.

The view our my new bedroom window!

How I feel trying to figure out how to fit everything in the tiny-tiny bedrooms.

I am super-excited about the good-sized pantry though.

My kitchen is a nice size and has lots of cupboard room.  And drawers.  I'm happy to have more drawers.

My new back yard. Perfect for Levi!

The living room and dining room, which I think is going to be all living room.  It is a tad smaller than our old one, which was pretty small.

The washer and dryer are off the breakfast nook, by the kitchen.  I'm happy with it.  We're going to try to fit the table and chairs in here and make it the regular dining room.

That concludes the house tour.  I may take more photos once it is full of our stuff. Now, let me tell you of the Catch 22.

Dan can't really start his check in process till he takes the Newcomer's Orientation class.  Neither of us can get a driver's license till we take the class.  So you see, things are at a standstill till we do this class.  The class is usually offered on Monday, but this Monday was a holiday, so it was moved to Wednesday.  Thus, Dan and I have to take the class on Wednesday. But wait, our movers are arriving at 8:30 Wednesday morning.  And we are scheduled to officially take the keys at 8:30 Wednesday morning.  Aaack!  What to do?!

The solution is that our utterly amazing sponsor, Melissa is going to hang out at the house, sign for our keys, and accept the house hold goods delivery.  It is a little nutty, but I'm excited to let someone else make the decisions on where to put stuff!  Well, Callie is going to help out.  The 2 little girls will go to the provided day care, and the 2 older will spend the morning at the room, and after check out, they'll hang out at the new house. Dan and I will spend the day doing the Orientation and it will be a fun surprise to see the house when we are done!

Never a dull moment! And I have to say, I LOVE it here!  It is incredible and I'm so glad.  Hopefully I'll still be thinking that in a month.

The trip to Iwakuni

(To set the stage..... Dan drove to Seattle with Callie.  I flew into Seattle Wednesday evening with the rest of the kids.  The kids and I were to take the shuttle to the hotel to meet up with Dan, Callie and the dog.)

It was frustrating.  Our orders said to be at the airport at 0530, and that the flight would leave at 0850.  A week prior, I saw on FB a comment about having to be at the airport a 0230.  I looked more into that and discovered some disgusting news.  The 0530 was a No Later Than time, and it wasn't entirely accurate either.  The ticket window opened at 0230 and closed at 0430.  At 0500, they would start offering seats to Space A folks.  So if we'd showed up at 0530 as planned, we'd have been in really big trouble!

Now we had to figure out how to work this.  There were stories of folks camping out in the line overnight.  The USO offered places to sleep, but it turned out to be surprisingly tiny.  The USO had one fabulously useful thing to offer- they had an entire room where you could check your luggage into!!  However, they wanted it gone by 0300, when they would lock the doors.  It was a considerable boon though.  I arrived at the airport with 8 sizable luggage items and I was able to walk out with only 1!  I cannot tell you how awesome it was to be able to leave everything else in there.  Oh, and we stopped by the USO and found it well stocked.  So we had sandwiches and hot dogs and cookies for dinner.  Score!  It may be tiny, but the food was the best I've seen.

But, back to the dilemma of how to work the details of timing at the airport.

We decided to keep our hotel reservations.  We debated the merrits of having one person show up for check in, but here was the kicker- you had to check in with EVERYTHING- all luggage, and every carry on item.  I couldn't see Dan or I wrangling 12 suitcases, 9 carry ons, plus a dog in a ginormous kennel, alone.  We considered leaving some at the hotel to sleep, or trying o return to the hotel to sleep, but with the unknown factors, it seemed wisest to just take everyone in.

We managed to have kids in bed by 9pm, and the alarms went off in my room at 0100.  I think Dan slept till 0130.  I showered, packed and hauled the girls out of bed.  We met at the shuttle van at 0150 and were off.  We were at the airport a little after 2.  We headed up to the USO storage area to spring our luggage before the lock up and made it into line by 0230.  They had it split into 3 lines and we went in the pet line.  There was also a family line and a single line.  The lines moved very slowly, but only the singles line was long, and it wasn't longer than the space designated for it.  So my visions of lines wrapping around the terminal were put to rest.

