Quick Update

I know, I'm a slacker and I haven't updated in awhile.  Last week we had my cousin and her 7 month old baby staying with us.  It was fun, because during the day when Corey was at work, I had them as company as I ran my errands!  Inu became pretty fond of little Tristan and would check on him all the time...even during our walks.  If the baby was crying, Inu was there to make sure someone was helping him. 

I still don't have curtains hanging up in our apartment because they are impossible to hang!  We have the sliding glass doors in our dining room and I can't seem to find the right hooks to hang curtains up there.  I am pretty sure I found a solution, now Corey and I just have to hit up the hardward store to get a few things.  I will be so happy once they are up! 

We still haven't gotten out TMO shipment in, so the apartment is kinda plain right now.  We're working with the clothes we brought with us, the stuff we've bought since we got here, and stuff we're using from the Loan Closet until we get our household goods.  It will be nice to use my scrapbooking and baking supplies again!

While Samantha was staying with us, she bought us a rice cooker!  Yay!  Now I always have to make sure we have rice in the house for Corey and he insists on eating his rice with chopsticks!  Gotta love him! 

Last week I finally got to meet up with Maria!  I had been emailing her and talking with her on facebook for a couple of months now and she was such a huge help answering my questions about moving out to Okinawa.  I can't believe it took a month of me living her to finally get around to meeting her though.  She is just as great in person as I expected!  She stopped by this weekend to drop some info off for Corey and me and she fell in love with Inu and it seemed Inu was pretty fond of her too.  Now we're trying to find Maria an Oki mix so she can have her own and Inu can have a friend! 

Laura gets here on Thursday!  I'm so excited that the time is finally here!  We've got a bunch of things planned...American Village, Yogurtland, visiting some of the beaches, and of course the Churaumi Aquarium!  I'm sad that she can only stay for a few days, but we'll make the most of it!  I'll make sure we take a ton of pictures so I can post them! 

Inu

Meet our new puppy, Inu!  He's about 10 months old and he's an Oki mix.  I found him while searching my new favorite website Okinawa Yard Sales.  This couple was leaving and needed to find a home for little Inu because they couldn't take both of their dogs back to the states with them.  They had a family take him, but when he threw up in their house and wouldn't go to them, they took him back after one night.  I emailed the girl back and forth about him for a few days and then we decided to meet him and see how things went.  Of course we fell in love with him on the spot and I made plans to meet them the next day to tranfer vet registration over to us and take him home! 

We've had him for 3 days now and he's doing great!  He was nervous at first, and wouldn't come all the way up to us, but now he's following us all around and runs right over when we call him.  We're going on nightly walks and he's a great walker.  We're teaching him to sit at all the crosswalks and wait for us to say it's alright to go...and he's slowly but surely catching on.  I'll leave you all with some pictures!

The aweome placemat we got Inu for his food and water bowls!

Blogger Awards!

How exciting!  Thank you Allie from My Marine and Me for my first two blogger awards!  It's nice knowing a few people other than my family read and keep up with my blog! 

The first award is the Beautiful Blogger Award.  I'm supposed to list seven things about me and pass the award on to seven people.  Here goes!

1.  I just moved to Okinawa, Japan with my husband less than a month ago!
2.  I love to bake anything, but cake decorating is where my true passion is
3.  I could eat salad everyday and be a very happy person
4.  I want to go back to school to get my nursing degree
5.  I love taking pictures of things...I have my camera wherever I go
6.  The past couple of years I've gotten very into scrapbooking
7.  I love working with kids, but I'm not sure I ever want to have my own

The second award is the Sunshine Award.  It's given to bloggers who inspire others and show positivity and creavitity.  I'm following in Allie's footsteps and cheating...I'm giving both awards to the same seven people.  I haven't been in the blog land long enough to have that many followers or blogs that I read!  I'll get there soon enough!

1.  Tonya  Bennett Family
2.  Jalane  The McAtee Memoir
3.  Nicole  Love is Distance
4.  Crissie  Life as I know it, A Marine's wife
5.  Holly  All Because Two People Fell In Love
6.  Christiana  Abroad in Africa, deployed in the desert
7.  Nicole  Something Beautiful

So there you have it..my first two awards!  Thank you so much Allie...I really do look forward to reading your updates too! 

Freedom!

We got my car yesterday!  We had been looking at a few cars at the lemon lot on Kadena, and we jotted down a few phone numbers, but then the other night I was looking online at some of the classifieds for the bases.  I came across a 1996 Toyota RAV4 for only $2000.  I told Corey about it and he called the number and set up a time to meet the guy so we could check out the car.  We met him yesterday afternoon and I was kind of expecting something to be wrong with the car, but it's in really good shape.  It drives really well, the AC is ice cold, and it's got a lot of room.  The guy had lowered the price on the car a lot because he's leaving the island soon and needed to sell the car quick.  So we bought the car and got everything tranferred to us and I drove it home!  Woohoo!  Now I don't have to wait for Corey to get home to go somewhere.  I can run errands by myself during the day and now I can start meeting up with some of the friends I've made!
Here are pictures!

Our first home!

Yesterday we picked up the keys to our base housing and moved in!  We're living on Camp Courtney in one of the high rise towers.  The government furniture that we'll be using while we're here was delivered before we picked up the keys, and now we just have to arrange it how we want. 

