WeHaveANewHome

(sorry for the title. If I put spaces then the words change to Japanese, and I can't figure out how to stop it... any suggestions?)

The day finally came, we made the decision, and now have a home. Which, we knew would happen eventually... the key was keeping in mind God's timing is perfect. Right?! For some reason it's so easy to be distracted by, pretty much everything, and not be focused on the one thing we do know, and should trust at all times. That being, God and His perfect timing.
We thought for sure, before we even got here, that we would live on base. However, not long after arriving we decided we really should live off base. After searching for a week for a place we saw three we liked. Two were a little bit more expensive, but we heard from different people that you don't use all the money you're given for utilities, so you can use that extra money for the rent. We weren't really sure if that would end up being true, but we knew we liked the places a lot. Well, when we finally decided yes, that's what will do. Spending a little more is okay... The places were already taken. Wow, that hit us hard. Hard with dissapointment, but also reassuring us God is in controll. Because we hadnt found anything else we liked in town, our only option was on base, and all we heard were negative things. The same day we received our two offers for base housing and picked up the keys to go look at them. They offered us a multiplex in a new neighborhood and an appt. on the 5th floor of a Tower. Surprisingly, we were impressed with both options. We decided against the Tower because of lugging the kids out of the car, to the building, up the elevator. And we decided to take the place in the multiplex. Our home is on the end of four town homes joined together. We have 3 bd and 2 1/2 bath. A big family room, nice eat-in kitchen, private back patio, and small grass area beyond the patio, lots of storage space, and two assigned parking spots out front. We find ourselves very blessed once again, remembering God had His plan in place the whole time would have saved us a few headaches, but we live and learn and grow in God.
We are very excited about moving into our new home on Friday. Unfortunately, we will be waiting until April 10th to receive our advanced shipment. Why it is called advanced, and taking so long is beyond me. Oh well. We do get to borrow some things free of charge, which is awesome. Things like beds, a couch, kitchen table, pots & pans, coffee maker (for Andy, of course), silverware, etc.
The biggest bummer will be not having easy access to a computer. We will try getting to one as often as we can. Please do not stop the comments, emails, and posts on Facebook, because we are loving it. Thanks so much for your love, support, and prayers. We really appreciate you!

TakingABreakFromTheMadness

Today ended up being a pretty nice day. It was the first day, since we've been on the island, we were able to relax and not worry about our mile long "to do" list. The kids have been doing better and better waking up at a decent hour in the morning. I was getting worried there for a little while when we were getting up at 4-5am and it lasted for a couple of days. But now the kids are adusting well, as well as Andy and I. We still are ready for bed an hour after the kids are down, but there's nothing wrong with that. Since Madelin has been bugging us about going to church, today we decided to start the hunt for our new church home. At the Newcomers Orientation we received a book that had different churches and things to do around Okinawa. We spotted one and decided to check it out. The church is called Koza Church. Overall, it was a pretty good experience. The pastor taught from the word of God and we had a nice worship time. The people were nice and the kids' classes were well supervised and had a good security system in place. After going to New Life for such a long time it will be hard to find our "ideal" church. I feel that anywhere we go will be different and will take some getting used to, which is why we will probably try Koza again, plus try another one out too.
After Church we got some lunch at Burger King. I'm starting to realize why we will be receiving a COLA (Cost of Living Allowance) on top of Andy's base pay. Our bill for three of us to eat was $17. Kinda of crazy I thought.
After Lunch and naps we finally made Madelin's dream come true and went to the beach. The only way we got Madelin to agree to move to Japan was telling her we were going to live by the beach, and I think she was beginning to think we were lying to her. Araha Beach & Park is only two miles away from the Commisary Gate to Camp Foster, but it took us 30 min. We ran into just a little bit of traffic, the entire way. The beach/park was pretty cool. It had a pirate ship play ground with a cool rip-line for the kids to ride on. Madelin loved it. We walked down to the water, but didnt go in the water today. Which im sure made our fathers happy and for the fact there were signs stating "No Swimming, Caution, Jellyfish". So, we took lots and lots of pictures and walked up and down the walk. We all had a really nice time.
Tomorrow is back to the "to-do lists" trying to get everything situated for Andy's work, our car we just bought (which by the way, is a 2000 Mitstubishi Dion. Pretty cool. It has lots of room to drive visitors around too. hint hint.), and narrowing down our options on where to live.