Levi was not happy about being rolled around in his kennel.  We needed 3 trolly carts to move the dog and all our luggage around easily.  We were able to get Lei set up- he needed food and water dishes, special stickers on the kennel, and padding inside.  We duct taped a bag of food to the kennel, and I duct taped the pet-pee-pad to the floor inside.  A nice lady came around to check the documents and paperwork and slapped a sticky envelope on the kennel with all his paperwork.  So easy!  I'd had nightmares about how to get it all done and it was a 5 minute process and no one ever checked to make sure we met all the specific requirements for the kennel and everything.

There were probably 5 people in front of us, and despite the slow process, we were still at the desk at 0300.  It took forever because they had to weigh everything.  All the luggage, all the carry on, the dog, and the kids  The politely asked for Dan's and my weights so we did not have to stand on the luggage scale!  We were told to leave the kennel in a designated spot and that Levi would be taken away at 0600, so to be sure to walk him before then.  We were told how to get him out the door and where he could be walked.  We left him to his lot and wandered around, played on the escalators, caught up on FB, and eventually went up to the USO.  Marian wanted one of their yummy sandwiches and the rest of the girls pigged out on donuts.  I found a chicken caesar wrap to be surprisingly delicious at 4 in the morning.  Joshua discovered that a tired tummy may not be a happy tummy and voided his.  Poor kid.

We took Levi out and he got 30 minutes of circling a parking lot to empty himself and exercise.  Callie was very distressed that he would be sad and scared and miserable on the flight. We stuffed him back in his kennel at 6 and headed through security ourselves.   There were 10-12 pets lined up, and one of them was a barker. Poor Levi!

Security was pretty quick and painless.  We found our gate and made friends with fellow passengers. They started loading the plane at 0745, and we went ahead and got on when they made the call for families with small children.  I don't really consider our kids to be "small" but having extra time to get everything settled was heavenly!

Rylee, resting at the airport.

 Waiting at our gate.

The plane was packed.  It was smaller than I expected, with a 2-3-2 seating arrangements.  We went with Delaney and Callie on the side, with Me, Rylee and Dan across the aisle, and Joshua and Marian sitting behind the girls.  It worked out well.  The plane was older and I was incredibly disappointed to see they lacked the tvs on the back of the headrests.  I had been counting on that for entertainment!   The audio jacks were also horrid enough to make it not worth the effort of watching anything they showed as well, although the kids were still happy to watch "The Lego Movie".

 Dan and Rylee, sound asleep before we even took off!  They were pretty tired!!

 

 Delaney is excited for The Lego Movie.

Heh heh heh.  Snuck a shot of these 2 as well.

 These kids cracked me up.  They were all playing Mario Bros on their DSs.

The plane took off at 0830.  We flew 10.5 hours.  It was long.  Some of the kids slept.  Delaney only napped 90 minutes, and slept deeply enough we wished we'd put on a pull up.  Fortunately, I was prepared and she had fresh clothes to change into, and I had a zip lock bag to put the peepee clothes into. (Sadly, I'm pretty sure that bag of clothes got left in the overhead bin when we got off. Oops.)     It was 1900 (7pm Seattle time) when we landed in Yakota.  The terminal was tiny and it was amusing to see every outlet being utilized- even the ones behind the vending machines- as everyone tried to charge their stuff in the time we were there. They called the pet people up and we had 20 minutes to take our animals out and walk them around.  There was a small patch of grass to utilize.  Poor Levi.  That was the longest pee I have ever seen! He was happy to be out, and was still a very good dog about getting back into the kennel.  They loaded us up again at 2045, minus those staying.  I think we swapped some out for new folks, but I'm not sure.

 This was the Yakota terminal.  It was raining when we arrived in Iwakuni, and I was too tired to think about getting a photo there.

After the 10 hour flight, this one didn't feel so bad.  Although my legs decided they were done.  I have had restless leg syndrome when I was pregnant and it was about like that- twitchy legs.  Fortunately, we landed quickly and there was much rejoicing!  It was 2203 when we landed.... or local time, it was 2:30 pm.  Hooray for being DONE!

The kids were amazing and really did well.  Callie did not sleep AT ALL, right till they announced the decent into Iwakuni.  Then she nodded off and I nearly couldn't get her up to get off!  Joshua and Marian snagged a couple hours of Zzzzzs and Rylee took 3 really long naps.  We've already mentioned Delaney. I dozed of a bit but not as much as I'd have liked.  Planes are just so dadgummed  uncomfortable!