It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and tons of storage space!  I love the size of our kitchen, even though it has the washer and dryer in it.  As a friend pointed out, it just means I can do laundry and cook at the same time!  Yay for multitasking!  We're going to use the first bedroom as a guest room and the second bedroom is going to be our office/scrapbooking room.  In other words it has both desks in it for each of our computers, but I'm pretty much taking over with my scrapbooking supplies! 

Today we went to the BX to get some stuff to start setting our new place up.  It took two hours, and two carts, but we got most of what was on our list.  Tomorrow we have to go back for some things we thought of as we were setting up today, and we've also have to head to the commisary because our pantry and fridge are looking pretty sad. 

After we moved some furniture around and unloaded today's buys, we headed to the tennis court.  Neither of us has played a lot of tennis.  Corey has played only once before, and while I took tennis as an elective at NMMI, my skill level was never very high...and that was over six years ago!  We probably looked like fools out there today!  There was a girl practicing with her dad...or maybe coach, we're not sure.  She looked like she was maybe 14, and if he served her the ball and told her to hit it in a certain spot, she did exactly that.  Corey and I, however, spent most of our time chasing after the ball when we would serve it way to the side or even worse, when Corey would hit the ball over the fence...which he did three times!  Luckily the tennis courts are here on base and they aren't too far, so we're going to keep practicing. 
It was also my first time driving today!  We haven't gotten a car for me yet, so Corey has been driving everywhere we need to go.  But we're looking at cars for me, and before I have to drive on some of the busy roads off base, I wanted to try driving around on base a little bit.  So I drove to the tennis courts today, and around a little bit to see how it was.  Honestly at first it felt odd to go to the left side of the road, but it didn't take long until I was used to it.  And I keep having to remind myself that when I want to use my turn signal, it's on the right side...but I know one of these days I'm going to try to put my turn signal on and I'm going to see the windshield wipers waving side to side! :) 
I put a couple of pictures in this entry, but I have more on my facebook page.  It's taking a long time to load them on here right now.  I'll continue to post pictures as we decorate the apartment! 

A Rainy Easter

Well the Easter Bunny brought us rain...off and on ALL day!  So our plans of driving up to the aquarium were scratched once again.  The weather is supposed to be sunny next weekend though!  We weren't about to sit around the house all day, so we had to make new plans.  Corey wanted to search for some 100 yen stores, so off we went.  We started driving south and he still couldn't find the store that he had seen before, so he just kept driving. 
Eventually I started recognizing the area and asked him if we could please turn in at the next gate.  Woo hoo...we ended up on Camp Kinser!  Kinser is where my family lived when I was younger, so I was super exicted to show Corey around.  We drove by my old elementary school, my old apartment building, the church, PX, and theater.  I never thought I'd be back in Okinawa and have a chance to see all of this again, so it was a real treat for me. 

Kinser Elementary:

Our old apartment:

Kinser theater:

After Kinser, we drove back to the house because we still couldn't find the store Corey was looking for.  When we got home I jumped on my computer because I had heard of a really fun place called Yogurt-land.  I wanted to see where it was located so we could have something else to do for the afternoon.  It turns out Yogurtland is in American Village, so we headed out.  American Village was pretty interesting.  They have a HUGE ferris wheel, Tony Romas, Nathans Hot Dogs, and a whole bunch of other shops.  We first went to a Japanese department store, Jusco.  I had two or three floors of all sorts of clothing shops, food, arcades, and more.  Corey was amazed just walking around and told me we definitely will be going there again.  We got to watch a short Japanses dance while we were there and then we walked around again.  I found a cute little change purse at the Sanrio store so now I can keep my Yen separate from my American money!

The ferris wheel in American Village:

My new change purse:

Next up was Yogurt-land!  This place might be my new favorite!  It's self-serve, and then you pay by the weight of your yogurt cup at the end.  They had 16 different yogurt flavors to choose from.  I got double cookies and cream and vanilla wafers.  Corey got Green tea and Pomegranate Raspberry.  Then we got to put toppings on!  They had fresh fruit, dry toppings like chocolate chips, brownie bites, and different nuts.  We had so much fun picking different toppings for ours.  We paid for our yogurt and then sat down to enjoy.  Oh my goodness, it was SO delicious!  I will definitely be taking everyone who comes to visit us to Yogurt-land!

Yogurt-land:

Our yogurt creations:

After Yogurt-land, Corey wanted to go back to Jusco, because he had seen a place he where he wanted food.  Turns out it was an Udon place and he wanted to try it because he had always seen them in the Japanese cartoons he watched.  I wasn't so hungry at this point, so I let him go up to the counter and order.  They brought out his food and he had gotten the udon with egg and it was really good! 

Corey and his udon:

So that was our first Easter together! 

In other news, I finally got to have coffee!  40 days without coffee was definitely not fun with all the moving and stress of paperwork not being right.  Luckily there is a Starbucks semi close to where we're staying and Corey took me there to enjoy yummy coffee! 

Enjoying my first coffee in 40 days:

Corey has found a new addiction....Georgia coffee!  Everwhere we go he looks for one, so imagine his delight when he found out the commisary sells them by the case!  Yup..we brought home an entire case of Georgia coffee. 

We're hoping this week we will have the area clearance fixed, get our housing application in, and have a car for me.  I know it's asking for a lot in one week, but none of this has happened when we wanted so far, so we're still asking!  Cross your fingers!