changes....

So, our household goods (HHG) shipment came in a few days ago...a whole week early!!! Which means that we have all of our own furniture! It also means that we have twice the furniture because our government loaner furniture can't be picked up until later this week. I guess you can say that we are really settling in to life here in Japan!

We went to lunch the other day at a Brazilian restaurant just down the street from American Village, not far from one of the gates of the base. I know, it sounds weird, right? A Brazilian restaurant in Japan, but there is also a Mexican restaurant we pass each week on our way to church. Many people have come and settled here due to exposure here through the military or other DOD assignments. Needless to say, JJ enjoyed speaking a foreign language for about an hour--Portugese rather than Japanese, but I guess you take what you can get!

Our car is finally out of the shop since our accident right before we left to come here, so now we have to figure out where to have it taken for storage until we get back. Our house still hasn't sold, and we haven't heard anything about any offers on it. We could really use to have it sell right about now....before money starts getting too tight.....

But, such is the life of the military family. We are hoping to have all our debts taken care of as soon as possible, so they don't follow us on to our next assignment in a few years and we can really save money for a rainy day. We are getting closer to making the dream a reality, but we still have a long way to go. On the up side, our car will be paid off by the time we get finished here in Japan, so that is a plus. Selling the house will be the easiest, quickest solution, as then we won't have a mortgage payment or window payment to worry about each month, but you do what you have to, I guess.

We watched fireworks down by the flightline the other night as part of AmericaFest 2011, to kickoff the 4th of July weekend, but no fireworks are planned for tonight, the actual 4th--oh, well--and we can't purchase fireworks ourselves here, so we won't personally be shooting them off. We did, however, have company over and grilled out on the balcony some hambugers and hot dogs. I made a type of cherry cobbler in the crock pot which was rather tasty if I do say so myself, and it was very easy with few ingredients. I let the crock pot do all the work! I was so happy to see my crockpots come out of the box when I unpacked the kitchen the other day!!! Now to unpack the rest of the house completely so we can determine if we need to make a claim for damaged goods or not, and since we have a limited time to make any claim, we need to get these boxes opened and emptied quick!

JJ begins working day shift next week and will be on that shift for the next couple months until he rotates back to night shift for a few months. That is our life for the next few years--swapping day shifts and night shifts every 3 months. But it allows everyone to work optimal shifts and better use their time off to experience the island and sights around our area. The commander of the base told us in our welcome briefing to make sure we get out and do--not just make a list of things we would like to see and do, but to actually cross things off the list. Take the opportunity to travel to areas in this part of the world we may not have another chance to see. I've already got some places in mind that I want to go and see, things I would like to do before we run out of time here. Many people I've talked to that are leaving can't believe that their time here is done....there's so much they thought they'd have time to do that didn't get done. I want to try to do things as much as we can when we have the time to do them instead of putting it off. There are some things that we have to wait for, like going to mainland Japan, and leaving the island of Okinawa, but there are tons of things to do here on the island that we can take one day to knock out!