June 18-23 in Okinawa

9th day continued (June 18) - Mike had a summer work party on this day at Torii Beach. It is so beautiful here. You should see the water; the colors are blue, aqua, and green, just incredible! We had so much fun. There is a water slide there, that’s what the kids and I did most of the time. Mike did not bring his swimsuit, so he suffered in the heat. But the weather is perfect when you are wet, even with the wind blowing, whereas in Utah, when you go swimming and if the wind blows, you freeze, or at least I do. It doesn’t take much to get me cold. I do have to say, I haven’t had any problems with my Reynaud’s syndrome here, thank goodness.

I forgot to mention that Japan is a day ahead of you back in the states. We are 15 hours ahead of you, if you are in Utah. When it is 8:00 a.m. on Friday there (Utah), it is 11:00 p.m on Saturday here (Okinawa).

Ok, so by now our family is almost completely recovered from jet lag, and we are going to bed at a normal hour. For awhile there, we were going to bed every night around 7:00 p.m. Also what was interesting is that we would be starving around 10:00 a.m., even if we just had breakfast not too long ago. When figuring the time change, that was our dinner time back in the states.

June 19th- Today we got to pick up our house keys from the housing agency. We were excited to go into our home and start picturing where we were going to put our stuff, and whose room is whose. There are 2 bedrooms upstairs and 2 bedrooms downstairs, and one bathroom upstairs and one downstairs. We decided that the girls would be downstairs and Dallin would have the bedroom next to ours. Kaitlyn has her own room too; she is excited to have a bed to herself again and to be able to stay up as late as she wants, reading her books. There is a security system in the house with cameras. When someone rings the doorbell, we can see who is at the door. The kids had a blast playing with that. We talked to one of our neighbors the day before. Every morning you hear the kids going to school; they chant something in the morning, can’t understand what they are saying?? Also you hear music, announcements, and a clock chiming coming from the school too. Everybody says how safe it is here in Okinawa, it must be true, because we always see little kids walking by themselves on the streets all the time. It is kind of odd to see, but also great to see.

We went to the Botanical Gardens today. We wanted to see what it was, how much it was, and if you could pay with dollars or if you need yen. We had to pay with yen, which we didn’t have any on us, so we just walked around to the stores nearby. We went into a plant and flower store. There was this area that was netted off, we saw a big, black and white beautiful butterfly in there and was admiring it, and then realized there were a whole bunch of the same butterflies in there. Then we realized they had an opening that you could walk in there with them. That was cool!!! There was butterflies flying all around you, they would sometimes land on you. That was the neatest little area I have ever been in, wish you could have been there.

June 21st- Today is Mike’s 35th birthday. Our loaner furniture was being delivered today, so we went to the house to wait for them to come. We got to talk to some family back home while we waited, that was great! We tried to find a place for dinner that night off base and ran into the American Village. We ate at A&W. We then realized that another beach was just down the street. That one was called the Sunset beach. We walked down to it after we ate. Of course it was another beautiful beach and so peaceful and relaxing. There was some music playing that really set the mood. So we walked along the beach, hand in hand, kids following behind us, and just enjoying the moment.

We had one more night in the hotel, so we took advantage of it, since our quick shipment wasn’t coming for 2 days; which meant we had no blankets, pillows, and any kind of dishes. But we would be sleeping in our house the next night, which meant we would have to live without those things for one night, ouch.

June 23rd- Oh, we are so thankful for pillows and blankets!!!! That night was not fun at all, sleeping on just mattresses with no blankets or pillows. We took our shirts and bundled them up, to try and make pillows. We had 2 beach towels that we all fought over for a blanket, Dallin and Allie won. The rest of us used shirts for blankets, that don’t quite work. So we did not sleep well that night at all. We made sure we said thanks in our prayers for blankets and pillows the next night.

Our quick shipment was delivered to us today. It feels so good to have some of our own stuff again. It was like Christmas opening the boxes. We shipped our Wii and a small TV, so the kids were very excited to have that. Now we can’t wait until we get the rest of our stuff. We also got our America’s Test Kitchen cookbook; we can’t wait to start cooking yummy home-cooked meals again. This night was the first night we finally got to really relax as a family.