I was surprised how few got off at Iwakuni.  I guess 99% of the plane was going to Okinawa, which was it's next stop.  I think there was 1 other family and a handful of single Marines that got off. We got passports stamped and met our sponsor, who is the gal Dan is replacing. She brought some guys from the office as well.  I was incredibly impressed!  They took out all our stuff, loaded it and hauled it and everyone away!  I got stuck with dog duty.  I had to wait for the vet, and she needed to see all the documents.  Unfortunately, we'd riffled through the documents and separated them.  So Dan actually had some of the stuff she needed.  We were able to sort it all out, and drop the dog off at the kennel.  The kennel was not as awful as I was worried it would be.  They had been  very non-communicative by email.  But even though they closed at 3:30 there was a warm bdy there to help us out.  And despite being closed for the weekend, there will be someone to check the animals and walk the dogs twice a day.  So Dan's new coworkers got us taken care of and dropped me off at the hotel.

We were able to get 2 rooms, so every kid actually has a bed to sleep on!  Our sponsor was delightful and put food in our room to tide us over.  I was really touched by that.  They really took good care of us and it was really nice.  We were all in the room and unpacking around 5pm.  Delaney was the first casualty, crashing in bed a bit before 6.  Dan had said he wanted to keep them up till 7:30pm, but I think he decided that was a lost cause, because Joshua and I were the only ones not sound asleep at 7.  I was soundly asleep soon after.  I think most everyone was awake around 4am.  I could live with that! 

So, that was the lengthy version of our travels to get to Iwakuni!  Stay tuned for more of our exciting adventures in Japan!

Miranda's house!

You know you have the best sister ever when she lets you crash at her house, and she plans to make your favorite dinner (Cafe Rio Chicken), and even though she's started dinner already, she takes you out to 5 Guys, because she knows you love that too!  And then she lets your children run around like hooligans in her son's super cool super-hero costumes.  And then she drives you to the airport the next day.

I'm going to miss her.

Last Photo Shoot!

 On Tuesday it was finally tine to say goodbye to Mom and Dad.  It was harder than I thought.  Well, no, not harder.  I just didn't think I would cry!  I held it till we were on the road, and then the kids shouted at me to stop before they broke down too.

 Group shot with my mom.

Silly shot.

My very first selfie with my mom!  Love it!

Dad was already out working, so we drove there and visited with him before we ran away.  The darn man will NOT smile in his photos. He is so busy talking that it is beyond impossible to get a smiling picture of him.  

Group shot with my dad. And no one is really ready.  Whatever.  They are all here and that's all that matters.

And Joshua being his silly self.  I just like Marian's smile here!

Selfie with Dad, and Look!  A smile!

Marian wanted to pose on his ladder, funny girl.

Zoom in on this shot, I think there may be an actual, genuine smile on his face!

And then we drove to Tulsa to Miranda's house.

She bought our van and drove us to the airport on Wednesday.

Silver Dollar City

 It took us all summer before we finally made it to Silver Dollar City.  The worst thing about that is it was a really mild summer with some pretty good weather, and that ended the week we decided to go!  So it was a blazing 100+ degrees while we wandered the park and rode the rides.  It certainly made the water rides more attractive!

 Rylee was very excited to get there!

 This is the first time we stopped and ate at the bakery.  This was Delaney's selection.  A giant cupcake.  Yes, it really WAS that big.

It was the last time we'd be there for 3 years, so I did let the kids each get their own thing.  Joshua got the enormous eclair.  It was so big he couldn't even finish it.

Marian and her gigantic cookie.  Are you sensing a theme?  Yep, oversized goodies!

This sweet little pupkin also selected a cupcake nearly as big as she is. 

 And she liked it a lot.  (But she did not finish it)

This was my pecan roll.  Yummy, yes.  Spectacular, no.

The obligatory water-ball photo. We must take one every time!

Joshua posed and then very nearly rolled over the top.

Rylee knew where she wanted to go!  She was emphatic about going to the carousel.  But first, it was off to the kiddie ride area.

So cute! Rylee and Grandpa.

Delaney wanted to go in her own tea cup, all by herself.  So she did.  And she liked it.

Rylee rode with me and we spun SO fast!  It was great!