फंडिंग अ हाउस तो कॉल ओउर होम

The Search is On... Trying to find a Home

Yesterday between 10:30am and 5:00pm we had about 5 different appointments with 5 different agencies to see several places off base trying to find a home for our family. When we first had orders to Okinawa we thought for sure we would want to live on base, just because living out in a different country seemed a little scary. Since then we've been talking to different people about their experiences and have gotten a lot of feedback. Living on base has its advantages and disadvantages. You have a lot of rules to live by on base. Your grass always has to cut and maintained at a specfic height, or you'll get a ticket from the grass nazi. And we've also been told the housing on base is extremely small, and to boot we might only rate a two bedroom house. Needless to say, it didnt take us long to start considering living in a house/apt off base. Many of the places available off base are much bigger. After our many appointments yesterday we thought we had found "the one". The apartment had tons of space. Four bedrooms, play room, spacious family room, huge balcony with a oceanfront view, and a communiy yard right outside the kids could run around in. It was amazing but it ended up being just a little bit out of our price rang, and the last thing we want to do is stretch our budget. Can you imagine paying rent on an appartment that is more than $2,000 a month? Yea, that's what we're looking at, but luckily we get whats called OHA (Overseas Housing Allowance), which is 180,000 Y or $1,818. Plus a rather large utility allowance that helps with the outragious electric bills during the summers.
Overall are biggest need right now is for prayer helping us to know where we should live (on/off base) and to find a comfortable place to call home for the four of us.

We have arrived!

The moment we had been anticipating since the 1st week of December came this last Wednesday when we got on a plan headed for our new home in Okinawa, Japan. Definitely a bittersweet moment, leaving family and moving forward to a new adventure living overseas. Our day started out at 9:30am Wed. leaving my parents home headed down to Indy to catch our flight. With our 8 checked bags and 6 carry-ons the four of us took off at 4:00pm for Chicago (why we had to drive to Indy only to turn around on a plane and go to Chicago is beyond me. all i can say is thats the Marine Corps for ya.). We arrived in Chicago to catch our connecting flight an hour later to Seattle. We stayed in Seattle overnight getting about 5 1/2 hrs of sleep we started out the longest day of our lives it seemed. At 4:30 we woke up, by 6:00 we were back at the airport and about 3 hours later we were boarding an Air Bus with approx. 300 military members and their families all on our way to Japan. We boarded and found our selves sitting in 1st class. You have no idea how releived i was to see how much space we had for our upcoming 10 1/2 hr flight into Tokyo. It was amazing, our seats fully reclined, we had personal TVs with access to different movies and games and lots of leg room. God was really watching out for us. The kids did great. Madelin watched movies and colored. And Maddox slept, ate, and pooped. HaHa. Andy and i took turns sitting with each of the kids and getting some sleep when the kids were sleeping. After we landed in Tokyo we still had a 2 1/2 hr flight into Okinawa, which was a little ruff because of the weather. Our travels finally came to an end at 7:00pm Friday night.
It rained the first day and a half we were here, but today we found out the sun does shine in Okinawa and it is a beautiful day. Our first venture out was yesterday when we went to the Macaroni grill for breakfast, which is right next to the hotel we are staying in for 2-3 weeks. Our room is actually 2 conjoining rooms. Its pretty nice, with a small kitchen two tvs and two computers. We went to the commisary yesterday to get some groceries. It was a bit differnt than what I had expected. The store only carried about half what Martins or WalMart would carry, leaving some brands of cereal, salad dressing, and hair moose non-accounted for. The milk we bought only comes in cartons and was some brand i had never heard of before. Not a huge deal, but is going to take some getting used to. As well as, driving on the left side of the road which is still weirding me out. We are still getting used to the time change too. We are 14 hrs ahead of Indiana. So as i write this in the afternoon on Sunday, everybody back home is sleeping Saturday night. Weird, huh? Today we have been up since 4:30 this morning b/c we were all passed out by 7:00 last night. Needless to say we are all pretty tired, but on the brightside we've gotten a lot accomplised.
Well, i must go for now. Sorry there are no pictures yet. Don't worry, we are taking them, it's just downloading that's the problem (at least for now).